
MWC 2020 canceled over coronavirus health concerns - coloneltcb
https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/12/21127754/mwc-2020-canceled-coronavirus-trade-show-phone-mobile-world-congress-gsma-statement
======
OldOneEye
While I feel sorry for the people that put the energy to make this happen and
also for the people that may lose their jobs this month over this, as a native
inhabitant of Barcelona, I can only celebrate the news, even if it is for this
terrible reason.

When MWC is ocurring in Barcelona, public transport (subway) goes on strike
(because of the maximum impact). But usually this only fucks over non MWC
attending people, because tickets are so expensive that only people which can
use a taxi anyway will go, greatly diminishing the impact of the strike for
attendants while making inhabitants lives miserable for that time period.

Also, Barcelona already has a very severe problem of houses being rented out
to tourists with very high markups, producing a gentrification of the city
(along with other factors, not only the tourism is responsible for this).
Events like MWC do not help this situation.

BCN is already overloaded with tourism, events like MWC only make it worse for
those of us that live there.

I'm completely aware that this is not the responsibility of MWC organization
or tourists, this is a regulation problem. But since regulation is stacked
against us, I can only get happier that this year we won't have to suffer all
the inconvenience of the event while reaping almost none of the benefit.

~~~
totalZero
You never really know what you've got till it's gone. A hundred thousand
visitors eating, drinking, commuting, sightseeing, dwelling, and flying about
in your city in a short period of time.....for many cities that would be a
welcome occurrence (apart from the traffic woes).

It's about $500m Euros of revenue, and I saw an estimate of something like 15k
part-time jobs due to MWC. No small thing.

~~~
alexgmcm
I'm also in BCN and everyone always says that but I'm not sure I buy it.

I mean, yeah, some guys benefit from having the MWC for sure but I'm not sure
most residents do - I'm not letting out flats or running venues etc. I'm
trying to get to work on time and pay my rent.

It reminds me of the similar arguments people make about the big cruise ships
that come here - I mean sure, it massively benefits tourist attractions and
restaurants etc. but most citizens don't see any of that money, they just get
lungfuls of air pollution.

~~~
paul_f
Do you understand how economics works? When money from outside your city is
spent in your city, that is a huge net benefit to everyone.

~~~
alexgmcm
> that is a huge net benefit to everyone.

This isn't necessarily true though.

Honestly, the MWC doesn't bother me that much - yeah the metro always goes on
strike but that's a problem with the metro unions and the Ayuntamiento not the
MWC in my opinion.

But take the case of the cruise ships which do irritate me - every citizen
gets to suffer worse air quality so a few can enrich themselves on the tourist
money.

I understand that in theory that money might 'trickle down' to the citizenry
at large, but it is far from obvious that this actually occurs sufficiently to
compensate the downsides.

------
justinzollars
I just can't understand why the stock market keeps going up.

~~~
testfoobar
No clue about the stock market.

But here is some interesting real-time traffic congestion data plotted with
2019 averages for cities. Gives a sense of how many people are going back to
work.

Scroll down and click "Last 7 days"

Notice SF & London are trending with 2019 averages:

SF: [https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/san-francisco-
tra...](https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/san-francisco-traffic)

London: [https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/london-
traffic](https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/london-traffic)

Then compare:

Wuhan: [https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/wuhan-
traffic](https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/wuhan-traffic)

Shanghai: [https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/shanghai-
traffic](https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/shanghai-traffic)

Beijing: [https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/beijing-
traffic](https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/beijing-traffic)

Shenzen: [https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/shenzhen-
traffic](https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/shenzhen-traffic)

Hong Kong: [https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/hong-kong-
traffic](https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/hong-kong-traffic)

~~~
justinzollars
This is a great resource. Thanks

------
Ballu
What I heard, insurance coverage played the big role. Seems like, in US,
insurance companies are able to find exclusions for this scenario on foreign
land. This is the text shared by one: "..Your travel & health insurance could
contain exclusions to pandemics since the regional insurance industries can't
measure the amount of risk. The insurer might defer to apply broader
exclusions...."

------
clement_b
This is a very sad news for the city of Barcelona and for everyone involved in
organizing or exhibiting. But that was the right choice.

I'm wondering what's next to be cancelled.

~~~
creaghpatr
Olympics are this summer, could be at risk if it hasn't been contained by
then, especially given the proximity of Japan to China/mainland asia.

~~~
baxtr
Summer is not a good time for a virus since the don’t survive Heath and the
sun so well.

~~~
topmonk
Given the number of cases in Singapore, this may not be the case for _this_
virus.

