OT: Fauci says sports can probably proceed without spectators (for summer)
Per ESPN
Take that, doomers. It's not what we all prefer, but it's far from the worst case scenario if it comes to pass.
I'll be very sad if I can't see a game at Michigan Stadium, Comerica Park or Lambeau Field this fall but I will take getting drunk in the mancave over the nothingness that is our current situation.
Now remove the stick from Newsome's ass.
April 15th, 2020 at 12:05 PM ^
Nice post. I am a banker that likes to forecast. I looked up coronavirus in January and noted that we (US) were likely to see 80,000 victims with an average CV impact and with 110,000 being the worst coronavirus outbreak ever. Anyone can model.
I am definitely not one to take this virus lightly. Living in NY, I have seen first hand how contagious and deadly it can be, including the loss of two amazing grandparents in the past 2 weeks.
That said, while I think that certain precautions will need to be observed until a true vaccine is widely accessible - likely spring of 2021 - I don’t see fall sports, or even summer sports being cancelled. Empty stadiums may the option for the immediate future but I expect that by fall, we will start to see life return to something resembling the “old normal,” with a number of significant exceptions, such as increased focus on hand washing, possibly the slow death of the hand shake and high 5, drastically increased testing (both antibody and active infection) and possibly travel restrictions to certain active hot spots.
But, the majority of this country is itching to get back to something approaching life as they know it - restaurants, back yard BBQ, sports, parties, bars, hook-ups, etc. That doesn’t mean that certain people who are more vulnerable won’t need to take extra precautions until this thing is finally stamped out by a vaccine and more effective treatments, but the majority of people will start to resume normal life by the fall.
Also, this thing really hit the US consciousness in early March. It’s been just over a month, and look at the rapid advancements in testing (Abbott now has a test that gives results in a few minutes with a promise of faster in-home testing on the horizon). There are also numerous clinical trials being conducted in real time on treatment options to help bring down the severity of this disease, as well as antibody tests in development to determine if portions of the population have developed immunity through exposure to the disease. Again, this is all in just over a month. Summer is more than 2 months away, and September sports just under 5 months. At the sped that we are working on dealing with this disease, I am confident that we may be closer to normal than so many people think before toe meets leather on the first game of college football.
I love you.
April 15th, 2020 at 10:16 AM ^
Same
April 15th, 2020 at 10:18 AM ^
Sorry about your grandparents, michgoblue.
Treatments that might take the edge off this are the huge wildcard.
You wrote:
... certain people who are more vulnerable ...
There's a problem. Get enough virus in a short period of time and you might die. Very young health care providers with no risk factors have succumbed to this in NYC and Italy. There isn't a well-defined group of at-risk patients. It's a continuum. You can probably understand that. As for some others here, well, I lack confidence.
April 15th, 2020 at 10:28 AM ^
Sure. Other people are not immune. Of course, younger non-obese people have a greater chance of dying from many many other things.
Viral load also is a factor. Of the very very few non-vulnerable who have died, I wonder how many got a huge dose of the virus from working with infected people around the clock.
Anyway, it's not statistically risky enough to others to cause major concern.
April 15th, 2020 at 11:13 AM ^
Thanks for demonstrating my point.
Anyway, it's not statistically risky enough to others to cause major concern.
Do you know how risky it is statistically? If so, where are your numbers? If it's not risky, at what point (numbers again, please) would it be risky?
April 15th, 2020 at 12:22 PM ^
We are learning. Recent studies about the scope of the spread (based on serology testing) put the infection fatality rate at approximately .3%. None of those have been big enough to draw final conclusions from at this point, but that is the direction they are going.
Of that amount, the vast majority are over 65 and the other big factor is obesity (and its related health problems). They make up a huge amount of hat .3 or so.
We know that fatality for those under 10 is so rare it is statistically insignificant (on a macro level). I have seen the rates for those under 50 without obesity or comorbidity that suggest it is well below .1%, but, once again, that is just based on preliminary studies.
I am the first to admit we are on lockdown because we just don't know enough about this yet. But, as the information trickles in, it looks more and more that people who are "not fat or old" have a much greater chance of dying in a car crash or from a fall.
I am fine taking the risk, personally (since I am not in those categories) but that is just me. I want my parents to stay inside and stay safe. I wont visit them until we know more.
