MWC 2020 cancelled amid coronavirus fears

[Blademaster91]

51 minutes ago, Sushimus said:

@dizmo Like each manufacturer could show stuff off and do kool tech demos at scheduled times, but from wherever because they can all livestream from different locations

Yeah companies could stream from their offices or something, it would also cost them a lot less than having people fly out to an event.

 

[realpetertdm]

On 2/13/2020 at 6:57 AM, Devin92 said:

actually no. ebola can only transmit through contacting patient's fluid compared with this coronavarius transmitting through air. death rate means nothing if it can not spread easily. plus given china government is not really transparent about the situation, it's better planing for the worse for these big companies.

The coronavirus isn't airborne by itself, it's usually transmitted by airborne spit droplets which aren't airborne for more then a few seconds

[Mihle]

On 2/14/2020 at 1:20 AM, dizmo said:

 

What you said makes absolutely no sense.

Then learn to understand text better.

But if you don't want to do that: 

Much more % of infected die from coranavirus than flu. The only reason why total dead is lower than what flu kills every year is because much much fever have gotten infected with it than the flu.

[Bombastinator]

4 hours ago, Mihle said:

Then learn to understand text better.

But if you don't want to do that: 

Much more % of infected die from coranavirus than flu, the only reason why total dead is lower than flu does every year is because much much fever have gotten infected with coranavirus than flu yet.

My understanding of death rate from corona is 2% with the rate being as high as 50% if the infected person is very old or otherwise immune compromised.  I don’t know what the death rate from influenza is.  It varies a lot by strain.  My understanding is that makes it worse than the average flu, but not as bad as some very bad ones.  Could be wrong.  Not sure of the numbers.

[Sauron]

9 hours ago, dizmo said:

COVID-19 is more certainly contagious before symptoms show.

Well then I was misinformed on that.

9 hours ago, dizmo said:

China has very good control over what information is released, as there have already been several cases of people going missing who were trying to report on the virus.

If they had such a good control on it you probably wouldn't know about this... again, I'm not a fan of China but the conspiracy theories around this are pretty absurd.

9 hours ago, dizmo said:

The viral outbreak shows how China can't properly care for it's own population, and shows how weak it's healthcare system is. Which isn't an image they'd like to portray, just like they don't want to portray the massive amounts of poverty in anything but the largest cities

I don't recall having much of an issue finding out about the poor working conditions and widespread poverty in certain areas of China, so what makes you think this in particular would be kept a secret at all costs despite having the highest chance out of everything you listed to affect other countries directly?

 

Also this is a large scale viral outbreak, it's not something any country would have an easy time dealing with. China doesn't lack the means to "take care of its population", they just aren't particularly interested in using them outside of high profile cases like this one - they'd rather feed the industrial complex that, guess what, western nations' corporations are the primary clients for.

9 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

I don’t think a western country could have done better, maybe much worse.

I know at least one western country that would have had the people affected pay upfront for treatment...

[dizmo]

On 2/14/2020 at 3:26 AM, Sauron said:

Also this is a large scale viral outbreak, it's not something any country would have an easy time dealing with. China doesn't lack the means to "take care of its population", they just aren't particularly interested in using them outside of high profile cases like this one - they'd rather feed the industrial complex that, guess what, western nations' corporations are the primary clients for.

I didn't say they aren't capable of taking care of their population, I said they have a poor medical system, which is true.

[dizmo]

2 hours ago, Mihle said:

Then learn to understand text better.

But if you don't want to do that: 

Much more % of infected die from coranavirus than flu, the only reason why total dead is lower than flu does every year is because much much fever have gotten infected with coranavirus than flu yet.

Haha, hmm, since you're going to be a dick about it I'm going to ignore the fact that English probably isn't your first language.

You should probably learn how to type properly. Your sentence structure is horrible. For example, I think you meant:

Quote

A much higher % of infected die from coranavirus than the flu, the only reason why the total dead is lower than flu kills every year is because fewer people have gotten infected with coranavirus than the flu.

Do you get why what you said makes no sense? It's because your English sucks.

[Sauron]

37 minutes ago, dizmo said:

I didn't say they aren't capable of taking care of their population

I literally quoted the part where you said that:

On 2/14/2020 at 1:20 AM, dizmo said:

The viral outbreak shows how China can't properly care for it's own population

so either this is incredibly poorly phrased or you meant that they aren't capable of taking proper care of their population.

 

Regardless, even your attempt to reduce the scope of the claim falls flat - what does "poor" healthcare mean to you, and more importantly how does this outbreak in particular prove that the Chinese system is poor? Again, most countries would struggle to handle something like this; it doesn't speak to the overall quality of the system. I don't think Chinese healthcare is great, mind you, but this is not the right benchmark to measure just how good or bad it is.

