Unverified Voracity Is Moving To South Korea If They Let Him Which They Won't
[Lead photo HT: Tony Barnhart]
Sponsor Note. If you've got a small business this is a good time to have a lawyer check out your Ps and Qs. If you're starting one there's no time like the present to get yours off the ground. Here's an idea: drive around picking up children and taking them somewhere. It doesn't matter where. Just, you know, away. You can bring them back if you want. Later.
![hoeglaw_thumb[1]_thumb (3)](https://mgoblog.com/sites/default/files/hoeglaw_thumb%5B1%5D_thumb%20%283%29.jpg "hoeglaw_thumb[1]_thumb (3)")
If you're starting a voluntary child abduction company, that sounds like something with a lot of legal bits to figure out. Richard Hoeg is the man to do that. He's got a small law firm specializing in small businesses. Even if you're not planning on going into a business as fraught with complications as child… well, I don't want to say "care"…
Even if you're not going into a business as fraught with complications as child relocation, having a solid legal foundation for what you're doing will prevent problems in the future. Hoeg it up! This slogan is unauthorized.
If only. South Korea has resumed playing baseball, albeit in a modified form.
KT Wiz held a socially distant first pitch before their game today pic.twitter.com/DR0R9wulRi
— Dan Kurtz (@MyKBO) May 5, 2020
Random sports things have resumed!
We have a smoke delay, there is a building on fire near one of the stadiums pic.twitter.com/b5mUnkO10t
— CJ Fogler (@cjzer0) May 5, 2020
The Bundesliga is preparing to resume as well.
Both South Korea and Germany had no-bullshit, hardcore responses to coronavirus. This Atlantic article describes the Korean response in exacting detail. South Korea had the advantage of a preseason game, as it were, when MERS ran through their hospital system a few years ago. The government reacted with a lack of transparency and was blasted out of office afterwards. Mask wearing is culturally entrenched; idiots cosplaying as militia aren't roaming around demanding that nail salons re-open; public health is not politicized.
So they get baseball and soccer. We get nothing.
[After THE JUMP: maybe I'll start writing about old television shows]
Nothing, defined. Warde Manuel on the possibility of resuming sports in the fall:
“It is very difficult, if not impossible, for me to ask our student-athletes to return to campus to play a game when other students are not going to be returning,” Manuel said on a “Get Lit” virtual town hall with Edyoucore, a financial literacy advocacy group.
“That is just unfathomable to me as I think about it. I could listen to arguments and be a part of discussions, but it is just hard for me to imagine that happening.”
The current plateau where R0 is ~1 with everything in lockdown isn't going to cut it, because as soon as you start relaxing portions of your half-ass lockdown your R0 goes above 1 and then you have to shut everything else down again. Without massively expanded testing capacity and tracing ability—both of which would have to be coordinated from the federal level—we aren't getting sports this fall.
Warde also addressed the G-League thing whilst Getting Lit:
"I don't think college basketball was hurt because Lebron James, Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant went early to the NBA," Manuel said. "That is terrific for them. Now we missed having them in college, but it didn't hurt college basketball. It didn't put college basketball in a bad position."
The NCAA is wrong about many things but not wrong that the enterprise is about more than having mutants who can leap over buildings.
A couple of building blocks. "Returning" is doing a lot of work in a conference that just shed Chase Young and AJ Epenesa but Michigan's defensive ends were very good a year ago:
Highest graded returning B1G edge defenders:
— PFF College (@PFF_College) May 5, 2020
1. Aidan Hutchinson, Michigan - 82.9
2. Kwity Paye, Michigan - 80.9
3. Samdup Miller, Northwestern - 78.6 pic.twitter.com/PlrHo6t7Xd
Another reason that Uche's snaps were relatively limited: everyone who pushed him to the bench was pretty good.
Sigh. Wilton Speight confirms his status for the Spot game:
never been a shoulda/coulda/woulda guy. all I know is The Game with a collarbone cracked in half wasn’t ideal. https://t.co/Wv9W5FT8Ct
— Wilton Speight (@WiltonSpeight) May 1, 2020
I am emphatically a shoulda/coulda/woulda guy! That sucks! Aaaaaaargh!
