Coronavirus: FEB/MAR China OWL homestands cancelled, options being explored. SHD+GZC evacuating to Korea, CDH sheltering in place

General Discussion
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(Edit FEB 05 2020 02:35PM EST: Some edits as the scientific paper on asymptomatic transmission was retracted. This doesn’t mean the opposite, but rather that we don’t know.)

(Edit FEB 01 2020 04:16AM EST: added a statement from HZS, ty Starlord; added a post on common misconceptions from the CDC of British Columbia)

(Edit JAN 30 2020 10:08AM EST: added a medium post on behind the scenes prep from GZC’s COO)

(Edit JAN 30 2020 06:00AM EST: added SHD statements on potentially streaming matches, more Seoul statements on said SHD statement, and League and Chengdu statements, ty TylerG and VenusArmani for the last two)

Guangzhou Chief Operating Officer Eddy Meng has made a medium post showing a behind the scenes perspective of how the teams are coordinating their response. Notably “There was a conference call with all four Chinese teams and the league”, which would include Hangzhou, who has yet to make a statement the last team to make a statement.

To clarify, the League post says the matches are being cancelled, but SHD on their latest update, ~2-3 hours past the league statement, has “live streaming platform” as TBD.

Seoul’s COO confirms that nothing is confirmed at this moment in time, and that online is an option. This tweet was in response to a deleted SHD tweet on holding matches online, which was confirmed to be a translation error on reddit.

TL;DR they’re stepping up monitoring and personal protective equipment for the players and sheltering in place. The team is mostly Chinese nationals (Baconjack hails from Taiwan), and not Korean nationals. GZC, a heavily mixed roster, are getting exit visas for their Chinese players.

SHD statement:

GZC statement:

Seoul was the first to say they’re looking into it.

NYXL hasn’t made a statement, but since I live there, I know that the NYC city government and local health officials are well underway with preparations for the virus to hit. It’s currently seen as inevitable, and this is pretty much the other side of the planet.

As for the virus itself, novel coronavirus 2019, or 2019nCoV, is a virus that attacks the lungs, is transmissible between humans. For more information, this twitter post has a direct link to the coronavirus page by the US Center for Disease Control.

This twitter post contains a link to the World Health Organization’s recommendations to the public for protecting yourself and minimizing risk.

This reddit post compiles a twitter thread from the Centre for Disease Control of British Columbia (Canada) on common misconceptions about the spread of the virus.

If you’re interested in keeping up to date, there’s r/china_flu, which only allows posts with sources and has an epidemiologist and virologist on the moderation team. Some sensationalism and unverified stuff gets through, but the mod team is usually good with things, there’s just so much content flow right now. When in doubt defer to the links above. Here’s a link to someone’s guide on testing and fitting proper respirator masks, because it’s useful, but also linking directly to a subreddit is weird on TLv2.

Stay safe out there.

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Bump, as this post is both relevant and actually constructive.

Thank you for the use of your Trust powers.

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Ty for thread on this!
SEE mods please unflag the corona topic general info that people flagged and it’s now hidden…this stuff is important to all of us worldwide

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Yes

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Technically it is not hidden, you can read the full post by clicking the thing that extends the OP’s Topic if you wish to read it. Also not really sure why people are flagging these posts honestly, someone makes a rude and inflammatory topic meant to talk crap about someone’s favorite character, no one bats an eye.

Then when someone makes a serious post, everyone flags it like it is going out of style… I don’t understand how people’s brains work…

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The other posts aren’t getting flagged because the topic isn’t important; they’re getting flagged because they’re off-topic and a lot of them are just scaremongering.

OP not only is tying it back to how this effects Overwatch and OWL but also listing trustworthy and professional resources for the community to use in place of uninformed opinions from people on a game forum.

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Still, it takes the community to flag something. They don’t even bother flagging stuff that is rude or a breach of community code of conduct like not acting like a jerk. However they have zero problem flagging stuff for being off topic even if it is important that the rest of the world knows about this.

