Discussion: All organizers please read this

Please read this article: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-tod...

And then go for a run alone in a forest. But read this first.

Summary below, which sounds dramatic, but the article is actually very measured and rational and backed with strong data.

“The coronavirus is coming to you.

It’s coming at an exponential speed: gradually, and then suddenly.

It’s a matter of days. Maybe a week or two.

When it does, your healthcare system will be overwhelmed.

Your fellow citizens will be treated in the hallways.

Exhausted healthcare workers will break down. Some will die.

They will have to decide which patient gets the oxygen and which one dies.

The only way to prevent this is social distancing today. Not tomorrow. Today.

That means keeping as many people home as possible, starting now.

As a politician, community leader or business leader, you have the power and the responsibility to prevent this.

You might have fears today: What if I overreact? Will people laugh at me? Will they be angry at me? Will I look stupid? Won’t it be better to wait for others to take steps first? Will I hurt the economy too much?

But in 2–4 weeks, when the entire world is in lockdown, when the few precious days of social distancing you will have enabled will have saved lives, people won’t criticize you anymore: They will thank you for making the right decision.”

What are Tomas Pueyo's credentials? And has this work had any sort of peer review?

Lots of interesting stuff for sure.

Think about the math for a minute. Regardless of what numbers you choose for the various constants, it's an exponential growth curve. And we know that people are infecting other people before they begin to experience symptoms. Two big problems that are really bad in combination. With an exponential growth curve the actual factors in the equation will only account for a few days difference one way or the other in the end result. Do you want to be right or do you want to save lives?

To Fossil’s point, this video breaks down the math including addressing the point that the difference in number of cases is just a matter of time, not seriousness, unless we take mitigating action to change the growth rate.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Kas0tIxDvrg

This graphic from the Financial Times shows that the only countries that have changed the growth rate have taken extreme, systemic steps:

https://mobile.twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/123...

Full article: https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3...

@bmay, looks like Pueyo is an MBA without any particular expertise in epidemiology. He cites a number of published articles in journals like JAMA and some white papers by epidemiologists at the Institute for Disease Modeling in Seattle.

Pueyo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomaspueyo/
Analysis of COVID in China: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/...

The ultimate goal is to reduce the basic reproduction number, the number of people a single infected person will infect, to less than one. “If you can bring it under one, the epidemic starts to dwindle,” Forest said. “I think everybody wants to achieve that. The question is how to do it,” and do it early, rather than late. Article.

COVID is spreading exponentially. Not all cases are created equally; once the health system is saturated, the mortality rate climbs significantly because of insufficient equipment and personnel. This is already seen in Italy.

We need to minimize the number of interactions we have to try to contain the growth rate immediately.

This is a theoretical model from the medium article Zan posted early with some parameters chosen to simulate Hubei in China. It's highly contrived, but it illustrates some potential benefits of early action for exponential spreading. Even a day can have a dramatic impact in the long term disease burden.

I'd also echo @Suzanne's implication that we don't have to stop orienteering. Rather than local meets with 200 people interacting in close proximity, course maps can be circulated electronically or deposited at a site. People can still go into the woods on their own time, run a course, and depart without having many potential transmission interactions.

@iansmith and @suzanne: I've been circulating the same medium article, Norway is of course already in full lockdown.

Last night I had a phone meeting with other O organizers in the Oslo area where we decided that the only orienteering we will offer until further notice (i.e. summer or even later) will be in the form of semi-permanent courses (out for a month or so?) with or without flags, and with the maps available as PDFs. Livelox for after the fact comparison with other people doing the same courses.

It is up to the people taking advantage of these to send a few NOKs to the organizers.

This is the letter I wrote to friends and family today: Be As Cautious As Possible for the Next 14 Days

https://medium.com/@zanarmstrong/be-as-cautious-as...

Organising an event next weekend, I have read that article. No problem with the author not being an epidemiologist, you can check his maths.

This is our model:
Online pre-entry only (we have an exception for beginners course at the moment, but that could disappear).
Online results only.
Start times pre-allocated.
Separated start lanes.
Hand-washing facilities at the finish.
2m personal proximity reminders
BYO water

The main risk would be when using the SI cards or if somebody involved in map production was infected I think.

Guessing 50% chance that the event could still get scrapped.

Thank you Zan!