On 2020-03-10 19:42, Jamie Douglass wrote: >> On 3/10/20 10:33 AM, James Mason wrote: >> Hopefully true leadership will prevail and the committee does not >> bow to the hysteria and LFNW goes on as is. > US currently has 805 confirmed cases with 28 deaths. > Washington state accounts for 23 of these deaths.
Thank you, Jamie, for providing some actual data. I hope that is enough to convince people that this is no matter to brush away as "hysteria." I'd like to add a little perspective and context to those numbers for further consideration. People have in the recent past suffered from several zoonotic (i.e. they can transmit across species) outbreaks, most notably SARS*. This was relatively minor compared to COVID-19, accounting for 774 deaths worldwide and none in the US, all within a little under a year: https://www.who.int/csr/sars/country/table2004_04_21/en/ That said, I can understand a certain amount of healthy skepticism and resistance to panic. However, this is most certainly not the same situation. By contrast, in less than three months, we have 4012 deaths worldwide with COVID-19: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200310-sitrep-50-covid-19.pdf The deaths in the US have primarily been in King county, Washington, and most notably at one particular nursing home facility in Kirkland, just across Lake Washington from Seattle proper. This essentially makes the Seattle area the epicenter of the outbreak in the US: https://apnews.com/3c6e4d0676eb3b7b653b9fb90da3086e The governor of the state of Washington has already made suggestions that folks give serious consideration to avoiding gatherings: https://www.opb.org/news/article/coronavirus-covd-19-washington-governor-jay-inslee/ Because of this, many events have been cancelled worldwide, but most notably within the area, including the Emerald City Comic Con, which was previously adamant about not cancelling: https://www.emeraldcitycomiccon.com/About/A-Statement-From-Reedpop/ Given all that, this is not mere hysteria or panic. This is a literal pandemic that has found a significant foothold less than 100 miles away from LFNW. This is not a political issue. The people who are dead and suffering from this illness (which, I might add, can last as long as 6 weeks) are not up for debate. The death rate might be (depends on how you cut up the numbers) but no matter how you look at it, it's very high. This is unquestionably a legitimate concern worth very serious consideration. I'm very glad to see that the committee is giving it the attention it deserves. Sincerely, Walter Lapchynski * Technically, COVID-19 is also a severe acute respiratory syndrome, but I mean here the one that broke out in 2002. -- @wxl | polka.bike C563 CAC5 8BE1 2F22 A49D 68F6 8B57 A48B C4F2 051A _______________________________________________ Fest-list mailing list [email protected] https://lists.blug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fest-list