April 15th, 2020 at 12:58 PM ^
PetrKlima, 10:28 A.M.: "Anyway, it's not statistically risky enough to others to cause major concern."
PetrKlima, 12:22 P.M.: "I am the first to admit we are on lockdown because we just don't know enough about this yet."
A or B?
Both. It is a tiny risk unless you are in a vulnerable category. We also don't have enough info about how widespread it is or the testing to allow us to mingle with vulnerable people.
April 15th, 2020 at 12:44 PM ^
Just saw this paper and through of you.
Of the worst cases that were tested at hospitals. Without any of the light or asymptomatic people (of which there are many).
If you are not fat or over 65, you are not likely to need a hospital. That is only looking at the worst cases again.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.08.20057794v1.article-m…
How low do you think the risk is for non-obese people under 65? It is much smaller than many other every day risks.
https://as.com/diarioas/2020/03/26/actualidad/1585242301_035736.html
Right here is a statistical study from Spain that shows the following for fatality:
https://as.com/diarioas/2020/03/26/actualidad/1585242301_035736.html
< Aged 60, the fatality rate is 0.35%.
Aged 60-69, 1.83%.
Aged 70-79, 4.52%.
Aged 80+, 14.96%
April 15th, 2020 at 10:36 AM ^
This is pretty much where I'm at with all of this too. As a society, we're going to have to figure out a way to live with this virus in our midst for likely the next 1-2 years until a vaccine is widespread and the population as a whole has reached herd immunity.
But until we get there, they are going to need to make a lot of rapid advances in widescale testing and treatments to mitigate the effects of the virus while also making sure the infected and needing treatment rate isn't overwhelming the hospitals. Only after all of that is established and widely (and cheaply) available will you see a return to large scale gatherings of people in arenas and stadiums.
Summer or Fall 2021 is probably the next time you see arenas and stadiums full of fans.
April 15th, 2020 at 10:51 AM ^
What if there isn't a vaccine? There's absolutely no guarantee that vaccination is possible.
We need to accept that risk exists in life and start living again. Life's too short to waste it in a self-imposed economic depression caused by the first ever quarantine of healthy people.
April 15th, 2020 at 11:19 AM ^
If there's no vaccine, then you're going to see hundreds of thousands to millions of people dead because one way or another, the virus will work its way through nearly the entire population because we have no way of stopping it.
In the US today, there are 328M people. If you want to project positively that we're able to lessen a lot of the effects of the virus, and drop the mortality rate to something like 0.5% (its currently around 3-6%...just over 4% of cases nationally, and in Michigan its around 6% of cases) and only 80% of the population gets infected, then you're still looking at 1.3M dead.
There's going to be an economic depression regardless. Its not self-imposed. People are going to get sick, miss work, lose jobs, etc because entire industries are going to have to change whether there's a vaccine or not. That's going to change the economy no matter what we do. There's the way life was around Feb of 2020, and life after that -- same as it was for 9/11. The whole notion that we can just "start living life" again is fucking asinine.
April 15th, 2020 at 11:29 AM ^
If there's no vaccine, then you're going to see hundreds of thousands to millions of people dead because one way or another, the virus will work its way through nearly the entire population because we have no way of stopping it.
Correct. The sooner that we accept that there is nothing we can do about this, the better. People will die. I don't mean to be cavalier about that, but it's going to happen. It's the nature of infectious disease. The idea that if we all stay under house arrest, fewer people will die, is probably true, but how many fewer, and is it worth the tradeoff?
After all, absent COVID-19, if we locked people in their houses, fewer people would die. We don't do that, because we realize that it is an unreasonable tradeoff. I don't see why it's suddenly more reasonable now.
If going about our normal routine is asinine, what do you call cowering in fear while the economy crumbles?
April 15th, 2020 at 12:56 PM ^
But we CAN DO something about this and we are doing right now, which is ISOLATION. The question is not about whether or not we are all going to be infected in the end, the vast majority of us will get infected. The question is about keeping the rate of infection low enough so that our healthcare system is not overloaded and kick that 0.5% death rate to 2 or 3%.
Before we reopen anything, we need to get to a point where testing is available for everyone, because that is the only way to control the rate of infection while reopening some sectors for business. We are nowhere near from that happening. We can talk about reopening stuff when that testing is available.
