02/12/2020
Update from Washington Post:
Coronavirus fears prompt Facebook, Amazon to drop out of huge Barcelona tech conference
Organizers of conferences are restricting who can attend and imposing temperature checks in an effort to ward off the illness
Coronavirus has already closed countless factories in China and grounded flights to and from the country. Now it’s hitting the global conference circuit, too.
Several big tech companies, including Facebook, Intel, and Cisco are pulling out of the telecom industry’s largest annual meeting in Barcelona later this month, citing worries about a virus that has killed more than 1,000 people, nearly all of them in China. Many Chinese researchers are unable to attend a major artificial-intelligence gathering in New York this week, and a number of conferences in Asia have been canceled or postponed.
Amazon, Ericsson, Sony, LG and Micron are among the companies that have announced they won't attend a conference later this month in Barcelona that is the largest gathering of telecommunications companies in the world.