[Bombastinator]

The thing worrying me is this I GOING to happen in other places.  China has “wet markets” but bush meat is eaten in lots of places including the US, and I strongly suspect it’s only a matter of time.   I’m not at all sure the US could have dealt with it any better.  The challenges would have been different.  I think there would have been more issues with obstreperous citizens and assholes using the situation to grind whatever financial or political axes they have, but less with actual medical delivery.  That whole “of you’ve not been tested you must be fine” thing likely wouldn’t have happened for example but there would have been other different things.  This kind of thing is going to be a shit show wherever it pops up.  And it’s going to pop up.

[Mihle]

4 hours ago, dizmo said:

It's because your English sucks.

I really hope you don't think that I don't know that.

 

I was being a dick because you probably didn't even try to understand, you probably went, "oh, this sentence is weird let's just drop that totally" 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

Hopefully this will help them see how unnecessary these events are in this day and age.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

57 minutes ago, Mihle said:

I really hope you don't think that I don't know that

Just for the record, your English is fine, and your sentence was mostly correct both grammatically and semantically. 

[Unixsystem]

At this point the idea of a trade show with million dollar booths and thousands of journalists traveling halfway around the world is so antiquated, I could see this escalating the death of the format. There's basically nothing gained from a consumer perspective of a glitzy booth where someone can pick up a phone, rattle off the specs they're given and say "feels good" or "feels bad". 

 

Basically any big company is capable of doing Nintendo style "direct" video announcements and/or livestreamed press conferences, and smaller companies (which would get buried at a trade show anyway) can still send out press releases or review units just the same as they always would. Much the same way that E3 is in its death throes with numerous companies backing out, I feel like the more general tech/hardware shows are lagging only a few years behind. 

 

Spoiler

On the topic of coronavirus, holy crap some people in this thread haven't been paying attention. It's one of the most contagious common diseases we've ever seen, it's practically (if not literally) airborne at this point, it can survive on surfaces for 4-9 days depending on the surface type, it has an incubation period anywhere from 5-24 days and during nearly that entire period it makes you contagious without symptoms. Death rate is 2-3% versus the tradition flu's 0.1-0.2%, and even if you recover you are generally bedridden for at least a couple weeks (with some reports that it can take a month or more to fight it off). 

 

Go on Twitter or YouTube and look up the non-WHO "sanctioned" videos leaking out from inside China. Even if you avoid the full conspiracy side of things, there are numerous examples of piles of body bags, police chaining/welding infected into their homes, food riots, police killing pet dogs in the streets (despite dogs not being a known infection vector), and dozens of videos of government workers gassing down the streets and inside buildings with disinfectant. Multiple interviews with crematorium operators make it sound like all 48 crematoriums in Wuhan are running 24/7, and those "hospitals" they built so impressively are converting shipping containers with no plumbing, no medical equipment and minimal staff. They are quarantine camps, nothing more. 

 

Even the CDC and WHO (the latter of which has been proven to be a total joke at this point) have admitted that containment isn't working and it will likely become a worldwide pandemic, and multiple US congressmen have talkes with the DOD about containment procedures and about the possibility that this may in fact be a leak from a Chinese biolab and not a purely natural virus (that's not to say it's a bioweapon, just an accidental leak). 

 

Is it going to wipe out humanity? No. But acting like it's no big deal or just another SARS or something is completely ridiculous at this point.

 

Edit: A couple other important points I forgot:

Currently all of our testing methods for the virus suck. The RNA tests that have been standard for the last month or two are somewhere between 30-50% accurate, and worse they are in extreme short supply. Huebi just a couple days ago changed to using CT scans to look for pneumonia symptoms (hence the 15k spike in cases), but that hasn't gone into effect across China and even then it only catches severe cases that are fully symptomatic, and even then it's they obviously can't test all the families currently locked down in their homes and unwilling/unable to head to a hospital. We're approaching 70k confirmed cases right now, but it's highly likely that we are well over 100k active, symptomatic cases due to untested/faultily tested individuals, and likely at least double that in terms of cases that are incubating and will likely start showing symptoms in the next several weeks. 

 

Secondly, back in December China jailed several doctors who acted as whistleblowers who tried to warn everyone in the early stages of the infection, and only "released" them after massive public outcry. The best known of those doctors just recently died allegedly due to the virus itself. Since then there have been multiple citizen journalists who have disappeared as well. 

 

I don't want to get political or try to claim that any other country would have done significantly better in terms of handling the situation, but China absolutely covered up the virus for the first 3-4 weeks, followed by continuing to downplay it. Saying that they aren't worthy of criticism is crazy. They have at least 90-100 million citizens under strict quarantine (I've seen some numbers putting this closer to 500-700 million under some form of lock down). I'd much rather trust their actions and their attempts to quash information over whatever propoganda they are trying to make everyone believe. 