Are you really so dense that you do not see how this works?
I am not dense. The health care system throughout most of the country is not overloaded, and there is no reason to think it will get overloaded, lockdowns or no. New York City is overloaded, because the population density is much higher there than it is in the rest of the country. Manila may be looking at a humanitarian disaster of untold proportions, as it's the most crowded city in the world and has less access to health care than the US does. But the Upper Peninsula of Michigan? How does closing restaurants in Escanaba accomplish anything?
Even if I agreed that reducing the death rate was worth the cost -- and, I might -- I don't have any confidence that these measures will actually do that. At least, not unless we're willing to live under them indefinitely, at which point the number of deaths from poverty will overwhelm the number of deaths from viral activity.
NYC is not the only place where it is overloaded. There are other cities Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and Miami that is about the get hit hard. And unless you are willing to quarantine the entire city, you cannot open surrounding areas hope that it does not spread from there. This is all or nothing kind of deal.
I could not care less if YOU do not have confidence. The numbers clearly shows that isolation is working and the rate of infection has been lowered. It is your fault if you do not accept that data, but you have no say in this matter, so I could not care less.
If the average age of the 1.3mm dead you state is 80 years old, as is currently the case in the two biggest centers outside of the US (Italy and Spain), there will be NO economic depression in your scenario. Those people don't work....
There's 40,000,000 people aged 65+ in the US. If you lose all 1.3mm to that age group, that's 3.25% of that total population. Assuming only 50% are in that group, it's 1.625%.
That's not a big deal......but 20,000,000 people unemployed (to date) is considered "an inconvenience"?
What the fuck?
You don't get what the goal is and it's so simple: To have the health care system act anywhere close to normal. As we are now trending toward that goal in SE Michigan, we now begin to talk about reducing social distancing without immediately overburdening the health care system too.
Since you're sole concern is the economy, do you understand that when an ICU is 100% full of covid patients, that things that bring money in to hospitals like elective surgeries don't happen and they also have to furlough staff?
You want the solution to be simple. It's not. Even if the goal is.
The solution is actually very simple.....quarantine anyone aged 65+.
Over 50% of covid hospitalizations are 65+....remove them from the pool of hospitalizations and there's plenty of room for the rest of us to get it without overwhelming the system and allowing it to operate normally. There are hospitals laying off staff right now because they can't do normal surgery when we are all under quarantine.
Quarantine the old and sick, let the rest of us get on with it quickly. The numbers prove this out as a good strategy.
April 15th, 2020 at 11:24 AM ^
Plan is to reach immunity via:
- Vaccination
- Herd Immunity
whichever comes first. Striving to slowly reach immunity with the second option gives us time to possibly reach it with the first option (which would save lives) without overwhelming hospitals and losing more than we need to. People are going to die from Coronavirus regardless. Our steps are implemented to save the lives of those who don't need to.
April 15th, 2020 at 11:35 AM ^
Normally you need a vaccine to achieve herd immunity, it’s not really an either-or. To get it through natural infection is not a feasible proposition, as the British government realized quickly.
April 15th, 2020 at 11:54 AM ^
This is the one article that I've been referring to:
https://www.healthline.com/health/herd-immunity#stats
Herd immunity happens when so many people in a community become immune to an infectious disease that it stops the disease from spreading.
It's not the elimination of the virus, but enough build up immunity to control spread. If the virus cannot re-infect recovered hosts*, we get to the point where everyone has gotten COVID, the only people who can get it are infants, and they not being killed by the virus outside of extreme cases.
*that's a big if
April 15th, 2020 at 12:33 PM ^
As your article notes, herd immunity is normally achieved through vaccination.
The British briefly thought they could achieve it through infections alone before realizing that in order to achieve the immunity that would keep people from dying of this, huge numbers would have to die first, which defeats the point.
It's also unknown how much long immunity after recovery lasts.
We are well past the ability to stop the spread of the virus. So slowing the spread is the trick. Getting a vaccine before the virus slowly runs it's course through the population will save even more lives, and is the goal. But if that day never comes, naturally achieved herd immunity is all we have left. I'm in no way suggesting we let the virus run it's course unchecked.
