Sports aren't coming back until there is a vaccine
Article on SI explains why sports aren't coming back anytime soon. Certainly nothing with fans in attendance and having empty stadiums is going to be too difficult to pull off.
https://www.si.com/mlb/2020/04/10/sports-arent-coming-back-soon
O.K., but what about empty stadiums?
“The idea of a quarantined sports league that can still go on sounds really good in theory,” says Binney. “But it’s a lot harder to pull off in practice than most people appreciate.”
Conversations with experts painted a picture of what exactly it would take to make these sports vacuums a reality. Before any of this can begin, every person who would have access to the facilities will need to be isolated separately for two weeks to ensure that no infection could enter. That’s players and coaches, athletic trainers and interpreters, reporters and broadcasters, plus housekeeping and security personnel. No one can come in or out. Food will have to be delivered. Hotel and stadium employees will have to be paid enough to compensate for their time away from their families. Everyone onsite will have to be tested multiple times during this initial period.
That brings us to the question of testing. At the moment, screening is scarce enough that many healthcare facilities cannot even clear their employees. Asymptomatic professional athletes are not high on anyone’s priority list. But here Carl Bergstrom, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Washington, offers some hope. Testing is not technologically difficult, he says. There are supply chain issues—we will eventually run out of the long Q-tips required for the nasopharyngeal swab, for example—and questions of bureaucracy, but he is cautiously optimistic that we might have ubiquitous COVID-19 testing by the end of May.
All right, so the 14-day period is over and everyone has tested negative at least twice. Now they are allowed to begin spending time around one another—but not too much time. If one person gets it, he or she will begin spreading it immediately, so everyone will have to continue practicing social distancing. That probably means using a new ball for each play. It probably means seating players in stands rather than on benches or in dugouts. It certainly means banning high-fives.
All personnel must continue to be tested daily. We will be unlikely to have enough rapid testing by then, so they will probably have to settle for the tests that take several hours to produce results. That means the testing will probably run a day behind.
April 14th, 2020 at 12:18 AM ^
Taiwan is literally playing professional baseball now. Having said that, I don't at all have faith in the US federal government at all to handle things well. Already a massive difference in the response to date.
April 14th, 2020 at 12:32 AM ^
I think sports will return this summer, but it could be a long time before there are crowds of fans again. I think that article overly complicates things. If bars, restaurants, and so forth are open, then you don't need to worry about locking down how players get food and who they might interact with in hotels and all of that. The fear isn't that ultra healthy 20 year olds get coronavirus, it's that crowds of thousands of people swap the virus, take it home to their specific portion of the country, and then spark an outbreak. The amount or people that a player will interact with in the actual game will be less than the amount of people they run into at a restaurant or grocery store. So unless the whole country is locked down until there is a vaccine, I don't expect sports to be locked down (but as I said, fans could definitely be out of the picture for awhile). And in the end, TV money wins out.
Exactly. If a football player in September has a significant chance of getting the virus from interacting with damn near anyone, things will be so bad we won't give a shit about football.
Give me $10 million and I'll risk it.
NewsFlash...Rich ppl can die from Coronavirus too! You think Karl Anthony-Towns would give up his 9 figure contract to have his mom back? Money can’t replace your life, and if it’s not safe for fans to be in large crowds...why would it be ok for players to do it.
April 14th, 2020 at 10:10 AM ^
These types of threads make me laugh. You can tell almost immediately who took the 2 minutes and actually read the article and who posted comments based on what they assumed it said or on their prior opinion.
For those too busy to invest the 2 minutes here's the cliffsnotes version:
The logistics of the support staff, the isolation from family members and the inability to provide medical attention outside of the quarantine isolation chamber are the real issues that can't be solved without a vaccine or cure. NOT the players willingness to accept risk.
I wish people would just read the dang thing.
April 14th, 2020 at 10:27 AM ^
One SI writer's guess toward sports in the future based on a conversation with an epidemiologist from Emory doesn't equal fact. The counterargument is that all of the logistical issues she poses are overblown and won't be representative of the overall workplace landscape in the fall.
As we've since past peak new cases in Michigan and Illinois, conversations here will soon be on going back to work. If everyday people can go to work, so can athletes, coaches, trainers, and other staff. Maybe still no crowds.
