Tag: 2019-nCoV

How a Potential Coronavirus Pandemic Will Help (and Hurt) Virtual Reality in 2020

This scanning electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2 (yellow)—also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19—isolated from a patient in the U.S., emerging from the surface of cells (blue/pink) cultured in the lab. Credit: NIAID-RML

Although I said I would no longer write daily updates about the Wuhan coronavirus (now officially called SARS-CoV-2), I feel that now is a good time to talk about how a potential global pandemic could impact the still-nascent virtual reality market.

The world may be facing a situation not encountered in 102 years, when the 1918/1919 Spanish influenza pandemic swept around the globe in three successive waves in 18 months (in an era before commercial air travel), infecting one third of the world’s population and killing over 50 million people, more than the total number who died in World War I.

Not too long ago, I blogged about the eight tactics used to limit the spread of infectious diseases throughout human history. Of those eight tactics, two—quarantines and social distancing—are already being heavily used in China.

Yesterday, The New York Times reported (archived version):

Residential lockdowns of varying strictness — from checkpoints at building entrances to hard limits on going outdoors — now cover at least 760 million people in China, or more than half the country’s population, according to a New York Times analysis of government announcements in provinces and major cities. Many of these people live far from the city of Wuhan, where the virus was first reported and which the government sealed off last month.

Many infectious disease experts have already stated that they believe that the SARS-CoV-2 virus can no longer be contained to China. Indeed, we are already seeing cases of human-to-human transmission in many countries and areas, notably Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan, including 355 confirmed cases on a cruise ship docked at Yokohama (the largest single infection site outside mainland China). The virus is spreading.

Humanity has no natural immunity to this coronavirus (despite the hucksters taking advantage of the situation to sell you various “immunity boosters”). There is no vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, and there will not be one for at least a year. The World Health Organization has already stated that existing pneumonia vaccines are useless against the specific kind of pneumonia caused by SARS-CoV-2.

In other words, you really can’t prepare your body for this infection. It is true that some people seem to have very light or no symptoms at all (but are still able to infect others). The virus appears to be deadlier to older people, overweight people, and people with pre-existing health conditions, such as asthma and diabetes. (In other words, I am a sitting duck.)

Researchers are still trying to calculate the infectiousness (R0 or R-naught) and case fatality rate (CFR) of this new viral outbreak, and experiments with various treatment options are currently being conducted on infected patients to see what works and what doesn’t. However, all the preliminary reports suggest that the SARS-CoV-2 is about as easily transmissible as the regular, seasonal influenza we see every year.

As an interim measure, it is possible (some would say, likely) that we will begin to see the same kind of social distancing and quarantine policies currently seen in China being implemented by governments around the world. Travel between countries has already been and will continue to be negatively impacted. Major international conferences, such as the Mobile World Conference, are already being cancelled.

All of the preceding discussion is merely preamble to the point I am trying to make: that a potential pandemic will both help and hurt virtual reality.

How will a potential coronavirus pandemic help VR?

I believe that this truly unprecedented combination of circumstances might actually drive more people to embrace virtual reality technology and social VR platforms as a way to safely attend conferences, training sessions, and other events, where it is not physically possible due to pandemic quarantines and social distancing policies. In other words, more people will be exposed to VR, and sooner than predicted, due to the impact of SARS-CoV-2.

Some people (who might not be aware of social VR) are already tweeting about the need for this:

To which I replied:

This situation might even lead to a boom in the use of various social VR platforms (and perhaps even non-VR virtual worlds such as Second Life). We will probably begin to see many more conferences held partly or completely in virtual reality, such as this week’s Educators in VR 2020 International Summit, where presenters and attendees can share ideas and mingle without the worry of being exposed to an infectious virus!

How will a potential coronavirus pandemic hurt VR?

Many factories have shut down production of goods in mainland China, where many of the computer gadgets we use everyday are manufactured. While a potential pandemic might strengthen demand for VR headsets, it might also make it much harder to get your hands on one.

For example, I have already written about the impact that the Wuhan coronavirus is having on availability of the popular Oculus Quest headset, which is now completely sold out in most consumer markets. We can expect to see similar problems crop up with other VR hardware that is fully or partially manufactured by those countries affected by SARS-CoV-2. Tony (a.k.a SkarredGhost) of the VR newsblog The Ghost Howls reports that Beijing-based augmented reality headset maker nReal has completely shut down production, for example.

