Tokyo Olympics “looking at a cancellation” if coronavirus not contained
I&#x27;ve been checking for updates on the virus several times a day since it first started being reported in Western media around Jan 20 (in part because it&#x27;s been a fun distraction, in part because I have friends in Wuhan). I like to think I&#x27;m generally an optimist, but I think it&#x27;s been clear for several weeks now that this is going to have a significant worldwide impact.<p>There are just too many factors in favor of uncontained worldwide spread at this point - within the 1st week of reporting it already looked like China&#x27;s numbers were incomplete (and potentially manipulated) and the scale was greatly underestimated.<p>Untraceable transmission all over the place, relatively low-traffic countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka seeing cases very early on, extremely long incubation periods with airborne transmission without symptoms, false negative tests with people either catching the virus after leaving quarantine or not testing positive (both really bad signs), governments demonstrating weak and ineffective containment of potentially infected travelers (Japan: &quot;no symptoms so they can go home!&quot;), more infections than SARS in a small fraction of the time, the US only testing ~400 people thus far, entire families in Wuhan being wiped out. Basically everything is in place for this to be a serious pandemic.<p>I think when this all comes to an end, China will be one of the countries that dealt with the virus the best. Countries without authoritarian governments likely don&#x27;t have the means to effectively quarantine major cities and shut down massive portions of their economy immediately without major problems arising. Given a couple weeks, sure, but by then it will be too late.<p>As an aside, BNO has been doing an excellent job of posting timely and sourced updates that make it easy to keep up to date with every new confirmed case (scroll down to the Timeline section):<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bnonews.com&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;2020&#x2F;02&#x2F;the-latest-coronavirus-cases&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bnonews.com&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;2020&#x2F;02&#x2F;the-latest-coronavirus...</a><p>Hopefully I can look back at this comment in a couple months and chuckle at my paranoia!