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Just waiting on the olympics... any day now..
by o-__-o 7y ago
Just waiting on the olympics... any day now..
- chii 7y agopeople who purchased plane tickets and booked hotels to watch the Olympics are gonna be pissed...unless they can either get their refund or also postponed bookings for free.
- xyzzy_plugh 7y agoAny half decent trip insurance would cover this. Many travel credit cards include basic trip cancellation insurance.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoDepends. Have to call and ask. "Insurance companies designated the coronavirus as a foreseen event between January 21 and 24, which means policies sold after those dates aren't going to cover issues related to the outbreak, said Karen Johnson, a travel insurance program leader with USI Insurance Services." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-flight-cancel-travel-insurance-consumer-rights/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-flight-cancel-trave...
- refurb 7y agoFrom what I've read, apparently most trip insurance doesn't cover a decision to not travel due to the corona virus. "Most travel insurance plans don't offer coverage for pandemics like the coronavirus,"
- fyfy18 7y agoI'd wager most travel insurance doesn't cover half as much as people would expect it to. A few years ago I was travelling abroad, and someone broke into my rental car and stole my suitcase which had my passport inside. Both my travel insurance through my bank, and car rental insurance wouldn't cover any of it (they shimmed the lock open, so there was no damage to the vehicle). Since then I've just opted for the lowest cover which will cover emergency medical costs, and kept the rest in a rainy day fund.
- refurb 7y agoDid you use a credit card for the rental card? Plenty of cards offer travel insurance and anecdotally I've heard they don't put up much of a fuss for pay outs. Plus, if you have renters or homeowners insurance, it should cover the stole items.
- o-__-o 7y agoYou spent more on travel insurance than what real insurance would cost. If you had renters (or auto insurance but that deductible is much higher) insurance you would be able to file a claim to recover your stolen goods. As with any insurance policy, travel insurance is only as good as the words written on the paper (e.g. read it very carefully)
- ghaff 7y agoBy and large, travel insurance is borderline scammy. And it doesn't replace health insurance. There are a few circumstances where I'll buy it: Expensive pre-paid trip Uncertain situation with a close relative medically that may lead me to cancel Trips to remote areas that could require an expensive medical evac if things went bad But 95% of the time, I don't bother.
- eisa01 7y agoThat is pretty high risk and irresponsible - imagine traveling to the US without travel insurance and you could be on the hook for 100s of thousands USD for a small hospital visit! Travel insurance is usually quite cheap, about 100-150 EUR per year in Norway
- ghaff 7y agoI was speaking from the perspective of a US citizen who has health insurance which will cover me internationally although I may have to spend out of pocket initially. If you live somewhere that won't cover you for health expenses in other countries then, yes, it makes sense to buy travel insurance. However, note that in many cases, travel insurance mostly just pays to get you back to your country of origin as quickly as possible with the minimum of medical treatment. See e.g. this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17548285 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17548285
- smileysteve 7y agoWhere California has pre-emptively called a state of emergency, the providers themselves are likely taking cancellations. Just recently it was posted that airlines were accepting cancellations on mention of the virus.
- jacquesm 7y agoIt's only money for what is at best a luxury item. If the Olympics are worth more than lives then something is really wrong.
- chii 7y agoPeople do not like having their plans disrupted, regardless of reasons. I'm not saying that they'd go regardless of safety, i'm saying they're looking for reasons to get refunded and/or reimbursed (or re-scheduled), so that they don't lose out.
- s1artibartfast 7y ago>It’s only money It will be interesting to compare the death tolls from the covid-19 to the economic recession it causes. For example, the there were an estimated 500,000 additional cancer deaths between 2008 and 2010 due to unemployment and healthcare cuts [1]. When you consider other diseases, you are easily in the millions dead. [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)00577-8/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
- simonh 7y agoThe summary of the article says 40,000 extra deaths for the cancers studied, is the 500,000 an extrapolation to other cancers? I don’t think we can separate out the economic costs of spread prevention in comparison though. If we didn’t try to stem the spread if the virus, health systems would be even more overwhelmed and that would by itself lead to many more deaths from other medical causes, in addition to more deaths from the virus. I think there clearly is a balance to be struck between measures to slow or stall the spread of the virus and the cost of those measures, and as you point out that cost is not just monetary but can also be measured in lives. The problem is we can’t know for sure where that balance point is.
