Coronavirus and the World Championships

[rosy14]

I’d like to inform all of you that 95% of the lab test performed in Italy to people who supposedly had a contact with the virus, are negative, i.e.no virus. We have now nearly 400 cases, of which only 38% have symptoms. To give you figures to compare, Northern Italy has a population of 30 millions ca.

 

[macy]

This is scary.

agree, and i hope it doesn't come to that. how devastating to have to wait another 4 years for your olympic moment...and your chances of making another team are probably slim to none depending on your sport.

if it comes to it, i hope they try to move them to another past venue, Rio would make the most sense. i really hope they can pull it off one way or another.

 

[Ophelia]

^no country is safe right now. Brazil has its first confirmed patient.

 

[Supernovaimplosion]

agree, and i hope it doesn't come to that. how devastating to have to wait another 4 years for your olympic moment...and your chances of making another team are probably slim to none depending on your sport.

if it comes to it, i hope they try to move them to another past venue, Rio would make the most sense. i really hope they can pull it off one way or another.

Dick Pound said they wouldn't even try to postpone it, so I doubt they'd move it to another country. It just seems like a waste, with all the energy, resources and money that went into the venues, medals, athletes village, etc, only for them to never be used.

 

[Edwin]

Pandemics are a relatively new phenomenon. It is only statistics that matter to those studying it. But of course, ordinary citizens like you and me have different worries from commercial parties.

Generally, athletes are on the more healthy side of world's population, it is the spectators and the risks they bring that worries most organisers. If actually spectators present at the venue really matter in the revenue stream is another subject for discussion. Media rights and the income generated are more important. Spectators are often just a necessary nuisance ;-)

 

[Nachi]

I neet to correct this because pandemics are NOT a "relatively new" phenomenon. Maybe it's not quite clear what pandemia actually means so here a quote: "A pandemic (from Greek πᾶν pan "all" and δῆμος demos "people") is an epidemic of disease that has spread across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or worldwide."

Examples are the Plague of Athens, The Black Death, or The Spanish Flu. Now I don't want to compare Covid-19 to those examples because it still caused fewer deaths than any flu virus in prior seasons. It is just very contagious and shouldn't be taken lightly. To say that it didn't spread that rapidly in Europe yet...well, Italy was hit the worst. There also are cases in the northern part of Germany (it started in the south and it's unknown yet how those people in the north got infected), France, Spain, Austria... So it doesn't really matter were fans come from or if they go to a country which is "not a hot spot for the virus." That all can change in just a matter of time so it would seriously be the best decision (in my opinion) to cancel/postpone the event.

 

[drivingmissdaisy]

I neet to correct this because pandemics are NOT a "relatively new" phenomenon. Maybe it's not quite clear what pandemia actually means so here a quote: "A pandemic (from Greek πᾶν pan "all" and δῆμος demos "people") is an epidemic of disease that has spread across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or worldwide."

Examples are the Plague of Athens, The Black Death, or The Spanish Flu. Now I don't want to compare Covid-19 to those examples because it still caused fewer deaths than any flu virus in prior seasons. It is just very contagious and shouldn't be taken lightly. To say that it didn't spread that rapidly in Europe yet...well, Italy was hit the worst. There also are cases in the northern part of Germany (it started in the south and it's unknown yet how those people in the north got infected), France, Spain, Austria... So it doesn't really matter were fans come from or if they go to a country which is "not a hot spot for the virus." That all can change in just a matter of time so it would seriously be the best decision (in my opinion) to cancel/postpone the event.

What is most troubling about this is that it seems people can be contagious before showing symptoms. I do think that the suggestion another poster mentioned, which would be closing the event to the public but still holding to the competition schedule, might be a great idea if the virus continues to spread. Doing that at least allows the organizers to determine whether participants and others involved have traveled anywhere that might have put them at high risk of exposure, and respond to that risk accordingly.

 

[Nachi]

Why I suggested to cancel or postpone the event is that there are still people needed to work at the venue. And those aren't a few. On top of that they cannot stay at the venue. They will need to go home or the athletes need to go to a hotel. They need to get there by bus or any other transportation. You see that it's not very easy to keep this all very closed because they WILL have contact to the outside. Viruses don't care about borders or a city being shut down or a competition being held without audience. Otherwise we wouldn't be where we are at right now. Thus I still believe that it'll be the better decision to cancel/postpone the event.

 

[drivingmissdaisy]

All those concerns are valid, and I'm certain the ISU will weigh the pros and cons. I'm not aware of a lot of other sporting events being cancelled. Tennis tournaments are going on in the Middle East and Central/South America, basketball teams are playing in the US, etc. So, unless there is something unique about figure skating that is different than the other sports that are currently playing, I think it would be ok for the ISU to take cues from other sports organizations.

 

[TallyT]

Agreed that pandemics are as old as time... and mostly way way worse than this one. Even SARS may have not travelled as fast but had a much heavier mortality rate.

