I bought Coachella music festival tickets starting on April 10th~... guessing I need to cancel the airplane tickets which are non refundable.... wait!
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SXSW 2020 Canceled Due to Coronavirus Concerns
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The cost of cancellation would be dwarfed by the cost of treatment for the potential path of infection that could follow.
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Here in Australia, many of us are wondering why when we have travel bans for tourists from China, Iran and South Korea, why we have not extended the ban to Italy. Italy are reporting similar numbers to Iran but of course, the Melbourne Formula 1 Grand Prix is on next weekend and the rumor is that if the Ferrari team are not allowed to enter the country that the Grand Prix will be called off.
I live in Austin and will say two things:
1. This was absolutely the right thing to do, especially with people coming in from all over the world. The WHO is far more concerned about COVID-19 than it seems most people in this country are, and if we do not listen to the science, this could become much worse.
2. Waiting until the last minute to cancel was maybe not such a good idea. It should have been cancelled with a bit more notice, and it is incredibly unfortunate that the businesses here in Austin that depend on the revenue generated by SXSW to sustain themselves throughout the rest of the year are going to be hit pretty hard.
1. This was absolutely the right thing to do, especially with people coming in from all over the world. The WHO is far more concerned about COVID-19 than it seems most people in this country are, and if we do not listen to the science, this could become much worse.
2. Waiting until the last minute to cancel was maybe not such a good idea. It should have been cancelled with a bit more notice, and it is incredibly unfortunate that the businesses here in Austin that depend on the revenue generated by SXSW to sustain themselves throughout the rest of the year are going to be hit pretty hard.
Just a result of media induced fear and weak leadership from a virus that's no more harmful than the flu.
It’s twice as contagious, has a fatality rate that is at least as high if not higher, and there is no vaccine.
So, even if it is only as “harmful” as the flu, it has the potential to kill many many more people.
Yeah, I’m sure none of the people attending SXSW or those they’ll interact with in Austin are over 60, have underlying medical conditions or have older relatives who are vulnerable.
If this were only as harmful as the flu, and we had a vaccine, and we had an infrastructure in place to deal with it, we'd expect it to kill tens of thousands of Americans. If it is only as bad as the flu, except with no vaccine and an unready infrastructure.....
Of course, it seems worse than the flu, with the data we have so far.
Preventative measure (for when it inevitably hits). Declaring a state of emergency allows access to funding/resources.
The vast majority of Apple devs don’t attend WWDC so I don’t think virtual is a problem as long as they produce all the session videos, which are key.
In a way, this may actually be a good thing as far as the content is concerned because they won’t have all the logistics and restraints of running multiple concurrent sessions. The videos can be as long or short as they need to be instead of fitting into a 50 minute box. They wouldn’t have to wait for people to get their demos set up, etc.
Its not as good for the Keynote sessions with top games demos and so on but to me those usually are not very interesting, it’s the sessions that have code and Xcode demos where the meat is for developers.
I’m guessing WWDC will be virtual this year. They can issue press releases for updated iPads and Macs.
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Airlines are updating their policies.
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Regular flu vaccines are pretty cheap in the US. Unfortunately it will be at least a year before we have one for Covid-19 and we don’t know how it will mutate next year.
And the demographic which attends SXSW has older parents, grandparents and other loved peoples around which they don't wanna infect with the virus. Just its not a problem for one group doesn't make it any better. We are all connected and I don't want to see my parents die from a virus which I brought home just because of a music festival. Not worth it right now.
Yeah, now that you mention it, it would be extremely shocking if the olympics wasn't canceled. Quite the shame.
You cannot be serious. So far it’s anywhere from 10-40 times more fatal than flu(0.1% for flu and 1-4% for Covid-19). That’s the number everyone should be thinking about.
I’ll make a hyperbolic comparison so that it’s easily understandable. Jumping out of a plane at 10000 ft without a parachute has a near 100% chance of death. Yet far few people die from it each year. Which is more deadly? The above scenario or flu if it were to happen to you? Any person infected has a 10X-40x chance of dying from this when compared to the flu.
All these comparisons to the absolute numbers doesn’t make sense. Adding in the fact that everyone who is infected doesn’t know they are infected for an average of 5 days, during which they are actively infecting others.
The media certainly doesn’t help and I don’t think it’s panic time since 96-99% will come out of this without any issues, but it’s also a LOT worse than the flu.
Coronavirus: Northern Italy quarantines 16 million people
A quarter of the population is in lockdown as Italy takes drastic action to control Covid-19.
www.bbc.co.uk
Because everybody is exposed to the flu. So far, only a tiny fraction of the world has been exposed to Covid19, which is more contagious and more deadly. The whole point of cancelling but events is to limit the number of people exposed and slow the spread. Waiting for mass deaths before taking action is just plain stupid.
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So?
More people die of flu than Ebola, too. If Ebola came to town, do you think you should worry about it? What if Ebola suddenly became much more contagious, and there was no vaccine?
Not surprised at all. Was in Austin last weekend and people we talking about not going because so many acts and companies had already cancelled.
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Agreed. Apple is already telling Bay Area employees to work from home when possible.
Google I/O was cancelled and other conferences are virtual. The TensorFlow Dev summit this Wed will now be virtual. Of course Google has the advantage of owing the YouTube infrastructure.
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Agreed. Apple is already telling Bay Area employees to work from home when possible.
Google I/O was cancelled and other conferences are virtual. The TensorFlow Dev summit this Wed will now be virtual. Of course Google has the advantage of owing the YouTube infrastructure.
