The medical magazine The Lancet was one of the first Western media to point out the rest of the world could learn from the way China had dealt with the corona crisis. The severe lock-down of Wuhan and Hubei province, and the extended deployment of medics from the rest of China, was then still seen as too draconian to be used on other parts of the world.

Now Italy is in a lock-down and medical care in Northern parts are in crisis, while the rest of Europe looks surprised. “They are in a crisis,” said a shaken Dutch doctor on Dutch TV last night, after he made a phone call to a colleague in Milan. Displaying confidence in your own capabilities sometimes becomes a handicap.Read More →

China, with the exception of Hubei province, might be getting back to normal, the rest of the world is still bracing for a further outbreak of the coronavirus. Northern Italy shows remarkable similarities with the early weeks of the crisis in Wuhan: cramped medical facilities, expanding quarantine measure to stop the spread of the virus, and much uncertainty in countries and regions that still try to control the crisis. In China numbers of new patients are dropping, so – unless you might distrust those figures – its heavy-handed approach seems to be working at this list. But global stress on international economic relations seem far from over.
With all the justified criticism on the way China dealt the with coronavirus in the early weeks, the country did make some right choices later in the crisis as containment of the health issues was more important than keeping up the economy. More surprising it is that countries with a more developed health care system like Italy seem utterly unprepared for a major outbreak of the virus. Even a very solid country like Switzerland sees the number of coronavirus patients going up fast.Read More →

The China government is trying to push positive news in the way it handles the coronavirus crisis, but the economic fallout is only shaping up as the panic moves to other parts of the world. Airlines, shipping lines and other logistics and hospitality providers are maintaining the reduction on services, as demand is not yet picking up. Some logistic providers contemplate resuming services only in June, although they do not wish to confirm that less-favorable scenario.

Europe has become the latest victim of the coronavirus panic, and the number of patients rises, while numbers in the Americas are still low, but expected to go up too.Read More →

With all possible caveats: early signs do indicated the coronavirus is slowly retreating in China. That might reverse, as workers are slowly returning to work, and quarantine measure are partly revoked. Meanwhile, the rest of the world, notably South-Korean, Japan, Iran and Italy are fighting their own hot spots of the coronavirus and the fears of a global pandemic outbreak are all but over. 
When you follow our social media feeds at Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, you might notice that our China news – not related to the coronavirus – is growing since the weekend, and that is a good sign too. But still, we do not expect the event industry to pick up before May, and much might depend not only on China and the success of its quarantine measure, but also how the virus is developing in the rest of the world.Read More →

As the severe economic challenges caused by the coronavirus or Covid-19 show a less favorable development, scientists still argue on how to count patients, and how to assess the medical situations. Revealing was an article in Nature discussing the difference between positive-tested patients and confirmed ones, and how to count them in must-quoted public statistics.

Those debates have a profound impact on the assessment of the disease, the fear for mortality, government action and in the end how long the economic standstill might last. Read More →

While messages from the coronavirus are mixed, to put it mildly, the current economic crash course might only be over by April/May, in the most optimistic scenario. Numbers of infected people and deaths by COVID-19 still vary to much to support any scenario at this stage, while it is also unclear whether the rest of the world can contain the virus.

Footage from metro subways still show empty carriages, as the central government tries to encouraged migrant workers to return to their workplaces, local governments – including the big cities –  advise returning migrants to put themselves in a social quarantine for two weeks to be sure they do not carry the virus. The dilemma is obvious: different government make different choices when it come to prevent major economic damage or keeping their cities save from the virus. Read More →

Economic damage to China and the global economy has been limited up to now as two weeks in the Coronavirus crisis were anyway a holiday, and a week extension was doable. Apart from the consumption industries who go a firm hit during lunar festival, expectations were high most of the manufacturing and services would resume on February 10, although our event industry was expected to see longer delays as international flights, traffic and other operations need likely months to recover.Read More →

China is not yet one week back from lunar holidays, and the fallout of the coronavirus is not yet clear. We have seen major events being relocated, delayed or even cancelled, speakers being stuck inside or outside China, and potential audiences unable to move around. Meanwhile we are exploring an alternative option, that might help some event organizators: follow the lead from China, and get your speaker online.

Even when the virus might reduce its destructive path over the next two weeks, resuming events might be affected till the end of April, early May. Those are – with June – our most busy months in helping event organizers to get the right speakers in place, before the traditional summer break kicks in.Read More →

China’ struggle against the coronavirus has been on the front pages worldwide on the past weeks. Western CEO’s of companies with operations in China have been calling for calm and try to convince their audiences all is well for those operations. The question is whether that is more than wishful thinking.

China has been into lunar festival mode over the past weeks and all offices and factories would have been closed anyway. Damage might have been obvious in the consumer industry as even outside Wuhan many inhabitants kept off the streets. But the major question is now, as the lunar festival holidays end, whether China’s massive work force returns to their workplaces.Read More →

Under normal circumstances we would now slowly move out of the hibernation of the lunar festival activities. But the coronavirus has made 2020 all different from normal. The virus is still spreading, large parts of China have come to a standstill and this week many of the rail and flight connections have been cancelled or limited at best.

Meetings have been cancelled, relocated and – to stay close to our core business – rosters for speakers have been rescheduled. While the effects of the virus are still developing, many expect the effects to be felt at least till April, and perhaps longer.Read More →

The State Council has announced it will extend the lunar festival holidays till February 2, while more extensions are not excluded as more information on the Wuhan virus emerges. The activities of the China Speakers Bureau in China itself are limited, but we will also take the extension into account. Shanghai has announced an extension till February 9, according to a Facebook post by Rich Brubaker.Read More →

We are setting up our WeChat work account, and up to now pleasantly surprised. Service looks solid and – while the basic setup is in Chinese – translation service works excellent, so also for non-Chinese speakers the instructions are very doable. Customer service is also very active, although outside the regular office hours in China, you might have to bear a chat robot.

If you want to join our journey at this upcoming global social platform, you can download the software best here. The link below you can use to join our account. Officially WeChat work has started as a service for larger companies to communicate with their employees, but it looks like we can also sign up our larger network at this stage.Read More →