Try to wrap your head around it. Virtually every article about name and image rights that quotes an NCAA-affiliated person is guaranteed to have at least one quote that breaks your brain:
Smith and co-chair Val Ackerman, who also serves as Big East commissioner, said some of the most important details about how these future moneymaking opportunities will be regulated are yet to be determined. Ackerman said finding a way to prevent boosters and "overzealous individuals" from using endorsements as a way to pay for athletic performance or recruiting enticements remains one of their chief concerns. NCAA members will have to figure out a way to use school compliance officers and NCAA staff to make sure that endorsement deals reflect a real market value for the services provided.
"It's vitally important that we maintain some level of integrity and fairness," Ackerman said. "We believe guardrails on boosters will help us mitigate the potential of recruiting inducements."
I know that this woman's job requires her to shut off various avenues of thinking but jeeeeez. This is phrased to imply that bringing some money above the table is a reduction in "integrity and fairness." Even if narrowly targeted at the idea that boosters are going to buy croots, that happens all the time now and you do nothing about it.
The NCAA wants to regulate it so that players can make money on the fame their athletic exploits bring them… as long as none of that compensation is actually for the athletic exploits themselves. The only thing more futile than an impossible task is a pointless impossible task.
DO NOT READ BRAIN WILL BREAK. [throws cutlery]
Mark Emmert with an all-timer: "Our efforts over the years to improve the student-athlete experience have often been met with increased litigation and challenges that significantly limit the NCAA's ability to address those needs and opportunities."
— Dan Wolken (@DanWolken) April 29, 2020
I got nothing.
Silencing Chase Young will do that. One Michigan player cracks Mel Kiper's too-early 2021 first round:
14. Jalen Mayfield, OT, Michigan
HT: 6-5 | WT: 319 | Class: Junior
There is some projection here because Mayfield has started only 13 college games at right tackle. But I really liked what I saw from him in the biggest games, including when he was lined up against No. 2 overall pick Chase Young in the Wolverines' loss to Ohio State in the regular-season finale. Mayfield has some upside, and I'll be watching closely this season.
Ben Mason is the top-ranked FB and Kwity Paye the #5 DE.
And if you're thinking "wait shouldn't there be an implausible Big Ten West QB on this list", well, yeah:
1. Trevor Lawrence, Clemson
2. Justin Fields, Ohio State
3. Trey Lance, North Dakota State
4. Jamie Newman, Georgia
5. Tanner Morgan, Minnesota
Morgan is far less ludicrous than most guys in the bin after a 10 YPA, 30 TD, 7 INT season but his offense relies so heavily on RPOs and two totally rad receivers that I'm guessing he doesn't project to the league particularly well.
Waivers might stay. The NCAA legislation process is the very definition of byzantine so I can't tell you exactly what this means but it doesn't seem good for the prospect of a single free transfer for D1 athletes:
The NCAA Division I Board of Directors said Thursday that it does not recommend potential changes to the transfer waiver process.
The Division I Council is expected to vote on a one-time transfer waiver in May that would allow student-athletes in football, men's and women's basketball, baseball and men's ice hockey to transfer and compete immediately at their new school. As it stands, student-athletes in those five sports have to sit out one year before competing.
The Transfer Waiver Working Group recommended waiver guidelines change to allow the one-time transfer waiver, but while the Board of Directors recommended lifting the moratorium on transfer legislation, it disagreed on changing the waiver process.
This is permanent legislation and unrelated to any COVID-19 special exemption, and also this thumbs down is merely advisory. It could still go through. I don't know how much influence the Board of Directors has over the membership.
Terrible content, excellent grave dancing. If I wanted to make money writing about sports I would not hire this person. If I wanted to cause the most agony for the people who left en masse I would hire this person:
ROB PARKER JOINS REVAMPED DEADSPIN
“As the FOX Sports personality announced he was joining Deadspin, Parker also stated he was leaving The Shadow League, where he contributed as a columnist since 2013.”
Next hires up: Jason Whitlock and Hulk Hogan's jimmer-jabber.
Etc.: The Luiz Suarez handball turns ten years old. Yelp and Grubhub are undeserving of your business. Michigan econ professor on cubic fits and the appropriateness of applying them to a pandemic. CHET. The Athletic is welcome to call it "Draftageddon." EA is begging to pay people for their NIL rights.
If the national objective is to keep R0<1 until there is herd immunity, sports (not to mention school, etc) won't be normal until a vaccine is widely available. So get ready for another 12-24 months of this.
So get ready for another 12-24 months of this.
No. Under those conditions, get ready for this to be indefinite. The 12-24 month thing needs to stop being reported. It's based on nothing. Medical research does not follow a timeline. There has never been a commercially viable vaccine delivered in 18 months. There's no guarantee that there will be a vaccine at all.
