NASCAR: Our Best Hope for Fall Football?
I knew NASCAR had a race tonight, but had no idea fans were allowed. It was at Bristol Motor Speedway and they sold 30,000 tickets. Capacity is 140,000. I believe Tennessee and Virginia Tech played a football game there a couple years ago.
Reports are that at least 20,000 people showed up and practiced social distancing. Also, concession stands were open.
I pray everyone had fun and stays healthy, while giving us football fans a glimmer of hope.
Players wearing neck gaiters with full face shields while we all watch on TV is our best hope for Fall Football.
(Unless players are allowed to sit in cars while playing. Then, sure, go the NASCAR route.)
OP calls NASCAR our "best hope", yet... there is another. Another that can lead the way to our fall sport salvation... A New Hope:
"practiced social distancing"
You're living in a fantasy world. They weren't social distancing, they weren't wearing masks.
Seriously. If any of you think things will be anything close to normal in September, you're wrong. This is the blithe attitude that has gotten us to where we are. Schools are on the verge of announcing online classes (just look at the stances teachers unions are taking), college professors the same. If you're a betting person, you are not betting on in-person classes, which means college sports are totally off the table.
And, largely, because people are selfish.
Yeah because teachers unions always have the best interest of the students and schools at heart..., NOT!
I hope you’re also considering the other end of the spectrum with teachers who don’t have unions. Like my wife, for example. Georgia doesn’t allow teacher unions, and there have been plenty of angry parents who heard that the school is asking students to wear masks if in-person classes happen, and said parents decide to go full Karen and get their lawyer involved or even call the police (No, I’m not exaggerating, my wife has a student who’s parents called the police over this). The sheriff straight up told the parent that if push comes to shove, they will side with the parents. Those parents decide to go after the schools and teachers themselves for just trying to keep students safe and do the right thing. Meanwhile, the teachers have no one they can realistically rely on to step up and defend them. They’re alone.
What is my wife supposed to do when we’ve got a newborn at home with a weakened immune system, and then at least half of her students walk into class with no masks on, and she can’t ask them to wear masks, knowing full well the potential consequences of what will happen if she does? What happens if one of those kids transmits something to her, who in turn transmits it to our child? Some parents have said over their online forums, and I’m paraphrasing, “if the teachers don’t like it, then they can find another profession.” I’d love to hear how that’s fair to them.
Unions aren’t perfect, but there are times when it really helps to have one.
I would honestly tell your wife to quit. If she feels uncomfortable that she is risking the health of the family, nothing is worth that.
There will be parents willing to put their kids together in small groups and hire their own teachers - I can guarantee that.
So she’s supposed to just walk away? What kind of choice is that between “My child’s health and well being” or “an income to help support my child’s health and well being”?
That said, you can’t base decisions on the fringe case. You can’t base policy on the exception. There exceptions to every normative. You have to make broad scope decisions based on the normative and figure out a way to accommodate the exception.
Why not? I was told to close by business, are you ok with that?
The school should have rules (ie wear masks) but if the teachers aren't ok with that they should do something else.
So she’s supposed to give up her career and financial well-being just because some pissed off asshole parents don’t want the minor inconvenience of their kids wearing masks? Because of some complete BULLSHIT perception of “I don’t want my child’s rights being infringed upon”?
Respectfully, pal, fuck off.
And I would tell you that's fucking stupid. People need to work because they need to live. Quitting your job in the middle of a pandemic with record-breaking unemployment and little job prospects is fucking stupid. People are working because they have no choice...there's no bailouts/extended unemployment on the horizon.
It's about as useful as the first lady saying "Try something new". It's tone deaf to the extreme. "Let them eat cake, I say!"
Why doesn’t your wife “try something new”?
/s
That sounds terrible. Sorry you have to go through such lunacy. Time to start a union in GA unless that idiot GVT was able to outlaw it.
Of course there's some truth to that, but a lot of teachers love their students and poor in a ton of time to their kids and spend out of their own pockets to supply their classrooms well. Without their unions, teachers would be getting shoved back into schools with no protections because of dopey politicians
As a teacher at a public school I could make a very long list of specific problems with public unions. However, those can be reformed and they have some positives to protect us from some of the crazy policies being put forward, especially right now.
Exactly. I’m not saying that unions are the end-all, be-all. But teachers get shit on enough even when there’s not a global pandemic going on, as you’d know better than me. And now you’ve got parents turning on teachers and threatening legal action if those teachers dare ask their kids to wear a mask. A lot of things just seem very, very wrong with that. At least to me, it does.