So, the coronavirus is a double-edged sword with respect to virtual reality.

Good Sources of Information on SARS-CoV-2

Here is my updated list of good, credible, authoritative resources to learn more about the Wuhan coronoavirus (formerly called 2019-nCoV and now officially called SARS-CoV-2; the disease the virus causes is now called COVID-19):

If you want a quick, up-to-date overview of the current situation, here are three good places to check:

Stay informed and stay healthy!

P.S. Effective today, I have created a new blogpost category called Virtual Reality (General), under which I will put those blogposts that talk about VR in a general way that don’t fit under a more specific existing category. I will try to go back and add this category to older blogposts, but obviously, at 1,700 blogposts written to date, I can’t go back and do them all!

The Wuhan Coronavirus Outbreak Impacts the Manufacture and Delivery of New Oculus Quest VR Headsets: Facebook Announces That the Quest Is Now Unavailable In Most Countries

Thanks to the Wuhan coronavirus, the Oculus Quest is unavailable

For the past two weeks—since January 25th, 2020, when there were only 1,438 cases—I have been trying to balance my coverage of “social VR, virtual worlds, and metaverse” (as the tagline of my blog states) with coverage of the rapidly-evolving global health crisis that is the Wuhan coronavirus (more formally known as 2019-nCoV, at least until the authorities give it a proper name or acronym).

There have been many reports in the mainstream news media that the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak in China will negatively impact the manufacture and delivery of everything from pharmaceutical ingredients to automotive parts. Yesterday, the Road to VR website published a news report that illustrates the growing impact that the 2019-nCoV situation is having on the manufacture of VR technology. (Yes, this story is about both virtual reality and the coronavirus. It was bound to happen eventually!)

Titled Facebook Expects Coronavirus Will Have “Additional Impact” on Oculus Quest Availability, the article says:

After being back-ordered by weeks in many regions, Oculus Quest is now “unavailable” from Oculus in 17 out of 23 regions where the unit is sold, including the United States, Canada, and much of Europe. Facebook says the Coronavirus outbreak is to blame.

Responding to a Road to VR inquiry about Oculus Quest becoming “unavailable” in many regions, a Facebook spokesperson shared the following statement:

“Oculus Quest has been selling out in some regions due to high demand. That said, like other companies we’re expecting some additional impact to our hardware production due to the Coronavirus. We’re taking precautions to ensure the safety of our employees, manufacturing partners and customers, and are monitoring the situation closely.”

At the time of writing, the Oculus Quest is now unavailable in the following 17 regions: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States.

Facebook gave no indication of when it expects the Oculus Quest to be once again available. Given the severe impact that the coronavirus is having on China’s economy, it seems unlikely that we will see any new stock of Oculus Quest VR headsets available anytime soon. How this might impact other Facebook plans for 2020—including the impending beta launch of their social VR platform, Horizon—remains to be seen. (But you can expect resellers on eBay and other places to take advantage of the situation and start selling Oculus Quests at a premium to those people still eager to get their hands on one.)

Wuhan Coronavirus/2019-nCoV Update: February 7th, 2020

I took yesterday off from blogging about the 2019-nCoV virus (soon to receive an official name), and I do plan to take more breaks as necessary in the coming days and weeks, as a self-care measure.

Like many of you, I find myself worrying a lot about the current situation, and every so often I need to step away from all the news feeds and focus on other tasks on my “to-do” list for February.

So, don’t expect daily coronavirus updates from here on out.

Spread of the Wuhan coronavirus in mainland China (source: BBC)

Yesterday, The New York Times reported (archived copy) that the Chinese government was taking even more draconian measures to stem the spread of the 2019-nCoV virus at the outbreak’s epicenter in the city of Wuhan:

The Chinese authorities resorted to increasingly extreme measures in Wuhan on Thursday to try to halt the spread of the deadly coronavirus, ordering house-to-house searches, rounding up the sick and warehousing them in enormous quarantine centers.

