Coronavirus (Sports-Related and General)

[zambonir]

I find this sort of thing terrifying - never mind that there's no way they could play football in the heat or expect any kind of crowds. Seems nuts to me to expect things to be normal then, thinking it's going to be okay to "squeeze in" sports before the next spike in cases (whether that's in the fall or winter).

You also really can't ask college students to do this in the same way you might a pro player's union. And most of these universities will have bigger problems (thought the loss of revenue is still a big one).

John Ourand on Twitter

Also not sure there's actually any definitive science on heat killing the virus yet? Last I checked it had been doing just fine in the Southern hemisphere.

[julio]

If you want to explore - go to the linked site, tell your browser to SAVE the link on the "Raw" button. This will give you a text file - it's actually a comma-delimited .csv file. Open Excel, ask to Open the file, and in the dialogs that open, specify that it's a comma-delimited file. That will pull the data nicely into columns.

You can then use Excel filters to view only a single state's data, or a single county's data.

I pulled the Bucks County data into a separate spreadsheet, and generated an area graph, showing new cases as a portion of total cases - because it's the growth in new cases that's the most important thing to watch. When that plateaus or declines, we're getting somewhere...

The Bucks data looks to be pretty accurate through 3/25; 3/26 shows zero new cases, and we know that's not up to date. The county website is reporting 181 cases (presumably as of either COB yesterday, or early today).

[growe]

See if this uploads properly. I graphed NYC. I figured with all the cases and medical attention, we have the most credibility there. The blue line represents the percentage increase in cases from day to day. I'm not a statistician so there was too much "noise" for me to be confident about patterns. I also took a 3 day running average in the red line - I just did a straight average of the percentage change for the previous three days, no weighting so not sure if that is the proper way to do it. At any rate, it looks like there is at least some reason for hope from the heroic efforts of the medical community. I'm also wondering how folks come OFF the list once they've recovered. My guess is that isn't happening to any degree at this point so cases can only go up so as Julio points out, the rate that they go up is what to watch.

[phillychuck]

OK, if we are looking at graphs, here's one I think is really useful for putting epidemics in context. The x-axis is contagion (the R0 factor,, number of people infected by one sick person in a community) and the y-axis is CaseFatalityRate (estimated for COVID-19, likely to go down below 1% but well above common flu, which is 0.1%). These are world-wide numbers so they have some noise. Note that the y-axis is stretched at the bottom.

[Lawman]

The increase in new cases is not such a shock, in that as testing becomes more prevalent, you expect the number of positive cases to go up, and they're also only really testing people that we assume are probably going to be positive.

The more important number is the hospitalization rate and the fatality rate.

[rpmcmurphy]

I have been reading speculation about when sports might start up again, but realistically how is this going to happen until there is a vaccine? The virus will hopefully be suppressed enough for much of the economy to gradually get going, with face masks and social distancing perhaps, but athletes can’t compete in masks or stay six feet apart from one another. The virus is simply not going away. The total number of cases will be suppressed in the current “hot zones”, but they won’t peak everywhere at once, and we are being warned about recurrent peaks, as is happening elsewhere in the world, and was seen in the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.

[zambonir]

We just don't know yet. Here's one case that I would say is optimistic, if only because it assumes steps that aren't necessarily being taken. And they are not all easy steps.

Opinion | We Can Safely Restart the Economy in June. Here’s How.

But even that article still assumes truly mass gatherings (including sports) will not resume. I agree, it's hard to imagine - how is it going to be safe for 1000 baseball players/employees to start gathering and traveling, let alone for fans to gather en masse? At best there will be lulls, but the virus won't actually go away, so when there is another Rudy Gobert they'd just have to start all over again.

Things are going to stay in limbo, but none of the leagues or TV networks want to make a move before they have to.

The fact that MLB is seemingly more prepared for total cancellation (and is not interested in playing games w/o fans) than they are for a partial season says it all I think.

There's also a bit of an economic Catch-22. Sports is economic activity, but ticket sales and season ticket sales are going to fall off a cliff. If I had Phillies season tix right now I'd be more interested in my refund than Opening Day.

[bkox]

Florida Megachurch Packed with Worshipers During Coronavirus Pandemic

[zambonir]

In China...

75% of workforce was back as of March 24
0 locally transmitted cases reported for the first time on March 18 (some skepticism about those numbers)
Wuhan lockdown (which was really a lockdown compared to anything here) ends April 8

But live music, movie theaters, universities still closed. And it's a given virus will come back in pockets as activity resumes. Vaccine trials won't be done until the end of the year.

Can China return to normalcy while keeping the coronavirus in check?

[rpmcmurphy]

Zambonir, thank you so much for that link from NYT. Excellent info. That would indeed be a solid plan for the country. It is also one that would greatly reduce anxiety because right now we are rudderless as a nation, with an ad hoc piecemeal approach, and that itself is stressful.

