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Medicine The Internet

ICANN To Hold First-Ever Remote Public Meeting Due To COVID-19 Outbreak (circleid.com) 44

penciling_in shares a report from CircleID: The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has announced that its ICANN67 Public Meeting, which was to be held in Cancun, Mexico, will now be held via remote participation-only. This decision was made as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, considered a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization. The meeting, scheduled for March 7-12, 2020, marks the first time in ICANN's history that it will hold a Public Meeting solely with remote participation. "This is a decision that the ICANN Board has been considering since the outbreak was first announced and it is one that we haven't taken lightly," said Maarten Botterman, ICANN Board Chair. "We know that changing this meeting to remote participation-only will have an impact on and cause disruption to our community; however, this decision is about people. Protecting the health and safety of the ICANN community is our top priority."
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ICANN To Hold First-Ever Remote Public Meeting Due To COVID-19 Outbreak

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  • Bunch of fat-cat virtual real-estate tycoons wine-and-dine while talking about DNS? jeez... This is why I don't have a domain name any more, damned if I'm funding this nonsense.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Shutting out public scrutiny and blaming it on a virus in another continent right at the time when they are selling .org and raising .com prices.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by geekmux ( 1040042 )

      Shutting out public scrutiny and blaming it on a virus in another continent right at the time when they are selling .org and raising .com prices.

      Say what you will about conspiracy theories, but doing what you can to avoid corona virus isn't exactly some shit you label as dumb and nonsensical.

      At some point, logic can easily be used to melt tin foil.

  • by sad_ ( 7868 ) on Thursday February 20, 2020 @07:42AM (#59746288) Homepage

    corona virus is certainly having an impact on events, a lot of events are canceled or replaced with video confering alternatives.
    it might well change these events for ever, depending on how well it all goes.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      corona virus is certainly having an impact on events, a lot of events are canceled or replaced with video confering alternatives. it might well change these events for ever, depending on how well it all goes.

      Events? You're thinking way too small.

      I'm waiting for it to destroy the idiotic mindset that forces 21st Century employees to waste hours of their life behind a steering wheel driving to a building to sit in a cube to do a job that can easily be done remotely.

      (Fuck you very much, Marissa Mayer.)

      You want to talk about reducing emissions and improving the environment? Let's start by taxing the shit out of corporations who cannot justify why they force employees to pointlessly commute.

      • Let's start by taxing the shit out of corporations who cannot justify why they force employees to pointlessly commute.

        Yep there's no efficiencies at all to gain from having people who work together actually be together. /sarcasm.

        • Let's start by taxing the shit out of corporations who cannot justify why they force employees to pointlessly commute.

          Yep there's no efficiencies at all to gain from having people who work together actually be together. /sarcasm.

          Exactly. There are a lot of jobs that can be done remotely. But that doesn't mean all collaborative jobs must be done remotely. I've work remotely and otherwise, and I'm keenly aware when one works and doesn't.

  • by Kokuyo ( 549451 ) on Thursday February 20, 2020 @07:43AM (#59746290) Journal

    With hype media and China not being the most trustworthy source there ever was, how bad is the corona virus, really?
    Didn't they just remove the quarantine from an ocean liner off of Japan? Like 6000 passengers and only two deaths?

    Assuming that this was a very easily controllable location for a quarantine that probably didn't have the best medical equipment around, it seems to me the death toll was way below even the 2.5% an influenza can reach.

    Furthermore, aren't older people more likely to go on a cruise? I thought old people are in more danger from this virus.

    • by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Thursday February 20, 2020 @08:54AM (#59746420)

      It's still a problem, and a serious one.

      Once it gets out beyond the quarantine, and have no doubts, it will, it is going to stress the medical system beyond capacity, even here in the USA.

      This virus is responsible for a considerable number of hospitalizations and here in the USA we are not capable of servicing that many people in hospital beds. We don't have the beds, we don't have the rooms, we don't have the equipment and we don't have the medical professionals to take care of everybody who's going to be in the hospital.

      All we can possibly hope for is to delay this virus long enough to get to spring where it will slow down and possibly get a vaccine in place to slow it further. But the larger and wider this thing gets, the less likely we are to contain it long enough for any of that to be a reality.

      So wash your hands often and don't touch your face, load up on flu remedies and vitamin C, stay home if you feel sick and get ready for the worst. Because it's coming. No doubt in my mind, it's coming.