The urgent, seemingly improvised steps come amid a worsening humanitarian crisis in Wuhan, one exacerbated by tactics that have left this city of 11 million with a death rate from the coronavirus of 4.1 percent as of Thursday — staggeringly higher than the rest of the country’s rate of 0.17 percent.

With the sick being herded into makeshift quarantine camps, with minimal medical care, a growing sense of abandonment and fear has taken hold in Wuhan, fueling the sense that the city and surrounding province of Hubei are being sacrificed for the greater good of China.

The harsh new moves in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, clearly signaled the ruling Communist Party’s alarm that it had failed to gain control of the coronavirus epidemic, which has overwhelmed the country’s health care system and threatened to paralyze China, the world’s most populous country and second-largest economy.

The steps were announced by the top official leading the country’s response to the virus, Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, as she visited Wuhan on Thursday. They evoked images of the emergency measures taken to combat the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic that killed tens of millions people worldwide. Despite the severity of the new measures, however, they offered no guarantee of success.

Meanwhile, the number of cases on a cruise ship docked at Yokohama, Japan has reached 61, a testament to how easily the 2019-nCoV virus can be transmitted in close quarters. Among those infected are several Canadian tourists. All passengers on the cruise ship have been confined to their cabins in an attempt to stop further spread of the virus.

CBC interviewed some Canadian passengers in quarantine on the cruise ship:

Passengers from Toronto aboard a cruise ship quarantined off the coast of Japan after a coronavirus outbreak are questioning how they’ll cope for two weeks restricted to cramped cabins.

“We have no window. We have no daylight. They haven’t let us out yet for fresh air,” said Lana Chan.

“We’ve been cooped up in this little room for two and a half days now.”

Chan is travelling with three friends on the Diamond Princess, along with some 3,700 other people. She’s rooming with one of them in a 180-square-foot room in the ship’s interior.

Even worse, the World Health Organization has confirmed that the 14-day quarantine period resets every time a new infected person is found on the cruise ship. Those poor people may be cooped up in their tiny cabins for a long time!

Good Sources of Information on 2019-nCoV

Here is my list of good, credible, authoritative resources to learn more about the Wuhan coronoavirus (more formally known as 2019-nCoV):

If you want a quick, up-to-date overview of the current situation, here are three good places to check:

Sources of Fast-Breaking News on 2019-nCoV (WARNING: News You Read Here May Not Be 100% Credible!)

PLEASE READ: In addition to the sources listed in the previous section, there are other places you can check, which might have reports (including translated links to local social media in China) that have not yet made the mainstream news media. Please keep in mind that the situation in China is chaotic, and that some of the information you find in the sources I list below might be gossip, rumours, hoaxes, conspiracy theories, misinformation, or disinformation! 

Please review the information and videos I posted in my blogpost about How to Spot Fake News, BEFORE using any of these links.

Stay healthy!

Wuhan Coronavirus/2019-nCoV Update: February 5th, 2020

Yesterday, both the U.K. and French governments warned their citizens against travel to China, and advised their citizens already in the country to leave. Canada is now also officially advising Canadian citizens against travel to the whole of China, not just Hubei province (at the 2:18 point of the press conference below), as well as asking those Canadians within the country to leave China as soon as possible:

We can expect to see more such declarations by other nations about travel to and from China, but it remains to be seen whether or not such serious measures will have any significant impact on the spread of the 2019-nCoV virus. Most experts are saying it’s too late to contain the virus.

Today Bloomberg News reports:

Just a couple of weeks ago, scientists held out hope the new coronavirus could be largely contained within China. Now they know its spread can be minimized at best, and governments are planning for the worst.

“It is not a matter of if—it is a matter of when,” said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security and a spokesman for the Infectious Diseases Society of America. “There is not a doubt this is going to end up in most countries eventually.”

…

Total containment isn’t in the cards, said Nancy Messonnier, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. “Given the nature of this virus and how it’s spreading, that would be impossible. Our goal is to slow this thing down.”

Measures taken in the U.S. have been criticized in China, where officials said the Americans are stoking fear and overreacting. The CDC responded that it has no choice. The infection is spreading rapidly and humans have no protection against it, Messonnier said. While most cases appear to be mild, the worry is that it will spread to a large number of people and turn deadly in those most vulnerable.

