Time to call off Mobile World Congress yet? Nvidia, Amazon and Sony all sidestep trade show over coronavirus fears

It's been a brutal few days for Mobile World Congress, with several of its biggest participants withdrawing from the trade show over fears surrounding the coronavirus outbreak. The latest pack includes household names like Sony, Amazon, NTT Docomo and Nvidia, as well as 5G infrastructure stalwart VIAVI Solutions. The biggest …

[Pascal Monett]

Pull the plug

MWC should call it off, citing the well-being of presenters, visitors and staff.

Do it already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Pull the plug

>well-being of presenters

I didn't know Phil was attending with Matt ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiocy

This virus spread from 42 cases to 40,000 cases in a month (so making sure people haven't been to China within the last 14 days will be super effective), and those are just the official figures.

[Anonymous Coward]

This thing has well and truly taken hold and is now a pandemic even though the WHO is sat on it's hands and it yet to declare it so, you will be meeting this disease unless you live in a cave on the Falklands.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wake me up when coronovirus has killed as many as Winter Flu and Americans with guns do.

[Anonymous Coward]

Grow up, would you please?

[steviebuk]

But they are correct. Winter flu kills more each year.

[Anonymous Coward]

>Wake me up when coronovirus

Good job it's cousin MERS with a mortality rate of around 35% isn't as transmissible. However if we say a quarter of the planet's population (about 7.8 Billeeeeon) gets infected with a mortality rate of say 3% then that's around 58 milleeeeon who would be pushing up the daisies rather than walking around.

[Jason Bloomberg]

if we say a quarter of the planet's population (about 7.8 Billeeeeon) gets infected ... that's around 58 milleeeeon who would be pushing up the daisies

We've had worse: Spanish flu and plague. Hopefully the measures put in place will stop it spreading to a quarter of the population. It seems to be 40K infected so far, 0.0005%, with infection rates reportedly slowing.

I am sure something highly contagious and deadly will hit us one day and I doubt there will be much we can do about it than ride it out and hope for the best. But this doesn't seem to be it.

[DRue2514]

How do you know we've had worse? It's a bit early to say. And the Spanish flu came in several waves.

[Anonymous Coward]

Barcelona, Spain

Should of lead the article with the location of the conference.... Barcelona, Spain. Took a whole to spot that.

[cdrcat]

Try getting home when all flights are cancelled for months

If it is a pandemic, then all tourism will be shut down and probably flights will be very restricted (with a lovely long stay in a quarantine facility on arrival). An individual couldn’t predict the timing of that.

I wouldn’t want to be overseas if travel is mostly shut down: unless you happen to be in a country with better services. I’m in NZ and have enough food/water/medicine to let me hunker down at home for a few weeks. I am also lucky enough to have options to move to rural locations: hospitals won’t be able to help much if a pandemic peaks quickly...

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Try getting home when all flights are cancelled for months

Even if there isn't a pandemic. If European airlines stop flying to China / Japan / Korea / etc as a precaution and you have 1000 of executives stranded away from work

[DJO]

Re: Try getting home when all flights are cancelled for months

you have 1000 of executives stranded away from work

Enlighten me, I fail to see any problem with this?

[Allan George Dyer]

What was the event name, again?

If only there was some sort of technological solution, which would allow the free flow of information from remote locations without also transferring biological entities...

[www.pakmegaplace.com]

MWC 2020

Sony and Amazon withdraw from MWC 2020 over Coronavirus fears. At this point I think it is fair to say MWC will be postponed. I am calling it...