I assume you understand that hospitals and the health care system have to be able to operate at some level of normalcy. The health care system will collapse otherwise. Do you know how much money hospitals are losing because not being able to conduct normal procedures or electives? It's not sustainable.
This isn't about whether you are scared or not. No one cares. It's not as simple as yeah people will get sick, so what.
It's about keeping the health care system on its feet. That has always been the goal. Not just the goal of Fauci, but the whole world.
April 15th, 2020 at 11:12 PM ^
This is 100% accurate. It's also a great motivation to agitate for a healthcare system that doesn't operate on this framework.
April 15th, 2020 at 10:37 AM ^
Can this please be the definitive MGoPost for Covid 19? Please, post this on the front page.
April 15th, 2020 at 11:57 AM ^
Glad to see you've come around to a calmer tone. Guess you just had to blow off some steam earlier.
Excluding band and cheerleaders, I'd venture a guess that between the teams, coaches and support staff and the TV production crew, security, medical personnel, etc. etc. you still involve several thousand people for a given football game. Teams also travel in buses or planes.
It's not a question of could it be done, because it surely could.
Rather, it's a question of should it be done.
April 15th, 2020 at 10:30 AM ^
You'll run into a few thousand people on the subway or at a big workplace. Probably other places too. Of course, sports are a workplace for these people too. You may think of it as just entertainment, but it is a job for these people.
April 15th, 2020 at 10:42 AM ^
It's not in the several thousand range, more in the several hundred range. A TV broadcast for football takes somewhere in the 50-100 people range, you don't need as much security and don't need concessions at all if there's no fans, and teams will likely have to scale back the numbers of lurkers hanging out on the sidelines for games and keep that to core essential personnel only.
I'd imagine if you had to scale things back really far you could do a football game with around 500 people counting players, coaches, medical staff, etc.
April 15th, 2020 at 11:05 AM ^
In any sporting event there are plenty of support workers that could all be an exposure risk but the thing about not letting in fans and only authorized personnel is that you have control over who is in and who is out so you can much more effectively screen the select few who are involved which sharply drops the risk. Even taking the temperature of everyone involved would help but as soon as they have a test that can be read in a few minutes and can be produced effectively then that should be a completely safe environment.
April 15th, 2020 at 12:22 PM ^
Are you insane or just really bad at math?
Travel rosters in NCAA football are 70 players. The NCAA limits the number of coaches to 14. Let's say you have two waterboys, one guy to hold Harbaugh's headset, and three trainers. You don't need security in the stadium when there are no fans at the game. That's still less than 100 people per sideline.
TV production crew is only like 15 people. You could almost certainly run a NCAA football game with less than 250 people at the stadium.
TV production crew is more than 15 people. A bare bones "this is a shitty BTN broadcast" production is probably around 25-30 people: could probably get away with 5 camera operators, 2-3 utilities, director, assoc director, producer, assoc producer, graphics producer, 2-3 audio, 1-2 replay ops, 1-2 video ops, 1-2 engineers, researcher, stat person, red hat for TV timeouts, pair of broadcasters, few runners/production assistants, maybe a couple of others I've forgotten.
For the national Fox and ESPN games, those crews are around 50 or more.
There are a few articles out there that overview the logistics of playing sports in an empty stadium in light of Covid-19 and it is daunting.
Last half of this piece by LA Time's David Wharton looks at this scenario.
God bless America's short attention span.
Game on!
April 15th, 2020 at 10:35 AM ^
Thank God indeed! Otherwise, people would still be afraid to work in office buildings or fly on planes after 9/11. Otherwise people would still hate Japanese Americans and Germans from WWII. Otherwise we would still worry about the swine flu pandemic.
We need to leave some hysteria behind.
This is not as bad as the constant attention to it makes it appear.
April 15th, 2020 at 11:09 AM ^
Personally, I am still not a fan of Germans from WWII. Post WWII probably fine but the ones from WWII? Probably suspect.
April 15th, 2020 at 11:14 AM ^
This is not as bad as the constant attention to it makes it appear.
Basically the entire world has implemented some sort of month long lockdown measurements in order for you to think this way. Why are you so eager to rip off a band aid that is effectively keeping the blood in?
We need the band-aid. I never said rip it off.
The world threw it on because this is new and unknown.
AS we learn more, we might drop the blunt force and use more precise methods?