Any plan that relies upon a vaccine isn't a plan; it's a wish.
Everything you said is true but there are plenty of good scientific reasons to be confident that an effective/safe vaccine can and will be produced. Scaling the vaccine up to meet the demand will be difficult so I would assume first priority will be given to more at risk members of the populace.
Would be interested in the ‘plenty of good scientific reasons to be confident that an effective/safe vaccine can and will be produced,” that suggest it can be done quickly.
I didn't say "quickly"
there isn't ANY vaccine that is 100% effective against ANY corona virus. Wake up and stop spreading the mental disease that is being rationed out thru BIG government and the "so called" medical experts. More people will die from the resulting poverty than the virus itself. No guarantees in life period. I'll take my chances deciding how to live than have Big Brother tell the sheep.
You people really want the Michigan Governor making all the decisions for you????
Football this fall !!! Go Blue!
There are also reasons to believe one won't, see linked article below. There may not be a magic bullet here and in any case waiting 12-24 months for this to happen is going to have its own negative effects. In addition to unemployment issues, the food supply chain is also starting to break. There are no good choices, only whatever is "Less Bad" and I'm tired of people being unable to acknowledge that coming to a different perspective about which choice is "Less Bad" doesn't mean being stupid or evil.
Interestingly the food supply issues have much to do with the meatpacking industry that is an essential business. Because guess what, much of the economic turmoil we are seeing would actually exist anyway. Auto-plants closed before most stay at home orders went in place. Surveys show large numbers of consumers are uncomfortable shopping in person because of Covid-19. Lifting the stay at home orders is not some magic panacea that solves all the problems the virus causes.
I hope you're right -- and, yes, let's prioritize the people most at risk if a vaccine does actually become available. I just think we need to stop assuming that it will and start planning for a reality where it doesn't. Then, if we do get a vaccine, it's a positive surprise.
I agree with that. But in 24 months, virtually everyone on the planet will have already been exposed. It's quite possible by that time that we won't need a vaccine if people's second infections (and third and fourth) go much better than their first, which is entirely reasonable to assume based on how immunity works for many similar viruses.
When Europeans brought diseases to the new world, it decimated native populations that hadn't been exposed to those diseases. That's what's happening to us now, but it's entirely possible that once we're all exposed, it could be entirely tolerable. It's already not that big of a deal - not like MERS or Ebola - so cutting down on lethality from 0.5% to say 0.1% or lower makes a big difference).
Ox-ford! Ox-ford! Ox-ford!
(I'm sure they have a better cheer?)
(Nope, just talked to my sister who went there)
Are people unwilling to weigh general public health vs economic health? These two are diametrically opposed in this situation but must both be considered. An unending lockdown is simply unsustainable. “Every life is precious and if we save one life it’s worth it” is not a real policy. Why is that so controversial? Nobody is advocating for full blown, unrestricted, go-back-to-normal reopening. So perhaps people can start to realize that there are risks involved and we’ll be a bit more successful in reopening.
As far as football games or other large gatherings, we’re going to need expanded testing for Covid as well as antibodies to make any intelligent decision. We have time to figure that part out. But with schools announcing they will hold on campus classes in the fall, I imagine ADs around the country are formulating plans to bring players back for camp. They are likely weighing the risks, mitigating the most severe ones and figuring out how to, at a minimum, get them to play in front of empty or very partially filled stadiums that would at least get them the TV money. If they don’t, there will be some athletic departments that won’t be able to operate once this is over.
Your first paragraph is pretty spot on IMO. A couple weeks ago I brought up something similar. I think the issue is that many people view unemployment/recession as a minor nuisance that just impacts your stock portfolio. In reality, upticks in unemployment/recession (i.e. economic health) tie closely with individual health (i.e. suicides, addiction, etc.). The problem is that our President has stated this as such and good chunk of people will oppose whatever he says, which detracts from rationale discussion on this topic.
The economy cannot function until the disease is under control and people feel safe. This was always a false dichotomy.
Yeah few people are actually weighing these decisions. The fact is that people will get infected and people will die from COVID. That's still happening despite these measures. We are trying to slow it down not stop it, but there is a great cost to remaining on lock down. The National Restaurant Association predicts 15-20% of restaurants will close and not reopen. I am sure many other small businesses will do the same.
I cannot see how contact tracing is constitutional unless it is all voluntary. And if it is voluntary, the data won't be good enough to make a difference.
