Microsoft's Windows OEM, Surface sales looking a bit peaky as coronavirus takes toll on China supply chain

In response to the effect of the coronavirus outbreak on Chinese suppliers, Microsoft has cut its sales forecast for Surface tablets and Windows OEM licences. In a statement to investors last night, the global software powerhouse said although it had accounted for the impact of the virus on its operations in January's second- …

[tiggity]

Its not as if its a high fatality rate bug like Ebola (assuming nobody is lying about death tolls!).

Tipping point will soon be reached where its acknowledged that spread is inevitable.

Obviously China might still go their own way on movement restrictions, quarantine etc. but I expect once widespread recognition that blocking efforts have failed then in many cases it will revert to business as usual.

[Anonymous Coward]

Knowns and unknowns. No one wants another spanish flu. The only way to be safe, is to nuke it from orbit?

[JohnFen]

> Its not as if its a high fatality rate bug like Ebola

In a certain real sense, it would be better if it were. Ebola is less likely to become a pandemic because its severity makes people die fast enough to reduce their ability to spread it far and wide.

[Carpet Deal 'em]

China is riding a technicality of only reporting cases confirmed before death - if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, but takes off before the DNA test comes back, it's an aquatic bird - so it's hard to say for certain what the fatality rate is, but it's at the very least 2%(and if China quarantining tens of millions of people is anywhere near a reasonable response, that's apt to skyrocket as medical supplies run out).

[bombastic bob]

"Its not as if its a high fatality rate bug like Ebola"

it's about 3 percent, worldwide, from the information I've seen, and influenza is about 1%. By comparison, SARS was around 10% [if the information I was reading is correct]. So, like the Hitchhiker's Guide says, "DON'T PANIC".

Symptoms (viral pneumonia) are apparently more severe than others, but seriously, stay warm, drink some alcohol, take the right medicines [including things like tamiflu which have been reported to be somewhat successful] and avoid infecting others, and everything should just go away in a week or so. "Re-infections" are like colds, apparently, why SOME colds last for days, others drag on for weeks - cyclic mutations being ONE of those reasons.

Bacterial pneumonia is the REAL killer. But a viral pneumonia like this one makes it easier for the bacterial versions to take hold and kill you. That's usually why people die of it. So if you get bad pneumonia, you see a doc and let him prescribe antibiotics as needed.

Basically, do the same thing you ALWAYS do for flu season, when the strain-of-the-year causes severe chest congestion.

Now what they're doing in China, essentially going door to door and rounding people up and apparently sticking them in "corona virus" quarantine camps [I'm being nice by describing it this way], and shutting down ENTIRE TOWNS and thereby ENTIRE INDUSTRIES from this, I'd say they're in PANIC mode. They need to STOP THAT immediately, allow the WHO to get involved, work with the USA [we've got a potential vaccine in the pipeline already], and get this thing DEALT with, rather than playing "totalitarian regime" and rounding people up like cattle [and treating them as such].

Unless... they WANT to screw the world's economy for some reason... like playing a sick/twisted kind of hardball on trade deals!

[AMBxx]

Makes a change

From blaming Brexit!

[Fungus Bob]

Re: Makes a change

Brexit is responsible for the coronavirus...

[PhilipN]

Any excuse

Where I live the Surface counter in the electrical shop was always deserted. Nothing to do with Coronavirus. I reckon the shop stopped taking in inventory long ago.

[DrBed]

Re: Any excuse

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blame_Canada

[doublelayer]

Overeagerness to predict things

"Antonio Wang, associate vice president at IDC China, said there would be "a positive side" as Chinese consumers become aware of the importance of access to internet information as a result of the outbreak."

That's a rather strange prediction. I'm assuming that it's referring to the widespread and severe censorship of many topics around the virus and its handling, and the prediction is that people will be annoyed with this and ... I actually don't know what they're predicted to do. If the prediction is that people will protest against censorship, don't count on it; Chinese citizens are well aware of the censorship, don't like it, and are aware that open revolt doesn't end well. If it's people taking other measures to evade the censorship, that might happen, but doesn't seem relevant to the prediction quoted above. I really don't know where that prediction came from, but I'm expecting that whatever it is predicting won't happen.