Now, maybe we'll have continue to have serious secondary outbreaks and the author will be right and we'll have to wait 18 months for a vaccine, but it seems to me that in that same time frame the more relevant question is will we have already developed sufficient herd immunity for sports and normal life.
April 14th, 2020 at 10:39 AM ^
Now those (your points) are actual, debatable opinions based on your conclusions drawn from reading the article. I don't happen to agree with you but I'm thrilled you actually read it.
But my original point remains. Most comments in this thread were made by people not bothering to read it. And it's very easy to tell which ones those are.
April 14th, 2020 at 10:50 AM ^
We can't keep everyone from dying. Its a balance of risk. The answer is not between everyone stays locked up in their homes until we have a vaccine or open everything up and go about our business as before. People need money to live which requires a job. Our kids need education and yes we all need social interactions and entertainment. How do we do this over the next year (or several years) before we have a vaccine while limiting the damage? That is what we need to work out.
Also, to answer one Inflammatory question with another how do you think Anthony-Towns mom would have answered that question?
April 14th, 2020 at 10:00 AM ^
Honestly, does anybody give a shit about football right now. I think most people are busy trying to keep a basic family structure together. It has been weeks since sports have even crossed my mind, except in the sense of “when will my kids be able to do an activity with another human being?”
April 14th, 2020 at 10:46 AM ^
Exactly. What about sports is important enough to risk 1 extra life in this world?
April 14th, 2020 at 12:47 PM ^
The risk one extra life standard is ridiculous.
As a reference,” Football fatalities averaged 12.2 per year, or 1 per 100,000 participants. There were 164 indirect (systemic) fatalities (average, 8.2 annually [or 0.7 per 100,000 participants]) and 79 direct (traumatic) fatalities (average, 4.0 annually [or 0.3 per 100,000 participants])”
There is risk in everything we do. Its all about balancing that risk. Can we restart sports at a reasonable risk level is the question. And yes, reasonable will have to be debated but 1 is not reasonable.
If the only people put at risk were the players/coaches who sign up for the risks you outlined above, that'd be one thing. The added community spread and non-essential nature of sports put that number at 1 for me. If one trainer's grandma died just once a season as a direct result of a RB being tackled by a LB I'd hope we would rethink how necessary football is.
How many Grandma's die each year because of virus's that spread at sporting events. I think it’s more than one. You are trying to set a standard that is wildly unrealistic. If we go with your demand of perfect safety sports will never happen again. Hell, we probably need to do to home schooling for everyone. Our kids can never see their friends again, they can never play sports again. We can never have concerts again.
I am not saying just open everything up and go wild. At the same time, we have to accept some level of risk to allow a life that is worth living.
How many Grandma's die each year because of virus's that spread at sporting events.
I'd assume more than a few. It's a freak accident if it does happen, and probably an avoidable one by people actually getting vaccinated if you're referencing the chance that it's the flu.
Operating sporting events before immunity is achieved (via vaccine or spread) means that you knowingly are spreading a virus that will result in the loss of life. It'd be akin to ritual sacrifice at that point. Go ahead and pick out an old lady to shoot in the head before kickoff. She'd die anyways!
We are talking about grown men playing children games. We can't live without that for a year?! Freaking leagues pull that shit just to squabble over percentage points of profits.
Please share your list of what activities are allowed prior to immunity being achieved. Using your metric what can we do that will risk more than 1 death? It sounds like pro sports is out for you. Are youth sports OK if we take precautions to limit spread? (that of course would carry a risk of more than 1 death as absolute safety cannot be achieved even with precautions)
April 14th, 2020 at 12:15 PM ^
It's interesting, the sports-ish things that didn't immediately shut down in America are MMA and pro wrestling. UFC hasn't done many shows so it's kinda hard to judge how people are reacting to empty building MMA. Pro wrestling is obviously tougher to judge off, because it's a performance art that relies on playing to crowds which is impossible with no crowd, but it has done terribly in the ratings since the empty arena shows started.
There's something so uncanny about watching something when you're used to thousands of screaming fans in an empty building. I'm like 48% sure if the NBA/MLB played, it wouldn't do great ratings because the visual of it is so unsettling, and people will just turn the channel and watch something that doesn't remind them of how horrid.