Finally, according to coronavirus.maryland.gov, the COVID fatality rate for people under 50 is 0.4%. There are serious questions re child-to-child and child-to-adult transmission. We could open up a lot of places with the proper precautions while adding very little risk. The longer this goes on, the more people will do an actual cost-benefit analysis of these policies.
If it's .4% and we're just like fuck it let everybody get it, that's 1 in 250 people dying. So if everybody in the country was under 50, that's 1.3 million deaths. That's basically every American that's died in every American war combined. With the rate being so much higher among 50+ it's probably more like 2 million.
The economic damage can be mitigated if Congress wanted to do it. The human damage cannot. And bonus: the human damage will cause massive economic damage!
That’s assuming every single person in the US gets it. Which will not be the case, not even close.
Best projections have it at 60-70% of the population gets infected at some point. So fine something like 900,000 to 1.3 million dead.
I will bet you $10 that we won’t even come close to 1m dead. Latest projections (which were recently raised) are in the 100k range.
The 100k projection is a short term projection, not one that covers a second peak.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/forecasting-us.html
The linked compilation of forecasts is consistent with your 100,000 number by the end of May. .
We'll be at 100k in the next 10-15 days at the current death rate. Are you paying attention at all to what's going on?
Yes I have. My post states that I don't think we'll get to 1m deaths (not 100k). And I agree that we'll likely get to 100k deaths in the next month or so, but for most of the nation we've passed the exponential growth phase, so getting to 1m deaths will take 2.5-3 years based on current models. And this assumes no vaccine or other treatment.
I disagree that congress can mitigate the economic damage. Congress isn’t in control of opening up the economy. Each state’s governor is, individually, with an added guideline from the President. It’s also only a guideline. My governor here in SC is starting to open things up a little bit even before we hit some of the Trump Administration’s guideline checkpoints. Is it right? We won’t know for a while yet. But he’s getting hit from both sides (meaning the lockdown crowd vs the open it up crowd, not D vs R) on it, so he’s probably doing something right.
we went out to dinner on Monday with outdoor seating. They had a lot of protections in place and we were very spaced apart from other people. It was great. It can work. When other businesses are allowed to open up, they too will have proper controls in place including limiting the number of customer to 25 or 50% fire code or something like that. There’s ways to do it and not have an enormous spike that overwhelms the health system.
one other thing. We need to begin allowing “elective” medical procedures. By that I mean things like cancer treatments (yes, they have been considered elective in many places) and other procedures that many would not consider elective, but somehow are. If we don’t, many more healthcare professionals will be out of business and will have major implications down the road.
Congress already did something to try to mitigate the damage (that $1200 we all got). If it did that on a recurring basis for even 3 months, it would go a long way to bridging the gap. That would be ~1.2 trillion which is way less than they've already spent.
That's also assuming that everyone in the age group under 50 has been tested and every death has been counted. I bet the true death rate is much lower.
Ironically I find things wrong in your post in both directions.
First, even after states lift stay at home orders, restaurants are going to have a very tough time and many will close. While some may feel comfortable eating out, many will not. It will be hard to be profitable under those circumstances. Lifting stay at home orders is not a magic elixir for the economy.
On the other hand a fatality rate of 0.4 for those under 50 seems quite high. I suspect you are taking fatalities over tests? While deaths is probably underestimated (for several reasons including the fact that some more current cases are likely to die), the number of tested cases to actual cases likely represents an even greater underestimation.
Contact tracing is already constitutional. Certain diseases are considered notifiable conditions and are reported to states whether you consent to that or not. However to be generous, there isn't currently a system of cell phone gps tracking that enables it at this point. It mostly consists of calling people who test positive to see where they have been for x period of time and who they interacted with. Source - myself, State Epidemiologist in Texas
States are already ramping this up, Texas hopes to have 4,000 people trained to do this in the coming weeks. This might not be enough, but it's also not a good reason to throw our hands in the air and say "Screw it" it's too hard and not try to mitigate it.
I think Mass is hiring 3000, Cali is hiring 20000. Contact tracing is a must, totally agree. The irony is that mandatory testing, contact tracing, masks, mandating businesses change the way they operate will actually give us a lot of freedom to go outside and open up most of the economy but the freedom first people really don't support any of that stuff.
Many people in the US were cosplaying militia even before the pandemic, the idiocy just became more public. Once again putting personal wants/“freedom” above the larger societal good.