 

[Bombastinator]

24 minutes ago, Waffles13 said:

At this point the idea of a trade show with million dollar booths and thousands of journalists traveling halfway around the world is so antiquated, I could see this escalating the death of the format. There's basically nothing gained from a consumer perspective of a glitzy booth where someone can pick up a phone, rattle off the specs they're given and say "feels good" or "feels bad". 

 

Basically any big company is capable of doing Nintendo style "direct" video announcements and/or livestreamed press conferences, and smaller companies (which would get buried at a trade show anyway) can still send out press releases or review units just the same as they always would. Much the same way that E3 is in its death throes with numerous companies backing out, I feel like the more general tech/hardware shows are lagging only a few years behind. 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

On the topic of coronavirus, holy crap some people in this thread haven't been paying attention. It's one of the most contagious common diseases we've ever seen, it's practically (if not literally) airborne at this point, it can survive on surfaces for 4-9 days depending on the surface type, it has an incubation period anywhere from 5-24 days and during nearly that entire period it makes you contagious without symptoms. Death rate is 2-3% versus the tradition flu's 0.1-0.2%, and even if you recover you are generally bedridden for at least a couple weeks (with some reports that it can take a month or more to fight it off). 

 

Go on Twitter or YouTube and look up the non-WHO "sanctioned" videos leaking out from inside China. Even if you avoid the full conspiracy side of things, there are numerous examples of piles of body bags, police chaining/welding infected into their homes, food riots, police killing pet dogs in the streets (despite dogs not being a known infection vector), and dozens of videos of government workers gassing down the streets and inside buildings with disinfectant. Multiple interviews with crematorium operators make it sound like all 48 crematoriums in Wuhan are running 24/7, and those "hospitals" they built so impressively are converting shipping containers with no plumbing, no medical equipment and minimal staff. They are quarantine camps, nothing more. 

 

Even the CDC and WHO (the latter of which has been proven to be a total joke at this point) have admitted that containment isn't working and it will likely become a worldwide pandemic, and multiple US congressmen have talkes with the DOD about containment procedures and about the possibility that this may in fact be a leak from a Chinese biolab and not a purely natural virus (that's not to say it's a bioweapon, just an accidental leak). 

 

Is it going to wipe out humanity? No. But acting like it's no big deal or just another SARS or something is completely ridiculous at this point. 

 

There may be a point to this.  There wouldn’t be any cost savings though.  Part of the idea of trade shows is to go look at and feel the product.  There’s also “discovery” where someone finds something they weren’t necessarily looking for.

 The only way around feel would be to send samples to literally everyone..  different cost, but possibly no cheaper.  Also loses the ability to experience systems.  Some of that could be made up with through video.

 

Maybe gigantic sample packages of lots and lots of things sent to trade show attendees that would include things they weren’t specifically looking for.  Lot of waste, lot of shipping.

[Unixsystem]

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

There may be a point to this.  There wouldn’t be any cost savings though.  Part of the idea of trade shows is to go look at and feel the product.  There’s also “discovery” where someone finds something they weren’t necessarily looking for.

 The only way around feel would be to send samples to literally everyone..  different cost, but possibly no cheaper.  Also loses the ability to experience systems.  Some of that could be made up with through video.

 

Maybe gigantic sample packages of lots and lots of things sent to trade show attendees that would include things they weren’t specifically looking for.  Lot of waste, lot of shipping.

What "feel" is required for most of these products? For phones and tablets there's some degree of ergonomics, but generally speaking you can get the same info from a specs sheet. Even if a journo goes to MWC to hold a bunch of phones, how does that help you as the end user who isn't there? Stuff like keyboards or displays are maybe a bit more useful metrics to consider, but generally half the products shown are prototypes that will likely change before release, and the other half will be out in 6 months at which point you should just wait for reviews anyway. 

 

Quitting the trade show means that companies save millions on booths and get to more carefully control information rollout and the PR message. Consumers are still going to get the same filtered message that they would normally, just now its from the company directly instead of through journos (and let's be honest, most tech journos just read the specs sheet and give you a release date). The only people to potentially lose out in the deal would be press, but considering that they'd save thousands on travel it just means that they can reinvest that money into whatever their regular, non-trade show content is. It might hurt the bigger outlets, but smaller guys with more diverse content likely wouldn't really get hit. 

 

The one actual bummer would be the loss of someone like Steve from GN being able to go around be actively critical to manufacturers while they have products still early enough in development to actually implement fixes, but realistically he could still do the same thing with just pictures and a spec sheet. Apart from him I don't know any other outlet that will tell companies to their PR rep's face that their product is bad. 

[mr moose]

15 hours ago, Mihle said:

I really hope you don't think that I don't know that.

 

I was being a dick because you probably didn't even try to understand, you probably went, "oh, this sentence is weird let's just drop that totally" 

I understood exactly what you meant the first time.  In situations like this it is quite common for those who have a decent understanding of the issue to understand what you mean without any specific details. While those with only an average idea of what's happening need very specific details in order to understand a new concept.