On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 08:59:57AM +1300, Brian E Carpenter wrote: > > You may not share my perception, which is that most of the company > travel bans that have emerged in the last few weeks are just the > standard reaction by accounting departments to a business downturn, > and nothing directly to do with health risks. And the IESG has > reacted to the consequences of those travel bans for the practical > aspects of the meeting, again nothing directly to do with health > risks. FWIW, there is a pretty strong scientific argument for cancelling conferences. See these two YouTube vidoes by Prof. Marcel Salathé from EPFL in Switzerland, the first was recorded on Feb. 26th[1], and the second recorded on March 8th[2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RQBtA4dK9s [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0cjSnAynGs Both are very much worth watching in their entirety, but the TL;DW summary is that there have been enough cases of "community transmission" that containment is no longer a practical strategy, and so we need to move on to mitigation; see the slide at 51:07 in [1]. And at the slide starting at about 57:51, he argues that the focus should be on slowing down the rate of infection to minimize the burden on the health care systems, and to buy time for develop and test new drugs and vaccines (and it will be 12-18 months for vaccines to become available). The reason for doing this can be found at the slide at 58:46; by performing interventions like cancelling major conferences and events, it reduces the peak demand on the health care systems, by spreading out when the cases appear. Of course there is a political dimention to governments forbidding people from travelling, ala what China and now Italy has done. For countries which have a strong tradition of civil rights, restricting travel goes against the grain. And of course, politicians don't want to instill panic, which also means they are going to shy away from more drastic solutions. However, from a epidemiological perspective, having individuals and organizations voluntarily deciding to cancel events and making decisions not to travel may ultimately be something that makes a lot of sense from a scientific perspective, and is not merely just "fear" and "panic". Regards, - Ted
