Friday, April 24, 2020

Crazy but plausible.

A Covid-infected attendee emerges from CES, a massive tech conference in January.

"While millions of people worldwide will likely have antibody tests that return positive results, Webber's outcome offers new insight into how the virus may have begun to spread. He was among more than 170,000 people who attended the Consumer Electronics Show between Jan. 7 and 10 in Las Vegas, a four-day event that attracted technology professionals from around the world."

The only reason I started watching the COVID virus the way I have, is because I went to CES. When I first learned about it, my eyes grey wide and thought - if this thing had hit literally 10 days earlier - this would be super crazy.

Mr S. and I both were in the incubation period for about a week which is why I started paying attention to it pretty hard.

CES is already a well known virus spreader. Everyone that goes gets sick. For the past couple of years I became super germaphobic in January. Everybody touches the devices there. You are pretty much guaranteed to be sick if you aren't diligent.

If this report is true..... I would not be surprised at all.

8 comments:

  1. Yeah, I'd been wondering about CES. Also DesignCon (which I normally attend, but finally got moved away before the latest one), SHOT Show, etc.
    Big, dense gatherings of people indoors during respiratory-crud season - generally with a lot of international attendees, and people who just have to be there, no matter how poorly they're feeling.
    I usually have some sort of crud after attending a medium-sized trade show, and in general trade-show crud seems to be a well-known thing.

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  2. Capital of Texas RefugeeSaturday, April 25, 2020 3:05:00 PM

    Zero Hedge: "Japanese mayor: Men should do shopping since women are 'indecisive and take forever.'"

    Is it starting to get a lot spicier out there in Lockdown Land?

    Oh, wait, here's something from Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge then.

    "Others, perhaps those who have lived with a woman, supported the mayor."

    LAYIN' DOWN THAT HOT SAUCE, PEOPLE
    IT'S GONNA GET EVEN SPICIER :-)

    Figures this would come out of Osaka, food hipsterville of Japan.

    Those people can take something relatively straightforward like okonomiyaki and turn it into a specificity fetish.

    NO WE MUST SHOP FOR THE PERFECT DAIKON
    WHICH WE SHALL DESTROY BY GRATING IT

    :-)

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  3. Eric - it's pretty amazing we didn't cross paths at Designcon. CES is the only one I normally get the crud from. It's a little awkward when you walk up to a Samsung phone booth and they say - you want to hold it? And I'm like - uuuuh.

    CES could explain how it got everywhere so fast. I have never seen as many Hasidic Jews in my life as I have at CES. That community has been hit really hard. They thought it was because their culture is closer, but maybe it's CES. They have a whole exhibit hall just for South Korea. People come from literally everywhere.

    Leaperman - OMG. So adorable. The kissers are the best. Adopted bunnies have the best life. They are the lucky ones.

    Texas Refugee - Uuuuuuuh. He's not wrong. I honestly don't understand how women shop. I go in on a mission. I make it a special point to not block people. But how can women take two minutes to pick out ground beef? HOW?

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  4. Hey, it's entirely possible that our paths crossed at some trade show in years gone by, and didn't realize it. It's not like I wear the spiked black leather propeller beanie to DesignCon; that was more of a BayCon thing, back when I used to make it to BayCon, many years ago.
    I was expecting to miss going to trade shows on account of moving out of Silicon Valley, but it looks like I only skipped a couple of them because of the move and now the rest likely won't be happening anyway, in any recognizable form. Which is a shame (despite the usual after-show crud), because they're an opportunity for social networking, meeting interesting people, and spotting new companies that would otherwise not have come to my attention.
    Shopping patterns... I actually have two. Standard pattern for a known store is pretty much linear, sometimes with backtracking because (e.g.) I find something unexpected in the meat department and then go looking for ingredients that go with it. Alternative pattern, especially for flea-market type settings, is a scouting pass, buying nothing, following a regular pattern as best I can (the Maker Faire made this difficult, with an expo hall layout not at all conducive to seeing everything), then a second, slow pass, often in reverse order, buying stuff, chatting with vendors, and so on.

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  5. That is mot nearly weird enough to make you stand out. I did see a guy once who was wearing the plastic thing that makes your hats keep their shape. No hat. Just the plastic thing I thought you just kept in your closet. But he was wearing that as a hat.

    I don't know what they are going to do about the trade shows. There is no way we are going to pay to see things on the internet. It's just how the internet works.

    I sort of hate to shop. Mostly because of the women and old people. I don't understand why they lazily graze shop. I prefer the divide and conquer method. Mr S. hits one side, I hit the other and we meet in the middle.

    Tradeshows - if they are boring I will do a full fast sweep like you do and circle back for anything interesting.

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  6. I don't pay to see things at trade shows anyway... but as I understand it, the exhibitors pay rather a lot to put their wares on display. (Some pay even more to put their booth bunnies on display, with the nature of the wares being obscure, but that's another matter.)
    If I know what I'm looking for and what it's called, and can navigate past the "helpfulness" of modern search engines ("correcting" my spelling, omitting keywords, favoring trendy pages over exact matches), I can generally find things on the 'net - but trade shows are a much more effective way of finding the things that I'm not quite looking for, or the shape of the thing is floating around the back of my head but I can't put a name to it. Also, I often stop at booths and make suggestions - typically, "Hey, I know somebody who needs something just like this, only in mil-spec" or "I have an obscure, speculative application for exactly this product only in a package like (waves hands) so."

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  7. I don't normally pay, but most people there do. It's a whole racket. Sometimes I think companies make more money off of trade shows than products. Like the Nvidia ones are a couple grand .I know because very time I go to one and it sucks I am in disbelief they charge people ~that~ much for something that sucked ~so~ hard.

    But I don't think it even matters if they charge or it's free. The only reason I sit through their boring ass talks is so I can look at their fun hardware. And I want to see with my own eyes if you are lying to me. There is too much vaporware for virtual to replace real life. It's just the way life is.

    I have already sat through a couple of virtual and it awful. At least when you are there you are trapped and you just read twitter.

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  8. Oh, the paid sessions. Never had the budget for attending those, though once in a while one sounded interesting - just not a zillion dollars of my own money worth of interesting, and even when I had an employer I never got the hang of expense accounts.
    I've occasionally attended one or another of the vendor-specific mini-shows (Atmel, Freescale, NXP), complete with free lectures, and some of those were interesting and informative.

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