Originally posted by RGlasel I'm working as event staff at two large public gatherings this weekend, the
JUNO Awards (approx. 8000 people) and a cabaret for up to 3800 drunken university students; in my opinion cancelling public events is the wrong thing to do. It takes too long for the authorities to implement any plan (because it is always a delayed knee-jerk response to a public relations crisis, precipitated by a deluge of speculation) and getting the necessary level of compliance is always too expensive, too inconsistent and too late. There can't be any living persons on the planet who haven't heard of COVID-19; let individuals take responsibility for protecting themselves and provide free testing for as many people as possible, instead of making sweeping pronouncements and tossing political footballs for lazy journalists to broadcast. Just my opinion, of course.
Of course you are entitled to your opinion, but I highly disagree. At the current state the mortality is pretty much unknown, somewhere between 2%-4% of diagnosed occurences seem likely right now, but the data vary much more than they should, so the data are currently just not good enough to predict. Many models that people that are in the opinion it is not as bad as it is currently presented refer to do not take into account that currently that the coefficient infected by dead is completley useless, as death by covid 19 often takes many weeks and numbers are still exponentially increasing, so the mortality will be higher. In the end, this will be something we know after it is over.
The spreading however is a major problem. It is extremely simple, we need to decrease the acceleration, because the number of infected at the same time will quickly overload hospitals making it impossible to save lifes that would not have been in danger otherwise. It is not anymore about holding it locally, only about slowing it down so the infections spread over a longer period of time.
My company, as many others working in data sciences, does a lot of simulations right now predicting different scenarios of spreading. While those models give very different numbers currently there are models that predict a too fast infection rate to handle it in our country (Germany). This is not a valid prediction, but a possible outcome. The point is, there is a good chance that it will escalate if we do not forcefully deaccelerate it.
Again: Our numbers vary highly with different models and we do not know which is the best, so there are no good predictions right now my company delivers and I suppose others have similar problems looking at current news contradicting each other over and over again.
Italy unfortunately does not give good data as it was undetect too long and China does not give trustworthy data either.
I am not in panic, I am also not one of those people who bought a year worth of noodles and toilet paper, but the more I learn, the more I am convinced that reducing hot spots of spreading is very important.
Let's just hope it will be good at the end and most people are not affected at all.