~~~
ValentineC
Plenty of Singapore buildings have A/C. Some of the clusters so far include
two churches, one Chinese medical store, and Grand Hyatt Singapore.

------
merqurio
It doesn't make sense from a medical point of view.

China, and specifically Hubei Province and its capital Wuhan, suffer an
epidemic that they are trying to control with titanic efforts. 99% of cases of
coronavirus (COVID-19) infection, today more than 40,000 with a thousand
deaths, have been registered in China. Of them, almost 70% in Hubei. Only 1%
of cases have been registered outside China, in 24 countries (including
Spain), with transmission chains (secondary cases from a first imported case)
very short so far.

To put things in perspective, although perhaps inaccurate, the number of cases
of COVID-19 infection in China is less than 3 cases / 100,000 inhabitants.

The flu, in Catalonia, this week has reached figures of 360 cases / 100,000
inhabitants: more than 120 times higher than the incidence of COVID-19
infection in China.[1]

Our Health Alerts and Emergencies system works, works as a team and the
protocols established in the EU apply: detect the case, isolate it, treat it
and follow all possible contacts. In this way, the transmission chain can
likely be properly controlled.

There are many things we do not know for sure about this disease, but most
cases (80%) are mild. Serious cases and mortality (2%) will be adjusted
downwards safely in the coming weeks, as the detection of mild cases
increases. There is WHO data that indicate that control measures are slowing
the epidemic in Hubei and better controlling the situation in the rest of
China.

[1]:
[http://canalsalut.gencat.cat/web/.content/_Professionals/Vig...](http://canalsalut.gencat.cat/web/.content/_Professionals/Vigilancia_epidemiologica/documents/arxius/spfi.pdf)

~~~
inglor
Was waiting for this. The flu kills 10000 people a year in the US and
pneumonia kills 45000.

Suicide kills 47000 a year which makes you wonder why we aren't spending more
effort on mental health given it's a bigger cause of death.

CDC ref:
[https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm)

~~~
jbay808
Suicide is a big problem, buy it's scary in a different way. I'm not
personally worried about a suicide epidemic, or catching suicide from someone.

~~~
CydeWeys
And yet there are actually suicide clusters, with people essentially "catching
it" from their friends or loved ones who've committed suicide.

~~~
baddox
This seems like equivocation on the meaning of "catching it." Isolating
yourself so that you either have no close relationships or somehow never hear
about any suicides among your close relationships is a fairly nonsensical
proposal, and probably wouldn't in fact decrease your chances of committing
suicide.

~~~
catalogia
The realization that suicide has contagious properties does have practical
ethical ramifications for journalism. It's not some impractical theoretical
matter that can't be acted on.

~~~
totalZero
I went to a talk on this very matter. Kurt Cobain's suicide is an interesting
case study on how journalism affects the development (or attenuation) of
suicide clusters.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8897665](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8897665)

------
Mmrnmhrm
IMHO the coronavirus was used as an excuse to kill a fair that was already
producing negative ROI.

Due to the size and fame of the fair, most big companies were forced to
participate to "look better" than their competitors, even if they didn't have
any great novelty to show there: it was a marketing arms race where each
company had to invest more than the previous year.

On the other hand, the relevance of the fair has dropped, correlated to the
smaller incremental improvements that get into mobile phones year after year:
[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=w...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=world%20mobile%20congress)

So, the Coronavirus gave an awesome opportunity to exit the race: a big
company can skip the congress this year without appearing defeated.

Let's see if the fair will have an edition next year.

(of course that's only MHO)

------
corona-chan
The official infection and death numbers in China appear to be completely
fabricated as they followed an almost perfect quadratic progression:
[https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/ez13dv/oc_...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/ez13dv/oc_quadratic_coronavirus_epidemic_growth_model/)

None of the various measures taken to contain the outbreak have affected those
numbers.

This apparently has happened before with organ donation data:
[https://bmcmedethics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s129...](https://bmcmedethics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12910-019-0406-6#citeas)

------
meerita
As a citizen of Barcelona, I welcome this unspected event. A quiet end of
winter wihtout thousands of crazy tourists collapsing all the services. I hope
MWC celebrates in another city.

~~~
kimsant
but what do you do for living?

~~~
meerita
I work for tech company

------
songshuu
What's the over/under on SXSW doing the same?

------
kimsant
Huawei is the reason why this was cancelled. Huawei has MWC as the big show
up/party/global event of the year. Any excuse is good. Huawei spend Millions
in this event, more than anybody else

Recap of screwing Huawei history: Daughter of President jailed for business
with Iran, baning their products ( network infrastructure, google apps in
devices...), MWC cancelation....

🧐

