[FOSDEM] Coronavirus

[hostilius]

Hello,

Fosdem brings together people from many places all over the world,
which is awesome. But the timing of this year's Fosdem is unfortunate.

I suggest to discuss the potential effect of the Coronavirus (2019nCov)
on Fosdem, and potential measures.

The new virus appears to be transmittable from person to person, even by
people not showing any symptoms yet (this is different from the SARS
2002 virus).

Based on today's reports from Hong Kong university, the virus might have
an incubation period around 10 days. Currently 44000 people are
estimated to be infected (not yet sick), and that number might double
every 6 days.

The city of Wuhan (11 million inhabitants) was put under lockdown on
Jan 23. However, it is estimated that 5 million people were able to
leave the city prior to the lockdown.

I think this means, it's currently unknown how successful the quarantine
effort is.

Another developer conference by a large Telco, that was originally
planned to take place mid February in Shenzen (more than 1000 km away
from Wuhan), was already canceled.

How likely is it that the virus might already be spreading
internationally, with the majority of cases still being unnoticed,
because of the long incubation period?

How likely is it that the virus reaches the Fosdem venue and that many
attendees will catch it, thereby putting themselves at risk,
and further contributing to a quick international distribution?

Kind Regards,
a regular Fosdem visitor.

Sent with [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com) Secure Email.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.fosdem.org/pipermail/fosdem/attachments/20200127/f5c14756/attachment.html>