Mixed Thoughts about Tennocon Cancellation

[Mikhael222]

To preface, I am coming from a position of respect toward DE and the great job they have done with this game and community.....

On one hand, I am disappointed in DE's decision to cancel this year for multiple reasons.  Tennocon is a time where players all over the world can meet each other and meet the developers.  It is a shame that it is being cancelled over the media's fear-mongering.  Even if Corona was serious (which it's not; there are other diseases more common and more dangerous), there is a very small chance that it would still be an issue four months from now in July.

I mean…..how many media scares have there been over the past 20 years over viruses that were made into a bigger deal than they actually were?  SARS, Swine, Ebola, Zika, etc.?  And they just happen to occur on USA election years (probably to get people disheveled).

Players literally risk their lives just by driving/flying to Tennocon.  You have a higher chance of dying while traveling to Tennocon, than you do going to Tennocon, catching the flu, and actually becoming so sick that you would die.

On the other hand, I also understand that the last two Tennocons have been quick-to-hype and slow-to-deliver, so maybe this is good in a way......Instead of worrying as much about convention events and demos for a Tennocon, DE can put more time and effort into the actual game content.

Edited March 13, 2020 by Mikhael222

[Redfeather75]

The virus is being blown out of proportion because it was felt that the general populace were being negligent and allowing it to spread. There was government pressure put on the world health organization to declare it a pandemic to get people to shape up, but it kind of looks like it is causing people to overreact now. But better overact than let it slide out of control even further.

[Aggh]

7 hours ago, Mikhael222 said:

To preface, I am coming from a position of respect toward DE and the great job they have done with this game and community.....

On one hand, I am disappointed in DE's decision to cancel this year for multiple reasons.  Tennocon is a time where players all over the world can meet each other and meet the developers.  It is a shame that it is being cancelled over the media's fear-mongering.  Even if Corona was serious (which it's not; there are other diseases more common and more dangerous), there is a very small chance that it would still be an issue four months from now in July.

I mean…..how many media scares have there been over the past 20 years over viruses that were made into a bigger deal than they actually were?  SARS, Swine, Ebola, Zika, etc.?  And they just happen to occur on USA election years (probably to get people disheveled).

Players literally risk their lives just by driving/flying to Tennocon.  You have a higher chance of dying while traveling to Tennocon, than you do going to Tennocon, catching the flu, and actually becoming so sick that you would die.

On the other hand, I also understand that the last two Tennocons have been quick-to-hype and slow-to-deliver, so maybe this is good in a way......Instead of worrying as much about convention events and demos for a Tennocon, DE can put more time and effort into the actual game content.

COVID-19 has somewhere between 6 to 50 times (or even more) the mortality rate of the flu depending on how effectively its spread is contained.  It's been spreading far more quickly than other pandemics BECAUSE of mild cases that aren't caught.  SARS and the Swine flu were stemmed off by drastic containment measures, they were not overblown (they had higher mortality rates but never spread as much as COVID-19 has).  And you're focusing on "your" chance of dying.  The point in not hosting large events to prevent the spread of the virus to vulnerable populations who the virus can and will kill.  Additionally, even among healthy people, not all cases are mild.

[(XBOX)The Neko Otaku]

This virus is going to be still around by summer, combine with the fact that a infected person won't show symptoms for 2 weeks and they can spread the virus in that time with you being able to get reinfected if you even recover from it's best to have events closed down till we get a vaccine. 

[Yxivi]

Maybe compliance also? Here in my country, a lot of public events have been cancelled because government said so. 🤷‍♀️

[Letter13]

Thing is, the media isn't really 'blowing it out of proportion.' You might hear people saying "Oh it's just like the Flu" or "Oh the flu killed 14,000 people last year" and while the latter is true, what you don't hear those people talking about is the lethality rate.

The seasonal flu might wind up killing 14,000 people in a year (statistics have it between 12,000 and 16,000/year), with anywhere from 9 million to 65 million as having contracted the flu. If you take the highest deaths/year and divide it by the lowest infections/year you get the 'worst case' for the flu... 16,000 deaths out of 9,000,000 infected gives you a lethality rate of 0.17%.

Coronavirus on the other hand, there's been just shy of 150,000 confirmed cases worldwide so far, and so far of those confirmed cases 5,429 have died. This gives us a lethality rate of about 3.73%, or 21 times higher than the flu. If no vaccine is developed and the Coronavirus spreads as much as the seasonal flu in the worst case (let's say 65 million infected), you're looking at over 2.4 Million people dying from the virus.

Moreover, we don't know how fast the Coronavirus can evolve, or how radically it might evolve. We don't know how it might affect people in the long term either, whether it can leave lasting damage that makes survivors more prone to certain types of diseases or disorders.

Long story short...

• Coronavirus has a much higher lethality rate than the seasonal flu that people are equating it to (nearly 21 times more based on current data)
• Coronavirus has an incubation period of several days to 2 weeks, during which a person is asymptomatic but still contagious.
• Virologists/pathologists do not have enough information or data collected about the virus to anticipate how it may evolve or how quickly it will evolve
• We do not know how it may affect survivors in the long term (versus the flu which virologists/pathologists have more experience with)
• People with preexisting conditions affecting their lungs (i.e. Asthma or increased susceptibility to respiratory infections) are at a very high risk of dying as a result of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Otherwise known as SARS, a condition that Covid-19 causes)

 

So, no. Cancelling Tennocon because of the Coronavirus is not a 'wrong decision'; if it weren't cancelled and everyone at the convention contracted the virus while there, you would, statistically, be looking at multiple deaths due to the virus, as well as spreading the virus even moreso than it had been before (thereby increasing the risk of spreading it to others who are at risk of dying from it). 

10 hours ago, Mikhael222 said:

Players literally risk their lives just by driving/flying to Tennocon.  You have a higher chance of dying while traveling to Tennocon, than you do going to Tennocon, catching the flu, and actually becoming so sick that you would die.

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about here. This statement of yours is both unequivocally false information and an extremely dangerous mindset. For pretty much all the reasons I stated above.

 

Locking. Because really.