And it is true, the OWL many of it’s members come from Asian countries such as China. They are dealing with this too, and it is nothing short of a bit like an apocalypse for them. Virus breakouts in whole countries is always an important issue to make sure the rest of the world is aware of.

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I understand the worry, but given how almost as many people has recovered from it as though who have died, I wouldn’t be scared of it, especially when you don’t have a compromised immune system and have access to clean water and decent healthcare

What IS scary is the rate of transmission, which was due to the close quarters or china in general and many other factors, like illegal bushmeat trade and dirty water. SO if you hear about it in your state or country, do your best to stay clean and healthy, drink plenty of water, and for god’s sake stop freaking out

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Why is China such a mess though? You hear different issues they face all the time, but it is never said why China is such a mess or why Chinese Citizens didn’t already all move to Korea or Japan.

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large popluation, wet markets (Where meat is chopped in the open and there is blood everywhere), as well as illegal bushmeat sellers (aka wild animal meat that wasn’t clear by the government to be sold) and well…the general health of china

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imagine if people were this concerned about ebola when it outbreaked…

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It’s pretty long and complicated, starting from the fall of the Qing dynasty, through WW2 and the Chinese civil war, and the PRC CCP being the PRC CCP.

While the average person doesn’t care too much and those who do just want to trade, politics between the 3 have always been weird due to past invasions and warfare that was never really settled because the US was too busy in the cold war and wanted it’s allies to shut up about each other.

Ebola is transmitted by fluid contact, but not through airborne aerosols, making it harder to spread. It was also isolated to Africa, and it’s easy to see Africa as a bunch of poor third world countries in another dimension, but travel from there to other parts of the world is also limited, so it can’t quite spread through air travel as 2019nCoV has.

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This is the sort of thing I’m talking about; it’s not an apocalypse. It’s fairly apocalyptic for China, considering airlines are now locked out of traveling and whole provinces have been put in quarantine, and it’s somewhat apocalyptic for Hong Kong, who already doesn’t have a good relationship with the mainland and doesn’t want them exposing it to risk it didn’t ask for, and Thailand, who is having problems deploying the necessary public health resources, but it is decidedly NOT apocalyptic for South Korea or Japan. It is also not an apocalypse for most of the other countries who have infected patients. The ‘viral outbreaks’ you mention are generally isolated cases who have been put under appropriate medical observation. The number of infected outside of China is still outnumbered over 10:1 by those within and of those infected on the mainland the bulk of cases are still in Wuhan.

There is a right way to handle these sorts of outbreaks- responsibly sharing information, urging basic public health measures (wash your damn hands), etc.- and then there’s calling it ‘a bit apocalyptic.’

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I mean only that it sounded like a low level apocalypse how people put it. I don’t live in Asian Countries and I certainly don’t live in China. All I know is what people try to share about it.

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Really it’s just there’s too many people to reasonably deal with such a space that’s also trying to have huge factories all over it.

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It’s Overwatch related. If you don’t like a character you’re free to talk about them. Just because it might be someone’s favorite character doesn’t mean that nobody can say anything bad about it.
that’s a slippery slope

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yeah, basically…so rn in terms of the virus, biggest concern is containment and vaccine creation

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Right now they’re probably trying to figure out how to properly identify it before symptoms show.

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that too, but i believe the cdc have developed a way to get it, but it may be a bit longer than anyone would like

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Airborne viral outbreaks of any description always provoke outsized public reactions because of a collective memory of the Spanish Flu Epidemic and similar catastrophes. They need to be treated seriously by public health officials, which the current virus is, but the actual danger needs to be kept in perspective.

For context on the current mortality rates, this virus appears to have a mortality rate of around 2%, putting it somewhere between whooping cough and measles in terms of danger. Legionnaires’ Disease, by contrast, which is treated as something between a joke and a boogeyman, has a fatality rate of about 15%.

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