Long before COVID-19, the biggest problem with the CES show wasn’t the high cost of coming to Las Vegas with 180,000 other people from upwards of 200 countries. It wasn’t the logistics of getting around a city that simply can’t handle the volume of visitors that CES brings. The issue wasn’t that the Consumer Technology Association or CTA (formerly known as the CEA or Consumer Electronics Association) sold out all of the audiophile dealers thus ending a 40 year plus run of being the world’s most successful and powerful audiophile tradeshow. No. None of these real world problems were the problem.

The long-standing dirty secret about CES was that it was a global breeding ground for virus and influenza for years and years before COVID-19.

Think about it: you have nearly 200,000 people from literally every corner of the world converging in “Sin City” and acting the fool by staying out all night, congregating in crowded busses, monorails, restaurants and hotel shared spaces. How good does your immune system need to be to avoid getting the flu at CES? Pretty strong, even if you wash your hands, use hand-sanitizer or even wear a mask as the Asian attendees understood long before COVID.

What Happened To Samsung at CES 2022 With COVID?

Promises were made about the precautions that were being taken at the show but COVID-19 wasn’t over – it was thriving with the less-deadly but more contagious “omicron” variant. The CTA said that they had everything covered and that extreme measure were being taken but that wasn’t true.

Reports of right-wing, anti-vax union employees (a necessity when it comes to doing a booth at CES, especially one that is $20,000,000 or more like Samsung’s) were not wearing masks. They didn’t get vaccinated. They didn’t care.

The result was that 20 employees of Samsung came down with COVID along with 50 other Korean nationals which was reported but Stratagee.com and Fobes.com as well as (translated) Korean news sources.

Samsung closed their impressive but infected booth before the show opened. They additionally chartered two Boeing 787-9 series Dreamliners to take the infected people back to Korea safely. Doctors, haz-mat suits were only the beginning of the solution.

The costs of this gross mistake by the CTA were huge. While not confirmed, it has been widely suggested that the CTA gave Samsung a full credit for their booth AND paid for the chartered, Korean Airline Dreamliner Flights from Las Vegas to Seoul South Korea.

That’s a heavy price to pay for foolish, anti-science politics.