Once there is an effective treatment (not a vaccine) that keep the healthcare system from being overwhelmed then things will open up. This will happen before a vaccine and hopefully in few months.
For those who die of the virus, it takes about 17 - 20 days from diagnosis to death. Right now we have passed the peak (according to Worldometers) (April 10th) for both new cases and deaths. What this means is that they have already begun new treatments that are changing the mortality rate, otherwise the peak in deaths would be 17-20 days after the peak in new cases. And this has nothing to do with social distancing. This is people who are already infected and being treated.
The big changes have been to use Hydroxychloroquine (I know that some of you hate to hear that it does actually work), avoid ventilation where it won't help (70% of cases, anyone wonder why New York wanted 30,000 ventilators but only have 1,550 deployed?), and a better understanding of the overall progression of the disease. The mortality going forward is more likely to be 0.1% than 1%.
All of this is why we need to restart the economy and get back to enjoying ourselves.
Just so you know, your post was full of crap you heard somewhere, not from a health expert. We absolutely do not have "new treatments" and we are absolutely not -- even narrowly -- prescribing hydroxychloroquine with good and clear results. It's important that you stop believing the things you like you hear. It's even more important that you stop confidently telling others the things you like to hear
/medical doctor and biochemist
April 14th, 2020 at 10:31 AM ^
Sorry, my intent was to give people some hope by talking about the latest developments in our knowledge of the disease. I would be interested to hear what you are seeing that accounts for the apparently increased success with treating the disease. This does have nothing to do with Social Distancing as this is all about people who are already testing positive.
I do know from my days doing biomedical research, that you must cite your sources.
Worldometers is, of course, the definitive source of statistics on the disease. The simultaneous peak of new cases and deaths implies that there are new treatments that are effective. If there is an alternative explanation, I have not heard it.
Liciano Gattinoni in Italy first identified the two types of respiratory disease (Type H for High Elastance and Type L for Low Elastance) and discussed the implications of ventilation in the two types. Www.medcram.com is another good resource for understanding the latest science. This guidance on ventilation appears to have rapidly become settled science, but all of this is so new so who knows?
The Eastern Virginia Medical School updated their recommended treatment protocols to include the use of Chloroquine a few days ago. Dramtically, their guidelines include the exhortation: "URGENT! Please circulate as widely as possible. It is crucial that every pulmonologist, every critical care doctor and nurse, every hospital administrator, every public health official receive this information immediately."
Again, my intent is not to spread misinformation, but to try to educate folks about a very scary disease. It is a rapidly evolving field of knowledge, but we must be doing something right.
April 14th, 2020 at 11:07 AM ^
"Worldometers is, of course, the definitive source of statistics on the disease"
Not gonna go through your post line by line with the holes I see in it but this made me laugh.
Also, instead of BS reasoning about the gap between peak cases and peak deaths, you could just look at the actual charts on Worldometers. Italys deaths peaked about 1 week after peak cases. About 10 days in Germany. Not 17 or 20.
April 14th, 2020 at 11:30 AM ^
I am not going to go through all of your errors line-by-line either.
But, on chloroquine, the evidence that is meaningfully reduces mortality was very thin from the start. The original 'study' out of France was both small and flawed. It has since been withdrawn.
Moreover, if chloroquine were highly effective (effective enough to return to normal life/economy), then that would be showing up in the numbers. But it is not.
It may eventually be shown to be of some help, possibly for those with less severe cases. But it absolutely is not reducing mortality even close to enough to conclude that it is a therapeutic that will allow something close to a normal life/economy.
No doubt that clinicians have gotten a bit up the learning curve on how to best treat ICU and other hospitalized patients. They are figuring out how to make marginal gains, how to eliminate dead ends and bad protocols used in earlier weeks. And that will show up in mortality rates. But that alone will not be near enough to restart normal life/economy.
Also...what leads you to conclude that new cases and deaths have peaked at the same moment? We do not know this because (1) data is still bad (test still very limited, severe under-reporting of mortality), and (2) an early re-open could very well lead to new even higher peak infections/deaths.
At least one basic flaw in your logic is assuming that reported cases on Worldmeters can be used to reliably determine peak cases. Because testing has been rapidly evolving, it can’t. Some of changes in the number of reported cases is due to changes in the actual number of cases while some of it is due to changes in the number of tests being done. Unless you’ve done some analysis to separate out those trends, I don’t think you can reliably draw the conclusion you have.
