There's a lot of false assumptions about this. It isnt football versus nothing. You cant erase time. Its about alternative risk, football versus not football activites. Are players less likely to spread the virus in class, in the dorms? at bars, restaurants? Back home? Will they still be exercing, practicing with teammates, doing drills etc? 

Will they be monitored at the same levels if they arent around?

Sorry. I know everyone wants to think they are smarter and doing the right thing, but I'm not convinced banning football will have any impact on transmission of the virus in a macro sense 

I don't think you're being cynical, but realistic.

As a parallel case, you know who else likes money?  Disney.  And yet they were one of the first to shut down back in March and forgo massive amounts of revenue because their braintrust calculated that staying open would be even worse.

It's totally (partially) about the money.

I think that's a pretty realistic take

making a decision that considers liability vs monetary gains is the opposite of cynical.

Can't blame you. However, sometimes--just sometimes--liability isn't only about our society being litigious, it's about laws being there to protect people and society at large. Thus, liability is sometimes a good thing to have when institutions won't just do the right thing without it.

You are right, in a sense.  People didn't avoid social distancing and mask-wearing because those were inconvenient; they did it because they thought that those were good ways to "maek teh libruls cry."

Case fatality rates as a way to look at how well the pandemic is the dumbest possible way you could do it. CT/NJ/NY had large amount of spread before the virus was even detected, then testing wasn't available for a month plus for the general public. 

Just absolute trash.

FL/GA/TX/etc had a chance to be barely scathed by the virus. They chose to not take it seriously. Other states have made mistakes. Those states have been negligent. 

You are confused on at least a couple of fronts. The CFR in Northeastern states is high due to a lack of testing during the height of the outbreaks there. We simply didn't have the resources when the shit hit the fan here in NY. So of course large numbers of cases were never identified before recovery. Now, with much more extensive testing going on in areas just hitting or just past peak, we see lower CFR's. This makes sense and has nothing to do with the quality of "the job" a particular state is doing. 

Regarding New Zealand, get a grip: like most countries dealing with occasional outbreaks after successful initial management, they are talking about really small numbers compared to the US. 

I won't argue with you that the whole country has done a shit job, but the NE states got hit first when we knew less about how to treat those infected with the virus. Nationally, we're seeing much higher case numbers per day now than we were in March and April, but our deaths per day are about half of what they were in March and April. This is in part because we know how to better treat those who are infected. Pointing at the death rates of the states who got hit first is misleading.

Also, I'm not sure what your point about New Zealand is. They are a success story, in spite of the recent outbreak. They are also taking the necessary steps to mitigate and determine the source of the current outbreak. If your metric for success is zero cases then no one has succeeded at containing the virus. 

Intellectually dishonest bullshit. 
 

And NZ is measuring their “outbreak” by counting dozens not tens of thousands. 

Oh man, you've got me there.  Absolutely no reason to look at the timeframe of when those deaths occurred or how those states have looked for months now.  Hell, I've got a timeshare in Boca Raton you can have; Florida's gotta be one of the safest places in the US right now given they couldn't even crack the top 10 of this unsourced list.

Again, an oft-overlooked blindspot with people isn't just their inability to understand exponential math but also their willful ignorance of time series math.  

Places that got hit early (like all of the ones you list above) had literally no treatments or experience to help them reduce fatality. There was no remdesivir, no dexamathasone, and no best practice for how/when to intubate patients. They were flying completely blind. They also had community spread by the time Americans actually knew about the existence of the virus. Meanwhile, southern governors watched the carnage unfold and rolled the dice with the lives of their citizens, not implementing basic safety measures and in some cases not allowing local leaders to implement them until after cases were out of control. Lucky for them, new treatments and best practices had reduced the fatality rates of ICU patients by about 50% by the time they had their outbreaks. States that acted swiftly and responsibly before they had major community spread (like Oregon, Ohio, etc.) never experienced big spikes. Unfortunately for them, without a national plan, they could never truly beat down the virus

Regarding the present day, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, etc. now have the virus largely under control. Regarding New Zealand, they have 69 total cases. Maybe it will get out of control, but it's a bit premature to say they're in trouble.

New Zealand is a success story. I know they're a relatively low population island country, but they've done extremely well (better than their neighbor Australia) and their 'outbreak' would be considered a wild success in any American state

You're...not smart.

You really stepped on your dick here. NZ is a perfect example. It had a small outbreak, as will ANY country that houses humans. The difference is that NZ has testing and contact tracing and responded to this outbreak by immediately closing ranks, shutting down the area, and containing the outbreak. What it didn't do is just try to "power through it," in that uniquely stupid and self-defeating red-state way. NZ is an example of embracing science and proactivity.

New Zealand *is* a success story. They've had 1,600 cases and 22 deaths *in total*, and have the capacity to isolate new clusters so they don't spread out of control. 

By contrast, Florida had 3,700 new cases and 107 deaths *just yesterday* and can't isolate shit for shit. 

Im trying to write an algorithm to do exactly that but it keeps coming up Theta

The problem with what you are saying is that you seem to take as a given that these social distancing measures are what is bringing down the virus, as opposed to the possibility that that the virus hits a geographic location and spreads until a certain number of people have been infected, and then is unable to spread much further and to the number of cases starts to decline.  

In NY, we saw an initial surge in cases, a leveling off, and then a slow and steady decline.  Most have attributed that to the strict lockdowns imposed in NY and surrounding states.  And while I am not saying that those lockdowns did nothing, let's take a look at some other states that have recently become hotspots:  Tennessee, South Carolina and Arizona. To look at each state's curve, just google “Arizone Covid Stats" and you can toggle the state to see the curve for each.  Arizona, Tennessee and South Carolina are the states that the pro-lockdown crowd seems to tout as having messed this up by opening too quickly.  If you look at the curves from these states, they look almost identical to those of the Northeastern states that many think "got it right."  The curves in those states are declining, just as they did in NY, despite far less drastic social distancing, cancellations, etc.  It's almost as if these “mitigation” measures might not be all that the media is making them and that this virus just hits a location, runs through it, and when enough people get exposed to hit some level of community localized immunity, falls off.

A final example can be seen in Hawaii.  Hawaii implemented one of the strictest lockdowns in the country, and for months, barely had any cases.  In the past few weeks, the started to gently ease their lockdown.  Currently, Hawaii has the steepest increase in case counts of any state in the US.  So, unless you are advocating that we lock down AND STAY IN LOCKDOWN until a vaccine has been widely distributed and taken, it very well may be that all that the lockdowns do little more than simply delay the inevitable, as cases seem to surge as soon as the lockdown is eased, even a little.  By the way, for all of the shit given the Florida and other "red states," like Hawaii, those states locked down and delayed their surges.  But, like Hawaii (a blue state), once they opened, the virus surged.