- philistine 7y agoYou guys do realize that the US is notably alone in the developed world in offering no government healthcare insurance? You guys wouldn’t believe how different our attitude is of recessions.
- azhenley 7y agoI booked a flight a few days ago. The checkbox for the airline's trip insurance had a note above it saying it did not cover canceling for Corona.
- boulos 7y agoThis sadly isn’t true. Nearly all trip cancellation insurance excludes epidemics and pandemics. You need instead “cancel for any reason” insurance, which you can only acquire about 2-3 weeks after your first purchase. Now, if the event is cancelled, you might get your refund that way, but maybe not.
- empath75 7y agoThat would bankrupt travel insurance companies.
- chii 7y agoIn other words, the insurance industry is a scam, because the trick you into thinking they cover it all, but in essence only cover the most meagre of situations. They _should_ get bankrupted, if they don't themselves buy insurance against being bankrupted!
- arrrg 7y agoInsurances can deal very well with bad things happening to an individual. Insurances cannot deal very well with bad things suddenly happening to everyone, all at once. That’s just an inherent property of insurances. I’m not sure there can be any other way.
- hnick 7y agoReinsurance exists for outlier events like this. It may well not be covered but insurance companies have their own insurance too.
- coding123 7y agoWe're going to need Re-reinsurance soon.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- eric-hu 7y agoThey'd also be pissed if they paid all that money and brought an epidemic back to their community as a souvenir, or got locked into quarantine on their way home.
- bastawhiz 7y agoOr worse, got locked in quarantine on their way _to_ the Olympics
- ck2 7y agoThe US Olympic Marathon Trials are in Atlanta on Saturday. It's only national athletes but 700 from every part of the country and their friends and family. If anyone is a carrier, dozens might go home with a "present".
- Cacti 7y agoAtlanta gets about 140,000 tourists _per day_ and has one of the busiest airports in the world. A couple thousand for the Trials is a drop in the bucket of risk.
- seneca 7y agoTo underscore your point, it's actually the single busiest airport in the world.
- ck2 7y agoI think you missed my point. The time spent in an airport vs an entire weekend at hotel/model/airbnb It's essentially a massive convention from every corner of the United States. Airport is "pass through" for moments in comparison. But yeah trapped in an aluminum tube for a few hours is also a huge problem with a communicable disease that doesn't show symptoms initially.
- s1artibartfast 7y agoIf the airlines stop servicing japan, I would hope they get a refund
- mhh__ 7y agoCould get very messy for F1 if it's still a major problem after it warms up
- Teknoman117 7y agoThere's some historical motivation not to touch it. The summer games haven't been cancelled since World War 2. In fact, the only times it has been cancelled were in the middle of the World Wars (1916, 1940, 1944).
- jacquesm 7y agoWar isn't contagious.
- tlb 7y agoEmpirically it is. Most wars have spread or spawned adjacent wars.
- jacquesm 7y agoI'm sure they did. But that still doesn't make them contagious. They don't jump from person to person irrespective of whether that person is a civilian or military. I'm using contagion in the medical sense, not in some kind of contrived way to make an unstable region erupt in war because there is war nearby. Though, truth be told, I wouldn't be surprised at all if COVID-19 somehow became a factor in wars being started.
- LMYahooTFY 7y agoThis seems clearly unrelated to the point being made.
- Thorrez 7y agoAlthough sometimes war can help spread diseases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
- DyslexicAtheist 7y agonot sometimes. they go hand in hand. Ebola also spread in DRC during some of the worst fighting. It's an anticipated side effect to disrupt medical supply chains of the enemy to avoid their ability to recover.
- chaostheory 7y agoJapan is even worse than China on saving face, so much so that I wouldn’t fully trust their numbers either
- kkarakk 7y agoAtleast Japan has proper hospitals not morgue waiting rooms
- chaostheory 7y agoOnly time will tell. Abe seems TJ be keen on imitating Winnie the Pooh in epidemic containment, at least in the early days