As the scale of the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak revealed itself across the last few weeks, pretty much everyone expected the physical side of WWDC 2020 would be canceled and the conference taken 100% online. Apple Must‘s Jonny Evans takes a look at the positives about Apple’s decision to take the event online-only.
Apple says it will offer the show in a new format that delivers a full program with an online keynote and sessions, offering a “great learning experience for our entire developer community, all around the world”.
• Apple will reach more people
• Engineers may get to answer deeper questions
• It means there’s lots to expect: Think about it: If Apple planned a simple maintenance show with a few gentle upgrades and a less ambitious agenda, it could so easily have simply cancelled the show, delayed it, or let it go. Apple didn’t do that. This means it has something to say.
MacDailyNews Take: By the time the online WWDC 2020 arrives, we’re going to have a much better handle on the COVID-19 outbreak, understand the scope of it, have better treatments, be well along the way to vaccines, and there will be much less uncertainty about the future. In the meantime, WHAT YOU DO IN THE NEXT FEW WEEKS CAN MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE. YOU CAN SAVE LIVES. Please use your heads, be unselfish, help others understand the importance of social distancing, and, of course, practice social distancing yourself.
The goal here, prior to getting an effective vaccine which is at least one year away, is to get to herd immunity with as few deaths as possible. “Herd immunity is a hard-earned state in which a large enough percentage of a population has already established immunity to a disease that it’s difficult to sustain long chains of person-to-person transmissions. When many of the people an infected person encounters are already immune, outbreaks tend to stay small.” Read more here.
Please Read: Why outbreaks like coronavirus spread exponentially, and how to “flatten the curve” – Washington Post https://t.co/Ahl8qsY1SG
— MacDailyNews (@MacDailyNews) March 16, 2020
More info on the Prevention & Treatment of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) via the U.S. CDC is here. Track the Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) here.
MDN, you should be careful to point out that herd immunity is best established when a sufficient portion of the population is vaccinated, thus that the remaining number of infected people is so small that they are less likely to come into contact with someone without immunity before the viral illness runs its course. Letting people get infected to establish herd immunity can work, but at tremendous cost. About half the US population, or approximately 169,000,000 would have to become infected. Even using conservative estimates of the death rather, 1 percent, that means about 1,690,000 deaths, at a MINIMUM. The social, personal, and economic consequences of such an approach will be devastating.