      • by clonehappy ( 655530 ) on Thursday February 20, 2020 @09:35AM (#59746502)

        Good job not addressing the point of the post you responded to. An cruise ship is not the best place to take care of sick/dying patients. There is little in the way of medical supplies, food/nourishment, medical personnel. On that quarantined ship, in what would be one of the worst possible test conditions if you had have an outbreak of disease, the death rate was 2 in 6000, or 0.033%, far far below that of any common influenza outbreak. Im not trying to discount the seriousness of this virus, but how do you equate a 0.033% with the doom and gloom of your post? Are you being intentionally obtuse or do you sell preppier supplies, or whats the deal?

        People should be washing their hands, taking their vitamins being careful not to spread germs all the time, so I donâ(TM)t disagree with that sentiment in the lesser. But how do you get this âoeoh man itâ(TM)s comingâ attitude from such an insignificant death rate from what weâ(TM)ve seen?

        Something is really fishy about all this. There seem to be tens of thousands of deaths, if not more, in China. But in the wild the disease seems fairly benign from all accounts.

        So, is it a genetically engineered bioweapon that only affects the Chinese? Are the Chinese engaging in a regular Communist purge of dissidents under the guise of the virus? Or are our screening procedures working so well in the rest of the world that the virus is just being kept out?

        Something doesnâ(TM)t add up, between the quiet panic of large organizations combined with the relative calmness of the usually excitable news media (which usually points to something really bad, as otherwise it would be hyped by the media and ignored by large organization) and the lack of real information out there, I doubt anyone will ever really know what is happening.

        • On that quarantined ship, in what would be one of the worst possible test conditions if you had have an outbreak of disease, the death rate was 2 in 6000, or 0.033%,

          Ummm... 3700 people onboard, 621 confirmed infections as of now, of which 299 with symptoms. That's 0.3% death rate, and that's a lower limit because we don't know how many of the remaining 619 will die.

          Food for thought: worldwide, the ratio of deaths to recovered patients is about 1:8, which is probably high because the mild cases have not been registered.

          Refs:
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
          https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]

        • The death rate outside of China is (thus far) lower because the infected people have been rushed into quarantined isolation with intensive medial monitoring and supervision. The death rate we're seeing in China is closer to what it'll be if this becomes a pandemic, and hospitals aren't able to provide as much care to each individual patient because they're simply overwhelmed by the number of patients. That's why the WHO and national medical agencies are taking such large measures against this - they're tr
    • This is a good site: https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]

    • by Rei ( 128717 ) on Thursday February 20, 2020 @09:09AM (#59746460) Homepage

      So, here's [teslamotorsclub.com] the latest [teslamotorsclub.com] graphs [teslamotorsclub.com] (datasource: bnonews's tracking of disease cases). I generate these because of how terrible that ArcGIS page that many people have been using has been at presenting the nuance of the outbreak. I'm thinking about altering it to focus less on a province-by-province case in China and focusing more on breaking down international cases, since non-Hubei (non-Wuhan) China disease incidents have been collapsing, but some countries (esp. Japan and South Korea) have seen recent spikes.

      They're still identifying a significant number of new cases from the Diamond Princess. But you're right about the low mortality rate. There is some nuance, which WHO discusses, in that you have to balance the number of people who are sick but haven't died yet, against the number of people who have mild cases that were never diagnosed. A study cited by them suggests that the actual mortality rate might be only 0,3-1%, but it's very preliminary. The mortality rate has been much higher inside China (again, overwhelmingly Wuhan) than outside, likely due to the overloaded healthcare system.

      The low mortality rate can be seen in terms of the breakdown of cases. For example, in Tuesday in Hubei there were 69270 people under medical observation, 4194 suspected cases, and 41957 cases in the hospital. But of those, 9117 were seriously ill and 1853 in intensive care, and only a minority of those will end up dying. A lot of people have been making the mistake of confusing the ratio of "confirmed fatalities vs. people marked as recovered" with being a mortality rate. The vast majority of the people who have the disease will eventually be sent home as recovered, but they cannot be classified as recovered until doctors are completely convinced that they're no longer contagious.

      That said, it's still more dangerous than a typical seasonal flu, and it's good to see efforts to wipe it out. My main concerns at this point have nothing to do with China; they're with impoverished countries with broken healthcare systems. I'm particularly curious about North Korea, a country where even easily preventable food-based parasites are common, and where we're unlikely to hear about disease outbreaks unless they reach pandemic scale. China does regular trade with North Korea, after all. On the upside, China and South Korea have no interest in having a disease reservoir on their borders, so I'm sure they'd both offer support in terms of medical supplies, etc.