Eventually, yes. But I don't see how we are close to make that call today. And it blows my mind that sports is considered important enough to need to come back before it's guaranteed to not make things worse.
I know your argument is to keep the vulnerable community locked down, while the rest of us get back to it. But who do you think exactly takes cares of that vulnerable community? Retirement homes aren't being wiped out because the old people are leaving their communities, that's for damn sure. The more widespread it is amongst the resilient people who you view as immune to the virus, the more vulnerable people will die.
Gov. Newsom of California outlined what I think is a good course to start walking back lock downs:
- the ability to closely monitor and track potential cases
- prevent infection of high-risk people
- increase surge capacity at hospitals
- develop therapeutics
- ensure physical distance at schools, businesses and child care facilities.
- develop guidelines for when to re-enforce lock downs based on surges
I'd add ensuring the supply lines for PPE, hygienic supplies, & cleaning supplies are strong to that list as well. Meanwhile, our testing is down 30%, we are defunding the WHO, and folks are breaking social distancing habits while protesting in Lansing. Seems like we are going backwards this week.
Those vague terms from Newsome are just platitudes that can never be actualized.
We are never going to have enough tests to test everyone as often as would be needed.
We are never going to "ensure" physical distance at day cares and schools.
We are never going to fully prevent infection of high risk people.
You add "ensuring" "strong" lines of PPE. I don't even know what that means.
We can't make perfection the enemy of progress. We are not going to have all our ducks in a row before opening the economy back up and if you wait too long because you think COVID lives matter more than other lives you will do more harm than good to your own people.
We are never going to have enough tests to test everyone as often as would be needed.
- It still could be improved instead of reduced like it has this week. Getting testing for those who interact with the vulnerable community would be a great start.
We are never going to "ensure" physical distance at day cares and schools.
- I agree somewhat on that. Mainly think implementing standards for businesses would be most important. Enforced half capacity, every other table requirements, something along those lines. Workers who can work from home should still work from home. Day cares are already a small group of robust individuals. If an outbreak begins there, you can keep it quarantined within a few families. Normally younger parents too. As long as those kids aren't seeing the "vulnerable". Elementary Schools are the same. Just keep lunch in the class rooms/keep class rooms from intermingling. Middle/High schools could do some tweaking. Assign kids to home rooms. You only take classes with those kids. Maybe teachers come to the different classes? Someway that you can keep traceable groups. Or keep them online as much as possible.
We are never going to fully prevent infection of high risk people.
- We aren't even doing a good job of this now. It'll get worse as things are opened up. I'm not okay with opening things up until a better plan for these folks are in place.
You add "ensuring" "strong" lines of PPE. I don't even know what that means.
- Every person needs to have access to masks for public use, not just N95 for doctors. That means the federal and/or state governments should place orders to push businesses into increase their capacity, or entice new suppliers to join in. This can be done at the federal level with Title 1 or Title 3 of the Defense Production Act.
- Additional personal protective equipment like full body disposable gowns, gloves, booties for policemen, grocery clerks, subway drivers, people with the most exposure to people so they can not bring a days worth of germ collecting home with them.
- And we still can't find toilet paper, paper towel, hand sanitizer, lysol wipes, anywhere around us. This stuff needs to be stocked and ready for when we have more people sharing public spaces and these items are needed even more than they are now.
April 15th, 2020 at 11:56 AM ^
What you and some others here miss is that COVID-19 is not the future. It is a problem that will be solved by developing vaccines and the herd immunity that comes with it. Long term, living like many of us are is simply not sustainable economically nor socially. Missing football and sports in general, to say nothing about going to restaurants or visiting my kids and grandchildren for a year is not what I would hope for either, but it beats getting very sick with the possibility of dying.
You always have the possibility of getting very sick and dying. Always.
The question is whether this poses a greater threat. If you are not obese and under 65, it is not a greater danger than getting in a car accident or "getting a regular flu or dying." You are probably in more danger from eating processed and unhealthy foods (since cardiovascular disease is a real killer).
We are learning about how widely spread this is and accordingly how low the risk is that you have to agree there is a point it would fall into any of the other risks you face in your life.
That is the problem. We have lost all perspective.
You keep saying "if you are not obese and under 65...". You do realize 40% of the US are obese? They should just die right?