---- Original Message ----- From: Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: 20/04/2020 00:30:39 On 4/19/20 4:27 PM, Jay Daley wrote: >> However, a doodle poll sent to recent attendees with three options: >> >> Will you travel to IETF108 if the meeting is on? Yes/Maybe/No >> >> might be revealing. > > I doubt it very much because the response is not meaningful data. I disagree that it's not meaningful to assess whether IETF participants are willing to travel. True, there's some speculation involved, but it's fairly clear that there won't be herd immunity by July and there's highly unlikely to be a vaccine by then, and IETF people are smart enough to make those assessments with a reasonable degree of accuracy. For that matter, we won't really have reason to believe that it's safe to travel again until there have been several months without significant new outbreaks in most places in the world. By now we already know that that won't be the case by June. <tp> Keith, were I to do a risk analysis, I would base it on the peer-reviewed articles I have read and surmise that herd immunity may never be achieved, that three strains have been identified so far and reinfection is happening although the evidence so far is small and it may be that this is a virus that mutates rapidly. In which case, the exit, as with some previous pandemics, is mass immunisation. Here I am dependent on the media which, while optimistic about the development of a vaccine, seems shy of forecasting how soon there will be enough doses available to be effective but simple arithmetic suggests a year for a large western country and indeed in the early stages of this the media was suggesting September 2021. So for a risk analysis, I would assume that the next in-person meeting will be November 2021 and see what the consequences of that are. Meanwhile I would keep an eye out for other approaches such as contact tracing - at last a role for Bluetooth! - and see what avenues that open up. Pessimstic, but that is what risk analysis is all about. Tom Petch ps I agree 100% about the lack of a MUA that does the job --- New Outlook Express and Windows Live Mail replacement - get it here: https://www.oeclassic.com/ Keith
