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I bought Coachella music festival tickets starting on April 10th~... guessing I need to cancel the airplane tickets which are non refundable.... wait!
 
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.
 
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Over 55,000 people died from the flu and pneumonia in 2017 in the US. In 2020 Covid19 has killed 16. This could escalate to a crisis for the elderly, those with significant pre-existing conditions, and for healthcare systems but it hardly affects the demographic that attends SXSW. Everyone needs to calm down.
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.
 
Just a result of media induced fear and weak leadership from a virus that's no more harmful than the flu.

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.
 
Gotta wonder how Apple will handle that. Because the show must go on, of a roadmap for future Apple software and including developers in the loop.

Maybe it will just be virtual? The collaboration aspect in real life cant be replicated, but they have to be wondering how they will proceed, without cancelling 10.16 and iOS 14
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.
 
Gotta wonder how Apple will handle that. Because the show must go on, of a roadmap for future Apple software and including developers in the loop.

Maybe it will just be virtual? The collaboration aspect in real life cant be replicated, but they have to be wondering how they will proceed, without cancelling 10.16 and iOS 14
I’m guessing WWDC will be virtual this year. They can issue press releases for updated iPads and Macs.
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I bought Coachella music festival tickets starting on April 10th~... guessing I need to cancel the airplane tickets which are non refundable.... wait!
Airlines are updating their policies.
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There are though. I can’t speak for the US but countries with public healthcare that I live in (Canada, Australia) there are annual campaigns to get people to get free flu shots. The reason is a bad flu season can have a significant impact on the health system, which will consequently impact on the system’s ability to care for other patients.

Debate regarding the lethality of this COV-19 aside, it’s rate of spread and transmission is undeniably quick. You can already witness the chaos in countries where health systems are overwhelmed by the unpreparedness of this outbreak, even if it’s “just a flu”. I can appreciate why they would like to minimise it’s rapid spread.

But I agree, no need for over panic and we need to wash our hands 👍
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.
 
Over 55,000 people died from the flu and pneumonia in 2017 in the US. In 2020 Covid19 has killed 16. This could escalate to a crisis for the elderly, those with significant pre-existing conditions, and for healthcare systems but it hardly affects the demographic that attends SXSW. Everyone needs to calm down.
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.
 
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Man, sorry for sounding like a black cloud but I think this is only going to get worst. Maybe around Summer things will get better but the next 3 months this is going to be an huge issue. The Olympics might be the next casualty. Right now having large crowds of people together is a bad idea.
Yeah, now that you mention it, it would be extremely shocking if the olympics wasn't canceled. Quite the shame.
 
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Just a result of media induced fear and weak leadership from a virus that's no more harmful than the flu.

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.
 
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More people die of the flu.

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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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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WWDC is gonna be next. Actually a good opportunity for Apple to demonstrate their streaming prowess by doing a remote conference.

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.
 
I'm going to the BNP Paribas Open Tennis tournament next week (In Palm Springs CA area) and just got an email saying they are giving refunds for people who request them and also the list of precautions they are taking. This is one of the largest attended tennis tournaments in the world (typically only behind the 4 majors) drawing over 450,000 over the two weeks by people from all over the world. It is going to be interesting to see how much the attendance drops off.

Well, I guess you’re not going now.
 
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