April 14th, 2020 at 11:24 AM ^
Exactly. People keep forgetting that we cannot "defeat the virus" at least not in any reasonable timeframe. When we say, "save lives," we mean we need to manage the situation so that we can treat patients with proper supplies, beds, and protection for medical professionals.
That has always been the goal. It's still the goal. People have forgotten and throw the phrase "save lives" around without really thinking about how that is achieved.
100% correct. I live in NC; we have a stay at home order. There is a list of 22 categories of essential businesses which basically makes everything except places where groups of people gather still open. These doctors need to stick to medicine and shut the fuck up. If people listen to these idiots then there will be no companies alive to harvest the peanuts and make the cracker jack and no sports leagues providing games at which to eat said snacks. Except NCAA basketball, there should not be NCAA basketball for at least a year.
The problem is groups of fans, not 100ish football players going to work.
They need to stick to medicine and shut the fuck up????? What rock did you just crawl out from? They are on the front line and know 100 times more about this virus then any regular joe or politician out there. They understand how bad this is and how easy it spreads. They should be the voice we listen to the most
Wow. Do doctors run societies? Are there other factors that are used to make decisions? Do you always follow your doctors advice to the tee?
If we only listened to doctors, there would be a limit on fried food and sugar. We would all drive bikes to work or walk. There would be mandatory excersize (being fat is much more likely to kill you than this virus). We would not have bars or there would be a two drink limit per day. All guns outlawed. No extreme sports.
Doctors are not supposed to be the decision makers. Alot of other important facts go into life. You KNOW this.
And dimwits like Kevin that will give up all rights for the illusion of safety is why this country is doomed to fail. (psst, I say illusion because the same amount of people are going to get Kung Pao Stricken whether we hide behind our couches or not. Just wanted to make sure you knew that).
Now I am off to my lawyer's virtual office to copyright Kung Pao Stricken. I'll let Trump use it, though.
April 14th, 2020 at 11:05 AM ^
So we should stop listening to doctors and start listening to racist dumb fucks like you? Great advice.
April 14th, 2020 at 12:37 PM ^
I don't know who you should or shouldn't listen to. But I do know that most people will not take anybody seriously who refers to people that do not agree with them as "racist dumb fucks" without any knowledge of that person's prejudices or intelligence levels.
If you must know, I'm wicked smaht and I hate liberals. So feel free to draw a new moniker from there if it suits you.
April 14th, 2020 at 11:19 AM ^
Are you a Russian bot? I feel like showing you 16 random photos and asking you to identify the ones with traffic signals.
April 14th, 2020 at 12:41 PM ^
The tricky ones are when they add additional pictures after or make you do it twice. Thankfully my Macedonian owners have been able to program me to solve those as well.
April 14th, 2020 at 12:37 AM ^
This assumes that in 4 months we'll still need to be doing aggressive social distancing. That seems unlikely. Far more likely is that most businesses will be reopened, but large gatherings will be prohibited and avoiding unnecessary social contact will be encouraged. None of this will preclude sports from being played in empty stadiums.
Antibody tests in Germany show 14% of the population likely already has immunity. Our per-capita death rate is already close to double Germany's which means we likely have ~20% immunity right now. That much immunity in addition to summer heat and more daylight means the natural rate of spread will be substantially lower during the summer months. In that time, we should be able to loosen our restrictions and open up many businesses including most sports. Once the restrictions start to loosen, I doubt they will get tightened back up.
Also, you need to remember that the purpose of the lockdown is to slow the rate of spread enough that our hospitals can keep up with the number of infected. With 4 months to produce ventilators, disinfectant, PPE, and field hospitals, our hospitals should be ready to handle a much greater number of infected than they currently can which would also lend itself to loosening restrictions.
April 14th, 2020 at 12:41 AM ^
https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1249414291297464321?s=21
The science guys tracking this virus and examining the makeup of the samples of infected Americans currently have us at 2-3% of the population infected or recovered, even after accounting for the significant undertesting. We still have much longer to go unfortunately.
So, 203% has almost no effect on the healthcare system, right?
If you get to 15-20% like in NYC (NEJM paper) then you see a strain on a hospital system.
