Could you please not post in the flamewar style to HN? I'm not judging you (seriously); it's just not the kind of conversation we're looking for here, and it destroys the kind we are looking for, so having both is not an option. Sort of the same way you can't have both fires and, say, museums—or tank battles and, say, parks.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's not about the people going to these events, it's who those people end up infecting.

A student goes to FOSDEM , catches COVID-19 without any symptoms, and then on the way back home ends up interacting with a bunch of elderly family members, infecting them and possibly hospitalising them in the process. That's just one scenario, there are hundreds of other scenarios that will also occur.

Why take the risk?

You can meet many people as a volunteer in a Covid station in a hospital in many countries right now. Also helping to burn bodies.

Death robs you of your humanity far more effectively than any lockdown. Also now that we have several effective vaccines being rolled out all over the world, it makes even less sense to have this attitude. And all this in the name of some Linux talks and pommes frites? I think you need a little bit more perspective on the situation.

I live in Australia, so my life has been back to normal for several months now. I get the feeling you are afraid of something though, so maybe you're projecting those fears onto other people.

I've been able to leave my home this entire pandemic. What are you even talking about. And given how badly the rest of the planet is handling things, I wouldn't leave Australia even if I could (though we can visit New Zealand, which is pretty nice this time of year).

("If the vaccines don't work" is a pretty big if given we have a plethora of evidence that they are effective. You can't "what if" yourself into a reasonable argument.)

Current CFR is closer to 3% globally not 0.3% (I don't know how people get this number consistently wrong -- it's on the first page of any CoVID tracking website). A reminder that 3% of the world population is more than 150 million people (and the CFR goes up if hospitals are overrun -- which we saw several times last year).

Most people have some kind of underlying health condition (more than two-thirds of the western world are overweight or obese -- that's already one co-morbidity), so it's not surprising that most people who die from CoVID have other health conditions. And this is ignoring the more obvious problem that even otherwise perfectly healthy people can infect family and friends.

Case fatality (which is at 3%) is not the same as infection fatality. You cannot directly measure infection fatality until the pandemic is over (the best you have are estimates until then), so going with the case fatality rate (which has stayed around 3% for most of the pandemic) seems like a reasonable choice.

How will you measure infection fatality after the pandemic is over? You will still need to know the number of infected (including the asymptomatic) before you can arrive at a meaningful number. Or do you mean that infection fatality can be calculated once you assume that 100% of the population has been exposed to the virus? IFR would still be based on assumptions, I think.

> In-person events like FOSDEM invaluable to open source and worth the risk for those w/out underlying health conditions.

This would be fair enough if it were the case that only those choosing to attend the event are taking the risk. Most would-be attendees presumably live in societies where they interact with others, and presumably would need to interact with others travelling too and from the event.

It would make sense if closed cities were doing better than oepn cities but that isn't the case. Miami has fewer deaths than NYC and everything is open in Miami.

Vitamin D? Miami is a lot sunnier.

LA is pretty damn sunny

Yeah, it is puzzling. Of course we are assuming that all areas count cases and deaths the same. That may not be true. Maybe the rates are similar.

I think it's probably fair that when this is all presumably past, we'll conclude that some of the measures that we took and that many feel very strongly about weren't super-effective. (And a lot of it boils down to dumb luck.) On the other hand, there have been mitigating measures to some degree in most places so I can't seriously argue that we should have just have said "screw it. Let's just pretend that everything's normal." and act accordingly.

LA and Miami have similar # of deaths to covid while LA has way more restrictions. The difference? The difference? The restrictions can't stop the spread of a respiratory disease. They never could. We just copied China on the masks, social distancing, and lockdowns. That's it. Virus gonna virus whatever you do.

I used to live in LA and people really flouted the restrictions. They worked in China because the Chinese actually followed them.

I currently live in a SE asian country w/ very few covid deaths and few restrictions. The most likely reason is prior immunity due to exposure to other coronaviruses.

My family and friends in LA are all wearing masks and social distancing. Doesn't seem to be making a big diff.

Clearly untenable and irresponsible to hold an in-person event right now. I'm quite sure the school it's held at wouldn't have allowed it even if the organizers wanted to do it. You're not necessarily a horrible person. Just utterly disconnected from reality. Watch your Linux talks on video and get some takeout fries.

I think this is fine as long a those who decide to risk their life do not put others at risk without their consent, and there are equivalent remote or socially distanced alternatives for all activities.

For example, anyone who decides they want to risk infection should have to register with the government and they will be provided with an arm band that must be on display in public areas so other citizens can avoid them. Private premises will have the legal right to deny access to anyone with the arm band.

It might be a fun experiment in natural selection taking is course. All the "callous" types can go to FOSDEM and and see how bad of an infection of COVID-19 they -- or their relatives -- will get, and if they are part of the 0.3% (if that is accurate).

I suggest nice yellow stars to wear

Except that we - literally all of us - have to live with this disease. The vaccines are somewhat effective but not entirely at best 70% but perhaps 40% and worse for those most vulnerable. There is only one way forward.

You clearly don't work in a hospital.

do you? during winter? when they are usually full anyways? Also, please tell me if hospitals in cities w/ full lockdowns are doing better than those that are open? You can't. The restrictions don't work. Florida isn't doing any worse than CA. Unpopular opinion.