Kinda proud of Brian for waiting so long to write about his totally non political views. I say that with a very high level of sarcasm. It's his sandbox and his rules, kinda like the Governor's office, the rules apply to all the piss ants not the ruling class.
I think it was a business decision not a political one. He was getting lots of hits from Covid posts, but now that we are not getting a covid post every day, he realized he could generate more hits by throwing some red covid meat in a front page post
Brian is factually wrong about R0 being 1. In Michigan it's ~ 0.8 thanks to social distancing. That may sound trivially different, but it's not. For the country it's a bit below 1 and has been dropping.
It is also likely it will creep back up a bit as shelter in place policies are relaxed unless seasonality helps along with increasing number of people with antibodies.
It's also overly simplistic to say that if R0 > 1 = no sports and if R0 < 1 = sports. R0>1 means the virus spreads. It does not mean ICUs are at full capacity.
If unfamiliar with the website above, see here: https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/4/21/21227855/coronavirus-spreading-by-state-instagram-effective-reproduction-rate
And if you remove the NYC metro area, it's above 1 for the rest of the country.
It really doesn't make sense to talk about the whole country, as though it is on the same curve. Michigan and Massachusetts are clearly on different curves, for instance.
It's even more granular than states. In Massachusetts, for example, towns like Chelsea and Brockton have 4-6x time the rate of infection as nearby towns, so even there you see hot spots along with areas of relatively low infection rates.
That said, the US has a lot of interstate travel and commerce, so from a practical standpoint you do need to consider the country as connected when it comes to spreading a disease. The fact that Georgia, for example, has seen a pretty significant rise in cases is due in part of relaxed distancing measures and cross-state travel.
Brian, thank you for your take on the CoVid-19 issue. These past few days almost made me feel like I am the only sane person around.
Not having soccer is one of the benefits of the pandemic.
The current plateau where R0 is ~1 with everything in lockdown isn't going to cut it, because as soon as you start relaxing portions of your half-ass lockdown your R0 goes above 1 and then you have to shut everything else down again.
I think we can partially reopen this summer without it leading to disaster. Viral transmission appears to mainly occur indoors, and we should reap some seasonal benefit, both in terms of transmission of the virus slowing down somewhat and our immunity tending to function better in warm weather. Kids are also out of school, avoiding a major vector for infection. With widespread mask use and continuing to follow the 6-foot distance rule, I think we can be OK for the next few months.
My concern is more about what happens next fall when the kids go back to school and the temperature starts dropping.
That's somewhat promising, but, you do realize the obvious flaw with the study, right?
It was spreading in the winter, in China. China sits at similar latitudes to the US. The entire northern half of the country (and most of the sparsely populated west) is darned cold in December and January. Of course the virus mostly spread indoors; that's where the people were.
You can find a bunch of articles about this. That was just the first one to come up on a Google search. Here's another.
It's really not shocking. Indoors you have walls to trap the germs in. Outdoors you don't.
Yep. UV light kills the virus pretty fast and air droplets don't stagnate in one room. I feel safe doing pretty much anything outside during the day right now outside of a sporting event or something with packed crowds outside.
Aren't most, if not all, kids out of school right now? No one is physically going to a school and sitting in a classroom with other students and walking in crowded hallways. It's all online learning. I live in Colorado and it's been that way for almost 2 months.
I didn't read anybody's comments.
You're the smart or lucky one
The picture that leads the post, do you think heading into that 1918 GT game everyone was yelling at each other over whether masks are necessary? Or do you think they just did what the overwhelming majority of scientists and doctors recommended and wore the mask?
Really makes you think.
No they were all happy to be allowed to attend a sporting event and make their own choices. They choose to wear a mask because they choose to go to the event.
Really makes you think.
This whole thing hasn’t really changed my daily routine.
I’m still driving to work, dealing with the same crimes and callers and then going home. My wife self-furloughed for several weeks while my daughter’s daycare shutdown. Both are returning mid-month.
I’m satisfying my baseball itch via MLB The Show so the lack of sports is fine. Since all comic cons are delayed, I’m fulfilling my addiction by supporting several autograph vendors I know and trust. So, basically I’m waiting. And watching.
Honestly, if you enjoy fast internet and Korean BBQ, Korea really is the place to be. I lived there for 10 years, and I highly recommend everyone spend a few months there. Plus the bars don't have a closing time, so you can drink with your friends all night long.
CURRENT SCOREBOARD:
USA -77,883
South Korea -256
Thinking the USA needs a new coach, no?
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