So just use social distancing to keep it down, but don;t lock down everyone. Let it get to about a 10% infection rate week over week. We should be done in a few months.
I have doubts about your 20% rate of herd immunity. You need to consider the very large number of cases that have come out of NYC. While NYC has and surrounding areas have a large population, it is relatively small compared to the US as a whole. Even if you multiply the total cases in the region by a factor of 10 or 20, it is a small number relative to the total population of the area.
The question I ask is how, if you can't play sports in the fall, can you reopen our universities which resemble a large petri dish for spreading viruses?
Throw it... Big holes in your analysis.
First, it is NOT 14% in Germany. It is 14% in on Gangelt, a small town (12,000) that was a particular COVID-19 hot spot. So any any notion that you can infer anything about the German population as a whole is wrong. It would be like inferring US infection/antibody rate from the Elmhurst, Queens, zip code current infection/antibody rate.
Second, the best analysis I have seen makes estimates a 2-3% infection/antibody rate in the United states. See link: https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1249414291297464321
Third, you say that once restrictions are lifted you doubt that they will be tightened back up. But that exact thing has already happened in Asian nations. The reality is that when second wave outbreaks occur, the only way to deal with them is by lock downs, at least until we have a massive test/trace/quarantine program (which Trump Admin is not ramping up), a vaccine, or find some therapeutic drug that cuts mortality significantly.
Finally, any 'opening up' will be partial, and sports (any mass events) will be the last to open because they pose the highest super-spread risk. Opening is many major metr areas will still ban evens larger than 100, etc., until we get a vaccine.
The study was for one hard hit town in Germany, not the entire country.
“After testing blood from 500 residents for antibodies to the COVID-19 virus in the town of Gangelt, which is a hot spot of the pandemic in Germany, scientists at a nearby university say they have determined that 14% have been infected and are therefore "immune." Some of those people would have had no symptoms at all. Scientists found that 2% of residents were actively infected by the coronavirus and a total of 14% had antibodies, indicating a prior infection. "From the result of their blood survey, the German team estimated the death rate in the municipality at 0.37%”
https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/04/11/0231200/blood-tests-show-14-percent-of-people-are-now-immune-to-covid-19-in-one-town-in-germany
If you back calculate from the implied mortality rate of 0.37%, about 6.3 million Americans have had it. That is about 2% of the population. In New York it would be much higher. In much of the rest of the country, much lower. Conversely, for 20% of the US, the mortality rate would be 0.037%. If 100% of New York State had the virus, given the number of deaths the lowest possible mortality rate is over 0.05%. In NYC itself it is higher. It is very hard to reconcile the numbers we know with 20% of the US having been infected.
April 14th, 2020 at 12:40 AM ^
The source is “experts”. Notice how the author didn’t list a name and focus of said expert.
fake news
April 14th, 2020 at 11:43 AM ^
Choose from the following:
(a) You didn't read it.
(b) You're a liar.
April 14th, 2020 at 12:45 AM ^
By the time fall is here, I'm betting most sports teams will have had the plasma of already infected people be used to immunize the athletes. As for the fans though, I'm betting we see some empty stadiums and arenas for at least another year.
April 14th, 2020 at 12:48 AM ^
I'm responding with a confident "MAYBE" to all COVID related questions and predictions until further notice.
April 14th, 2020 at 12:49 AM ^
Shut the fuck up Donny.
April 14th, 2020 at 12:50 AM ^
Life will find a way.
April 14th, 2020 at 12:50 AM ^
As I said in another thread, that would be totally unprecedented. We've seen much worse pandemics and never relied on a vaccine to return to normalcy. Just find this hard to believe.
Cancelling the NCAA Tournament--a billion dollar event--was also unprecedented as well as all remaining sports stopping and cancelling the rest of their seasons.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/fanbuzz.com/national/sports-world-coronavirus/amp/
The last major worldwide pandemic was 1918-1919 and it was very bad since we did not have the medical technology we have Today. I remember in '73 - '74 the swine flu scare and everyone in my 5th grade elementary class had to get vaccinated. Well that one kind of fizzled. The 2nd swine flu back in '12, did strike parts of the US but it was not as widespread.
You guys all keep posting this without realizing that I'm saying WE'VE NEVER RELIED ON A TIMELY VACCINE.