There’s times where I know my wife would feel a hell of a lot better about her job if she had a union to represent and protect her from the crazies out there. Right now she (and many others) feel like no one is looking out for them but themselves.
Good for NASCAR.
People may not be social distancing, but they certainly have the opportunity to social distance. It's not NASCAR's fault (or Michigan's fault, if they have 20K at Stadium and Main come fall) that people that are in a stadium that's 20% full can't stay a reasonable distance from each other.
They are also providing an "opportunity" for the morons who are infected and infect other people at the event to go out and infect and kill other, innocent people.
There is an "opportunity" to not drive 120MPH while drunk. But for the good of the many, we have rules against doing both those things.
My optimism about humanity in general faded significantly when I saw a bunch of humans standing on the capitol steps in Lansing with 50 pounds of dick-compensation weaponry, protesting because they couldn't get their tasteless mullets trimmed.
That crew and their pathologically lying leader shit in the pool all of us want to swim in.
Fair enough.
I'm more optimistic about my fellow humans than you, I suppose. I know my fellow humans will never be 100% compliant with rules, but I thought Americans did a very good job with social distancing in the spring, and I think the majority are still being compliant today.
I didn't watch the race tonight, so I don't know how the fans behaved. I did see a Louisville USL match over the weekend, however, and I know a few people who were at the game (25% full stadium). And they social distanced well. So it can be done.
Anyway, I agree with NASCAR providing a carrot (some fans in the stands), as opposed to other folks who prefer to always wield a stick (more rules, more shutdowns).
As we continue to have record numbers of cases, what gives you the impression that the majority are being compliant?
Do we, though? There is great reason to doubt the current numbers. Have you seen the report out of florida?
From the article: “On July 4, more than 400 labs reported 100% positive cases, by July 15 more than 475 were showing 100% COVID-19 positive results, according to the state numbers.”
That’s impossible. 100% positive rate? How the hell does that get reported? What other locations around the country have similar reporting issues?
The argument that negative tests are not being reported would affect test positivity (and certainly a lower test positivity would suggest things are not as bad in FL as they would be with a higher test positivity but it would not impact the total number of positive cases.
Further, increased cases are being accompanied by increased hospitalizations and worse, very full ICUs. That is obviously one of the biggest concerns.
BlueInDC - the problem I have with the article you linked is the same problem I have with most COVID reporting. At best, it’s lazy “journalism”. At worst, it’s distorted news to support an agenda.
“1/3 of counties have less than 10 ICU beds available”. Are they rural counties? What’s the typical vacancy?
Same with EVERY number in the article. There’s no context. I’m fed up with lazy “reporting”.
The problem is this information gets passed on without any idea of WHAT IT MEANS!
It may be highlighting a real problem. Or maybe not. It’s all about headlines today.
Americans have handled this worse than almost any other country in the world. By somehow making a virus a political issue (shame on both parties), we are where we are, and we shouldn’t be. If all states responded the same way, at the beginning, listened to doctors, people wore masks, and we had an intelligent, gradual reopening....our country wouldn’t be the Coronavirus hot spot of the world right now. Instead we are back to where we were months ago.
Allowing 20,000 fans at an event is moronic. You can’t social distance with those numbers. The only benefit is that 20,000 fans instead of 100,000 + people are at risk.
EDIT: And by reading some of the comments just in this thread, it is no surprise we are where we are right now.
I’m curious what about our country’s response to this pandemic encourages you that this will be carried out responsibly?
But the 30 MILLION PROTESTORS overall who've been out there every single night for 6 straight weeks, that doesn't bother you at all?
The hypocrisy people are using to justify their political beliefs on this subject is unlike anything I've ever seen before in my life and they are serious about it also which is scary.
I'm at point where I think masks talk is bordering on lunacy as some people are actually convinced that every one who protested wore a mask when that isn't even close to being true not to mention that MASKS ARE SOMEHOW 100 PCT. None of that argument makes any sense. You know the damage that one unmasked person could do in a large gathering as according to many they put EVERYONE around them in danger. Not to mention the exponential growth that would come from something like this.
We're supposed to believe the one gathering of unmasked people caused all this but the protests with crowds overall likely 10,000x bigger did nothing? Haha seriously? And please don't cite that ridiculous Denver study claiming those cities didn't see spikes. That was so ridiculous when you read it as the actual reasoning given was because of protests other people stayed home so less spread so protests not bad. Yeah that's the reason given. That's on the level of something my 11 year old nephew would use as a reason to do something. If you feel that is true I assume then you're all for big crowds at football games cause somehow millions around the country were able not to cause any damage despite not being organized or mandatory. Surely if they can do it then crowds can be controlled.