Unfortunately, this plan would require strong bipartisan leadership from Washington, and that is very unlikely.

[phillychuck]

There is pretty broad skepticism about the current Chinese numbers being reported. The British government, especially, is being very vocal about those numbers being dishonest. They are also currently seriously considering pulling their 5G contract from the Chinese firm Huawei in retaliation for dishonesty.

[bkeich]

I hope China is punished for this obvious deception in some way, it is extremely dangerous to be publishing such ...

I wonder what happens when South Korea starts to ease restrictions. Is there another flair up? That may be a very telling scenario. That is the information that I think is going to tell the world how to act next.

My other fear is this becomes widespread in Africa and other 3rd world nations. It could literally kill hundreds of millions and become a plague if it gets a foothold in Africa, with no reasonable way to fight it.

[bkox]

A Dr that deals with amazonian tribes has tested positive for covid

[zambonir]

Well, yeah, that's the thing. Even if we believe the China numbers there is still no reason to think we could have sports in August, because they don't appear to be close to that, and they are two months ahead of us, and they have had actual lockdowns where we've only had milder mitigation efforts. And if we don't believe them...

(Of course I see no reason to think much of what the British government says either. And the Huawei thing has nothing to do with the virus, even if that's now having an impact on the issue.)

[Philsmania]

We just don't know yet. Here's one case that I would say is optimistic, if only because it assumes steps that aren't necessarily being taken. And they are not all easy steps.

Opinion | We Can Safely Restart the Economy in June. Here’s How.

But even that article still assumes truly mass gatherings (including sports) will not resume. I agree, it's hard to imagine - how is it going to be safe for 1000 baseball players/employees to start gathering and traveling, let alone for fans to gather en masse? At best there will be lulls, but the virus won't actually go away, so when there is another Rudy Gobert they'd just have to start all over again.

Things are going to stay in limbo, but none of the leagues or TV networks want to make a move before they have to.

The fact that MLB is seemingly more prepared for total cancellation (and is not interested in playing games w/o fans) than they are for a partial season says it all I think.

There's also a bit of an economic Catch-22. Sports is economic activity, but ticket sales and season ticket sales are going to fall off a cliff. If I had Phillies season tix right now I'd be more interested in my refund than Opening Day.

I have a seventeen game plan (and had tickets for the Home Opener). My first choice if the season is reduced or completely canceled is a credit toward my 2021 plan.

[Philsmania]

Here is an article in today's Inquirer by Mike Jensen regarding the grim future that awaits collegiate athletics once the public health crisis is brought to heel.

To summarize, the biggest nuggets from the article:

• The economic losses will be staggering;
• This could not have come at a worse time with colleges and universities already facing declining enrollment--and declining revenue--due to the small size of Generation Z in comparison to the Millennial Generation;
• Budget cuts will be extensive across all levels in all programs;
• In the most extreme cases, some colleges and universities will be forced to close their doors while others will be forced to drop interscholastic athletics in an effort to stay afloat;
• Other more-stable universities will probably have to drop some non-revenue sports;
• Most likely, the facilities arms race is probably over for now with the economy cratering and donations likely to dry up.

College sports will be hit hard, and will not be the same economically after the...

[zambonir]

I have season tix to my local MLS team and I will probably be asking for a refund rather than a credit towards 2021. I can't expect to be able to afford them, their resale value will likely be negative (and were already trending that way last season), and if I want to go to five or six games tickets will no longer be hard to come by. Normally they'd be more expensive w/o a season package discount but that's unlikely too, especially with dynamic pricing. As it is I usually sell half my tickets (to friends or online) and now can't recover any of that outlay this year until games are either played or cancelled. The team has offered to let us skip a payment on April 1 if we are on an installment plan but MLS's current official position is they intend to play a full season (since they used to play until December for years, so going back to that is still an option).

[phillychuck]

If you want to understand epidemics in general, this is the ONE video to watch (3blue1brown is my favorite channel on youtube, but it's pretty inaccessible in many videos on higher-level math):

Some of the really excellent math/science sites are publishing great stuff lately...Here's another on growth curves:

Link to the actual interactive graph discussed in the video:

Covid Trends

[Purduke]

Interesting topic. Can almost hear Waltzing Matilda playing in the background.

From what I have read the normal submarine tour in the US Navy is usually 6 months. While the article directs you toward thinking about the guys who started their tour before the virus started spreading, you can't help but think more about those guys who may be headed out in the next couple weeks and what changes on reporting updates may need to be implemented for them.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/blissful-ignorance-submariners-likely-unaware-083108120.html

[zambonir]

Is It Wrong for Baseball Players to Get Tommy John?