      • by DrJimbo ( 594231 )

        It is important to pay attention to the percentage of severe cases which was roughly 20% according to WHO with 5% critical [youtube.com]. If the infection becomes widespread in any area, even in a rich country with good healthcare, then the number of critical and severe cases will far exceed the number of hospital and ICU beds available. This will send the death rate up to 5% or higher. Even if you can convert buildings to hospitals overnight, there's not going to be enough oxygen to go around.

        I recommend Dr. John [youtube.com]

    • by Junta ( 36770 )

      It's only as not-bad as it is because of how seriously it is being taken.

      Of cases that have run their course so far, there has been an 11% rate of fatality. That's pretty high. If you include all the people still sick who's fate has not yet been settled one way or another, it's a 2.6% mortality rate. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, as diagnosed patients practically in the clear may not count as cured quite yet.

      The thing people love to trot out is that while 2,000 have died of the coronavir

      • by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

        My main issue is I am at a complete loss on how to take your post and Rei's (https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=15811448&cid=59746460) and come up with a workable opinion on the matter.

      • Of cases that have run their course so far, there has been an 11% rate of fatality.

        You are distorting the meaning of data to fit a narrative.

        That's pretty high.

        Yes, highly specious.

        The thing people love to trot out is that while 2,000 have died of the coronavirus, 14,000 have died from the flu in the US alone, so that number makes things seem like no big deal.

        Replacing one dumb argument with another doesn't accomplish anything. The flu data is a statistical estimate covering everyone who gets the flu whether they know it or tell anyone they have it. The Chinese data is only confirmed cases of people that have actually come forward and got tested in some way.

        For all anyone knows it is still possible Wuhan virus has an effective 0.2% death rate in line with flu.

        In short, 2,000 dead is a *lot* for 75,000 sick.

        You might want to resea

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      Flu *is* a really useful comparison, and no, unless we really screw this up it's not going to be anywhere near as bad.

      But here's the important thing to remember: flu is really *really* bad. It kills tens of thousands of people every year and cost untold billions of dollars. We mount a *massive* annual public health response to flu every year, culminating in the remarkable fact you can stroll down to your corner drug store and get a novel, bespoke vaccine every year.

      COVID-19 is news because it is new, and

  • First it was coronovirus novel-2019
    Then 2019-nCoV
    Then COVID-19
    Just yesterday I read that the cdc renamed it

    SARS-CoV-2

    • by gomoku ( 745800 )
      That is because the No 1 priority with any potential pandemic is to ensure no human or animal could get offended by the name assigned to the pathogen. Thus naming convention must clearly take priority over containment and treatment. ;) thankfully the woke crowd is on the job.
      • I doubt anyone even bothered to ask the virus if it really identified as a virus or not. Maybe it really identifies as a bacteria. Typical science-y people always giving labels.

      • by hey! ( 33014 )

        No, the problem is that Hubei Province, with it's 55 million people, 40 million pigs, and God only knows how many other farm animals is a perfect storm for virus emergence.

        When a novel hemorrhagic fever emerged in a quaint little German university town in 1967, it was fairly safe to call the pathogen "Marburg Virus". But naming a virus after the capital city of Hubei is setting yourself up for public confusion.

        Anything anyone who's programmed for a living knows, naming things is trickier than it looks. Yo

    • It will always be the wuflu to me.
  • Everyone is talking about the climate changes but those big companies/government/organisation still make face to face meeting which is a collosal waste of time and money and polute like crazy... What a waste to pay those fat cat to waste 12hours in a flight only to meet face to face... its counter productive and wasteful it should be like that for most everything.
    • Yep, if you are serious about this climate change thing, you are correct.

      But I don't see a lot of them out there pulling their electric service, refusing to eat meat or non-locally grown vegetables or refusing to drive their gasoline powered cars around or order stuff from Amazon for next day delivery. I'm not so sure they are serious.

  • Cut down on the CO2 generated by all that travel.
  • As is working from home and ordering everything online... avoid people, groups, shops etc as much as possible to slow down the spread.
  • These people should all be sent to have their meeting in the tent in which all the confirmed cases of COVAD-19 are being quarantined. It is not like if they died anything of value would be lost. As a matter of fact, if they died the world would probably be a lot better off!

    This isn't like IBM deciding not to send valuable engineers to a meeting because of the risk -- those people ARE actually valueable. This is a bunch of stuffed shirts attempting to puff up their own importance, when they are of no valu

    • by deKernel ( 65640 )

      Well personally, based upon your condescending tone I believe you belong in that same group of "not important so now value if you are lost" group. So, I personally believe you should also be remanded to attend any meeting in person with hope you come into contact with any and all contagions.

      Just my $0.02

    • A jolly good pandemic which decimates the world's population is precisely what is needed right now.

      There is already pandemic of people with worms where their brains should be.

I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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