Forgot to mention the average age per case is so low right now points directly at the extremely young protestors. Yeah but we don't dare blame them. Amazing I'm reading this but only many at this site would try and justify that
"But the 30 MILLION PROTESTORS overall who've been out there every single night for 6 straight weeks, that doesn't bother you at all?"
It bothered me. It might have bothered the OP. But you didn't ask, did you? Nope. You had a talking point that you really wanted to use, so why bother?
Maybe you could stick to the main point? Was it realistic to expect 20K people at Bristol (FFS) to distance?
When you start your post with something that is almost certainly not true, it significantly undermines the rest of what you have to say. I doubt that you can find anything suggesting that 30 million individuals have protested in at least one protest. Here are some estimates of 15 million to 26 million. The daily numbers are certainly much lower.
With regards to the protests, if you had asked me prior to the protests, I absolutely expected them to lead to large spikes. In fact, the only reason I did not participate was that expectation. (I have multiple congenital issues that put me at high risk, thus I try to be very careful). I also admit that I wanted to find out that I was wrong about the protests so I almost certainly have some bias when I review the claims that they have not caused large spikes. I also spend my professional time working on public policy issues and have to critique many studies so I have significant experience doing so.
I would cite 4 different lines of evidence to suggest that the protests did not cause significant increases in Covid transmission.
1. Testing positivity rates for protestors vs general population. I’ve linked these many times (I’m pretty sure several in response to you). In a number if cities including Boston, Seattle and Minneapolis there has been no significant difference in positivity rates between general testing and testing of the general population. (The only counter to this is an occasional story suggesting that police have seen higher rates - LA is the only one I could quickly find, but I think I’ve seen 1 or 2 others in the past).
2. Contact tracing. Multiple stories citing health departments that have been doing contact tracing. They have not seen significant cases linked to protests. They have seen them linked to parties, bars etc. (where coincidentally lots of young people hang out).
3. Looking at growth rates for Covid before and after protests to see if there was a significant change. This was in fact a pretty significant component of the National Bureau of Economic Research Study (I believe this is what you refer to as the ‘Denver” study. There are two components to this work. They looked both at whether or not there were increases in rate of growth in transmission of covid after protests. ‘while it is possible that the protests caused an increase in the spread of COVID-19 among those who attended the protests, we demonstrate that the protests had little effect on the spread of COVID- 19 for the entire population of the counties with protests during the more than three weeks following protest onset.’ and whether their was an increase or decrease of social distancing across the population of the protest as a whole. As you noted, they did determine it caused a decrease. https://www.nber.org/papers/w27408.pdf. I have linked to the study (which is not yet peer reviewed) because it is pretty clear that you haven’t read it (which also tends to undermine your credibility in criticizing it). I would particularly draw your attention to Appendix 8 on page 47.
4. Lastly the fact that while there is certainly a motivated group (including yourself) that should be interested in presenting some actual information showing the expected spike related to protests, I haven’t seen any, since the protests began more than 45 days ago, I find that pretty surprising.
Many epidemiologists seem genuinely surprised by these results. They usually offer several explanations
1. More evidence that outdoor transmission is significantly harder
2. More evidence that masks work (clearly not everyone was wearing masks, but by and large it seems like mask compliance was quite good).
3. Protestors were not staying in the same place and facing each other for any length of time. They were generally moving around.
Sounds like you've done your homework on this. Do you think or have you seen any evidence that it's one or another?
Example, if Michigan allowed 25% capacity (about 25-30K people) at the Big House this fall (they won't, but whatever), and everyone wore masks, do you think you'd see a similar limited number of new cases? Or would your final point (people don't move around at football games; they find their seat and stay there) override that?
What’s ironic is that their “pathologically lying leader” is not actually their leader, nor do they care about him. Those guys don’t vote. At least they stop voting once Chester the gun store clerk loses the nomination.
With no team sports to watch, football, baseball, basketball, a lot of people have turned to Premier league. Which is actually football. And hey, it’s a team sport!
Could the pandemic actually be the tipping point for people to turn from football to football?
Soccer is boring as fuck
Would you prefer watching paint dry? I actually think we’ll see e-sports take off and grab a greater market share of viewers, because what else are you gonna do?
I could easily name 1000 things I would do before watching some else play video games.
the opera, the dentist and a colonoscopy easily slide in before.esports.
"colonoscopy easily slide in"
I see what you did there.