Media rights and the income generated are more important. Spectators are often just a necessary nuisance ;-)

Very necessary. Take away the onscreen audience numbers and excitement, have empty seats and quieter rinks and the media will rapidly lose interest - and investment. Given that a large number of tickets for Worlds were snapped up by the Japanese and Chinese fans, if the former especially can't make it we could get a unexpected presage of things to come...

 

[Step Sequence4]

I would just like to point out that although Coronavirus is a scary global epidemic that definitely needs preventative measures, it is less dangerous than the flu. Worlds are in Canada, and although there are confirmed cases in Canada I think that should nothing very unexpected happen, the event will run. (although there will probably be many fans who cannot attend, and much higher security) The olympics, that is another matter, which I agree is scary.

 

[Autumn Leaves]

But the Olympics is in the summer and the virus should have lost strength by then, right? I read it was the type of virus that doesn’t survive when it is hot, just like the flu. So the situation should contain itself naturally then, even if all the precautions fail. Hope I have understood correctly.

 

[elektra blue]

in Italy the authorities run something like 9000 tests (better safe than sorry i guess) hence the large number of positives, the majority of them is between Lombarida and Emilia Romagna, so far the infected are 400 and the deads 12 (all elderly or already sick people)

 

[icybear]

The zika virus was happening right in the middle of the rio olympics and it went through and no one withdrew out of fear, as far as i know. Although the zika virus was spread by bites rather than airborne so thats a huge factor but still. There has been a lot of fake news spreading around lately driving fear and racism.

 

[NaVi]

The Coronavirus is much more dangerous than the flu. The fatality rate is about 10x the fatality rate of the flu. It hits older people much harder though as it's only about twice as fatal as the flu for those under 40. There are many attributes about it which make it very easy to spread. Symptoms often don't show up until the 2nd week of infection and many people only have mild symptoms. It can spread long distance through the air and on surfaces. It's already killed more people than SARS. There is no vaccine and won't be one until next year. Slowing it down requires extremely draconian measures.


The US has 330 million people. Let's say 10% got infected which is 33 million people. A 2% death rate would equal 660,000 fatalities. The number of US deaths in WWII was around 420,000.

Compared to the flu last year, "CDC estimates that up to 42.9 million people got sick during the 2018-2019 flu season, 647,000 people were hospitalized and 61,200 died": https://time.com/5610878/2018-2019-flu-season/

And that is with a flu vaccine program.

 

[NanaPat]

in Italy the authorities run something like 9000 tests (better safe than sorry i guess) hence the large number of positives, the majority of them is between Lombarida and Emilia Romagna, so far the infected are 400 and the deads 12 (all elderly or already sick people)

That is little comfort to those who are elderly or already sick or to their nearest and dearest. However, I agree that it is far better than an infection that disproportionately kills children.

 

[Sugar Coated]

But the Olympics is in the summer and the virus should have lost strength by then, right? I read it was the type of virus that doesn’t survive when it is hot, just like the flu. So the situation should contain itself naturally then, even if all the precautions fail. Hope I have understood correctly.

I’m not an expert but I think it’s believed the flu loses strength in the summer because people spend less time indoors in confined spaces (with poor air circulation). And children in the US are not in school.

I’m not sure we know enough about the virus yet to assume it will die down in the summer.
MERS is a type of coronavirus that had outbreaks in the Middle East during the summer.

I think the risk of the olympics is less concern about the athletes per se but rather anytime lots of people (athletes and spectators) gather and spend time in close quarters there is high risk of transmissions. But the problem is then everyone going back to their parts of the world and spreading it locally makes it almost impossible to contain. Lots of the early SARS and covid-19 cases worldwide can be traced to international conferences.

 

[ericpkh98]

Information about athletes from ROK who compete at Montreal

Junhwan Cha: He’s in Toronto right now, so he’s pretty much safe(unless one of his training mates get infected)

Young You: She recently competed at Korean Winter games, and she is probably at Osaka with Mie Hamada and Rika Kihira.(according to the interview) Maybe she might go to Colorado, which is another training camp for her. If we lose Young, it might also mean we might not see Rika at WC.

Yelim Kim: She mainly trains at Taeleung ice rink, which is an ice rink only for national team and alternatives. She also trains at Goyang(suburb near Seoul) and rink at Korea National Sports University(both are home rinks of her coaches, Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Shin). Maybe she can also try training at Colorado temporarily just in case, since she trained there until last season, but I find this option very unlikely. She might be in trouble.

 

[deneb]

Let's say 10% got infected which is 33 million people.

10%???

As of today:
Hubei: 65597 cases out of 58.5 million people = 0.11%
China: 78497 cases out of 1386 million people = 0.005%
South Korea: 1766 cases out of 51.5 million people = 0.003%
Italy: 453 cases out of 60.5 million people = 0.00075%
Japan: 189 cases out of 126.8 million people = 0.00015%

And in China the number of new cases per day is now decreasing.

 

[lappo]

As far as the Italian team is concerned, they can maybe apply the same procedures taken for our golf players competing in Oman this week; they were all tested for Coronavirus before departing, as per request of the host country.