“This is an unprecedented situation and we are taking aggressive measures,” she said. “We are preparing as if this were the next pandemic.”

The Los Angeles Times has issued a similar news report today:

Despite all the colossal efforts to contain the virus, scientists are quietly preparing for a grim — and increasingly likely — outcome: A full-blown global pandemic.

Since the novel virus was isolated in December in the Chinese megacity of Wuhan, the pathogen has reached four continents and infected more than 24,000 people. At least 493 of them have died as a result. With the outbreak continuing to expand, authorities acknowledge that efforts will soon shift from trying to squelch the coronavirus to learning to live with it.

“We’re proceeding as if things go really sour on us in the coming weeks and months,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health. “We’re working for the worst-case scenario.”

At this point all the experts are now saying the same thing: that the Wuhan coronavirus will continue to spread worldwide. It cannot be contained, either within the city of Wuhan, the country of China, or the region of south-east Asia. The best that countries outside China can do at this point is to use case isolation and contact tracing to slow down the spread of the virus within their countries, and buy more time in order to prepare. As Dr. Amesh Adalja says above, “It is not a matter of if—it is a matter of when”.

Remember, there is no vaccine against the Wuhan coronavirus, and there is unlikely to be one for at least a year. Also, no one has any natural immunity to the 2019-nCoV virus. Scientists still don’t know what percentage of the people who catch this virus will develop only mild symptoms, and what percentage of infected people will land up in hospital. It has already been reported by Dr. Anthony Fauci of NIAID that approximately one in four people who are hospitalized so far have severe cases, requiring intensive care. No hospital system, anywhere in the world, has enough intensive care beds to deal with a surge of tens of thousands of serious 2019-nCoV cases, as we have already seen in Wuhan, China.

As I have said before, what this means for you, reading this now, is that you need to prepare yourself and your family for the possibility that you will need to stay in your homes for a period of several weeks, avoiding contact with as many other people as possible, as a wave of illness caused by the Wuhan coronavirus sweeps through your community, forcing schools, businesses, and public transportation and public gathering places like movie theatres and shopping malls to close (as we already seen in Wuhan and many other cities in China). The time to prepare for this is NOW.

That means that you need to prepare by stocking up on food and other supplies to last you at least two or three weeks. Start by reviewing the Personal Health Preparedness lists provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention here.

You will need to have on hand:

  • At least two weeks of food and other supplies (toilet paper, first aid supplies, soap and hand sanitizer, garbage bags, etc.).
  • Refills of all your presecription medications, plus a stock of over-the-counter medicines (talk to your doctor and pharmacist about creating an emergency supply of your prescription medication).
  • Power sources (flashlights, extra batteries, car chargers and adapters for your mobile devices, etc.).

Other things that you should do:

  • Sign up for any local alerts from your city, state/province, or federal government (or know where to find the information on the Internet). Find out what plans your employer is making.
  • If you haven’t yet, get your seasonal flu shot. It can’t hurt, and it will help to figure out whether or not you do have 2019-nCoV if/when you do become sick. Many areas now give out the flu shot for free.
  • Watch the following video from the World Health Organization on how wash your hands! (Yes, I know I have posted it before. Watch if anyways, you might learn something you didn’t know before. Proper hand hygiene will also help you avoid catching regular seasonal colds and influenza, so there’s a net benefit to society.)

Good Sources of Information on 2019-nCoV

Here is my list of good, credible, authoritative resources to learn more about the Wuhan coronoavirus (more formally known as 2019-nCoV):

If you want a quick, up-to-date overview of the current situation, here are three good places to check:

Sources of Fast-Breaking News on 2019-nCoV (WARNING: News You Read Here May Not Be 100% Credible!)

PLEASE READ: In addition to the sources listed in the previous section, there are other places you can check, which might have reports (including translated links to local social media in China) that have not yet made the mainstream news media. Please keep in mind that the situation in China is chaotic, and that some of the information you find in the sources I list below might be gossip, rumours, hoaxes, conspiracy theories, misinformation, or disinformation! 

Please review the information and videos I posted in my blogpost about How to Spot Fake News, BEFORE using any of these links.

Stay healthy!