I turned 50 in June. My first colonoscopy was scheduled for late June. The doctor’s office called and requested I get a coronavirus test a couple days before the procedure to protect them. I got a second opinion about the need for the colonoscopy. That doctor suggested I get a cologuard test instead. I mentioned that to my doctor and she agreed. So they ordered me a cologuard instead. A couple weeks later I was shitting into a bucket (buckeye fans know what I’m talking about.) I UPS’d that shit (literally) to the lab in Wisconsin. A week later I got results. As our President has said, I was positive towards the negative. So I put off the scope for 3 years.
12 different sports have or will start in few weeks. We shall see but so far so good
Our best hope for sports is all of us getting covid because then nobody has to worry about it anymore.
Unfortunately I agree, with minimal hope for a timely vaccine herd immunity seems like the most likely bet.
I've been trying to hold my tongue lately, as I get really upset about this stuff, and sometimes have a hard time expressing myself gracefully. Don't care right now.
How the fuck. No, seriously, how in the FUCK do you not understand basic math at this point? First, we don't even know yet if antibodies last, so there's that. But let's say they do. It takes between 80-90% of the population getting infected to achieve 'herd immunity". What is the mortality rate again? How many people are there in the US? What percentage of infected individuals have to hospitalized? How many ICU beds do we have in the US?
I'll hang up and listen.
HERP
DERP
I spoke with a couple of my friends at the MHSAA today. If schools are open they intend to play. They said they’re not going to shut it down, and leave that decision to the governor.
I said “so you guys will play Pontius Pilate on this?” and they said “Call it what you will, if it’s shut down, it will be because the governor says so”
Well, there's only one person who decides basically everything in Michigan anymore.
That's just the MHSAA accepting the reality of 2020: an everywhere executive branch, a nowhere-to-be-seen legislative branch, and a Michigan populace who accepts all that.
I love all the aversion people have to executive leadership all of a sudden. You know the governor was elected right? By Michiganders.
And you know she has the powers she does because of the state constitution and laws passed by, you guessed it, the legislature.
So just because governors are using the powers they were given by the state and putting them to use to protect the populace who elected them, they’re all dictators now! Totally.
On top of that, all the Trumpers love the presidents EOs, but if a democrat (and god forbid a woman) issues one then it’s time to storm the Bastille. Do people have any sense of their hypocrisy?
Stop making sense, you are making people look foolish.
The crowd only needed to "officially" wear masks until they reached their seats. This probably was not a good idea... we'll see in a week or two.
No different than the thousands of protests we've seen nightly across the country that no one in leadership positions seemed to object too.
I know but but but they wore a mask. The whole mask thing is becoming a cult like religion as if wearing mask guarantees one complete safety. Not going to get deep into that but seems to be these thoughts among many that if you had a mask on then you're good to go and are excused for any kind of behavior.
The exponential growth from even a low percentage of people not wearing one combined with wearing one incorrectly, not keeping mask properly sanitized, is off the charts when it comes to larger gatherings.
Yes...from a purely scientific perspective (I am not comparing risking one’s health for social justice to watching a sporting event) just because one group of people used poor judgment (with respect to large, unsafe gatherings during a global pandemic), it does not justify another group for using poor judgment.
I hate putting a mask on, it is a pain in the ass, but I truly do not understand the aversion to wearing a mask. I don’t understand if it is just people don’t want to be told what to do, people are just totally selfish, people think it is somehow based on politics not science, people are in denial of the risks or COVID and/or are “over it”, or people aren’t educated.
But arguing that people aren’t wear masks properly so let’s not wear one is ridiculous. That is like saying well some people don’t know how to use condones properly, and condones can break, so what’s the point? A condom isn’t 100% effective, but if you don’t want to impregnate someone or catch a venereal disease, it is much better to use one than not. Same with a mask.
Nobody says masks are perfect
but they’re estimated to reduce transmission by 65ish percent.
if the nationwide transmission rate is dropped 65%, the R0 falls below 1, the pandemic gets under control.
if you have a bunch of dumbasses flouting common sense, then the curve looks like it does right now, with our idiotic country exploding in cases when the rest of the developed world has the pandemic well under control
I don't have much problem with the protesters that have been peaceful, respectful and following all health recommendations. The problem (wrt COVID) is that I have seen numerous instances (both first hand and in the news) where the protesters were not doing what they should. A lot of reasons I'm sure (people can be foolish regardless of their personal politics - especially the younger crowds), but it is frustrating to see critics call out certain groups for social irresponsibility while ignoring others.
Agreed -- it's ridiculous. Taking that position makes it harder to get support for other important positions. No one wants to give an inch.