NFL Set to Announce Plans for Season Beginning Sept. 10th
According to ABC news here in Chicago, the NFL is expected to announce plans this week for the season to start on Sept. 10th, along with new social distancing guidelines for stadiums. Details are in the video in the link, but the details are basically:
- Season starts 9/10, with the Super Bowl on 2/7.
- Stadium guidelines include designating certain times to show up at each gate, social distancing guidelines at each entrance, and exiting the stadium "much like, you know, a church environment" (actual quote from a guy planning this thing), so that people file out by row and not all at once.
The stadium guidelines seem far-fetched and not very realistic, but if it brings football back...whatever, I guess.
https://abc7chicago.com/sports/nfl-to-post-plans-for-2020-football-season/6148972/
Yeah, I’m going to wait and see what the COVID-19 virus has to say about all of this before I start getting too amped up for football.
COVID-19 isn’t going anywhere. At some point we as a society are going to have to start to make plans to go back to the things that were a part of that society: bars, sporting events, restaurants, concerts, school, camp, weddings, gatherings, etc. And at some point we are also going to have to take into account that these things aren’t just recreational for those who enjoy them, but they are economically important and create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
I’m not one of these people who thinks we should just “let it rip” and open the world up willy nilly, nor am I one who thinks that this disease is some political hoax. I actually lost 2 grandparents that I loved dearly to this disease last month. But I just think that we we can’t plan for a shutdown forever. September is 4 months away. If by then, the disease still is rampant and doesn’t have a good set of treatment modalities, we may have to consider that we will have an NFL season and that those who are most at risk - elderly, immune-compromised, obese, certain underlying conditions - will need to be provided extra precautions and exercise extra care.
I agree with the gist of what you’re saying but, contrary to popular opinion, football doesn’t fall into the category of an enterprise that is vital for society to function.
It’s not something that is worth gambling with reopening and, if it goes bad and leads to a significant number of cases spreading, then just saying “Well it didn’t work out, but we had to try.”
As unpleasant as it is, we as a society are going to have to make some tough choices over what necessities are worth taking the risk over and what luxuries aren’t.
I hear what you are saying. I do. But it’s not just a matter of “I like football so bring it back.” Sports account for hundreds of thousands of jobs. We can’t just say “opening is risky” and ignore this aspect of the equation. Also, when you talk about what is necessary and worth taking a risk on, I think that depends on what type of society you envision - many, many people would be willing to take the risk to go about life resembling something normal. And the overwhelming evidence is that for the vast majority - those under 70 in gold health and without preexisting conditions - this disease is not fatal. Millions have had it and didn’t even experience symptoms. That’s not to say that it’s not serious, but so is the flu, driving and sunbathing. There is an element of individual risk tolerance that has to be taken into account. Those who don’t want to go to a football game don’t have to. Same is true of going to dinner at a restaurant or even going to work in an office.
And at some point someone has to ask "what % of our lives are we really living in quarantine?" Personally I'd say 50%. I'd rather live 30 more years "normally" than 60 more years like this.... That factor might vary for different people.
If we assume that factor, how much life have we missed out on by being quarantined?
(328,000,000 people in US)*(1/6 year quarantined)*(1/78.5 average lifespan)*(50% life living factor) = about 350,000 full lives lost
We've lost about 68,000 lives to COVID, mostly elderly... Even if you assume the average person that dies from this have 25% of their life expectancy left, that's 17,000 full lives lost.
350k >> 17k
That's not me saying we need to open up everything immediately and go back to normal. But I think we can go back to getting 95% enjoyment out of life by opening everything back up, but continuing to wear masks, social distance and work from home when possible, sanitizing more, etc. It will lead to more deaths, but IMO, much less life being lost.
If you assume people are responsible then, yes, that would be the ideal.
But you and I both know that low risk people will go to these games, disregard social distancing and other safety protocols, possibly get infected without knowing it, and then will come home and spread the disease to grandma and grandpa and other high risk people. I mean people can’t even be bothered to wear a mask for 20 minutes in a store without losing their shit.
And “not fatal” doesn’t mean “harmless.” The low risk group that gets it and survives is going to be filled with people who suffer long term side effects as a result of the virus.
Yes sports provides jobs, but it’s a small amount compared to other areas that have been hit and it’s harder to justify the risks than things like the restaurant and travel industries.
The shutdown was never meant to stop the virus as that is impossible. It was only meant to slow down the spreading to not overwhelm hospitals. Trying to completely stop it only prolongs the inevitable and is impossible. The way for this to end is for it to burn out like all other similar viruses do and only way to do that is by people getting it. Sooner people realize this the sooner we can get back to some sort of normal
One more thing that everyone needs keep in mind is that catching Covid this fall is going to be nothing like catching Covid this spring. Even for the elderly and those in ill health, there will be interventions which will make it a vastly more survivable condition. There's already Remdesivir which shortens the duration of an infection. Other even more effective interventions will coming in the coming months. So we'll see. Thanks are changing very rapidly and 4 months from now may present an entirely different situation than the one we find ourselves in today.
The actemra phase III trial is going to be a home run. It will be the final nail in the coffin for the doomers and life will go back to normal within a few months. Kids are going to got to college in the fall, and we'll have college football, even in it's just students in the stands.
I wouldn't lump schools in with bars. Yes, they're important economically, but they're not nearly as important and urgent to open as schools. Bars can open up, but you can't make people go. States that have already re-opened are seeing almost no customers. I don't really expect that to improve in the near future, especially while cases and deaths are still increasing in most places. The overall numbers only look OK because NYC got hit so hard and fast that they're dropping off quickly.
One point on NY cases. NY was the first area to experience this seriously because JFK and LaGuardia airports are massive entry points into the US with more direct flights from Europe and China than all other airports in the US by many times. The disease was repeatedly transported into NY from foreign travelers in large quantities and for that reason, NY is ahead of other locals. Other cities can expect a similar curve - NY’s surge showed a rapid rise, some time at the plateau, and now a slow descent. Sadly, for those cities on the way up, that is what can be expected. Regardless of what social distancing measures are employed.
Why would they have a similar curve? Those places have had more serious social distancing and closures earlier on than NYC. California and Washington got hit first, and they've done much better with it.
In response to your question re: Cali and Washington having different experiences from NY: density. California and Washington do not have anything close to the density of NY. The danger of COVID-19 does not lie in its severity. For most other than a defined class of people (over 70, immune compromised, certain underlying conditions), the disease is not deadlier than the common flu. It’s true danger is in the level ti which it is contagious, which far exceeds any other common flu or virus with which we have dealt. So, even if only .1% of people who contract the disease die, because the disease reaches so many people and spreads like wildfire, it will kill many more people than other diseases (the law of large numbers).
NY is the perfect feeding ground for a disease such as that because there are so many people packed into such a small area. This is true in Manhattan, but also in the outer boroughs such as Brooklyn, Queens and Bronx. Add to that the suburban communities such as Long Island and Westchester have a large percentage that commute into NYC daily (and ride NYC’s filthy mass transit system along with city residents) and NY presents a unique condition. Completely different from Cali or Wash. but similar to Maryland, Italy, Wuhan, Chicago and Boston, which are also experiencing or have experienced similar curves.
In response to your question re: Cali and Washington having different experiences from NY: density. California and Washington do not have anything close to the density of NY. The danger of COVID-19 does not lie in its severity. For most other than a defined class of people (over 70, immune compromised, certain underlying conditions), the disease is not deadlier than the common flu. It’s true danger is in the level ti which it is contagious, which far exceeds any other common flu or virus with which we have dealt. So, even if only .1% of people who contract the disease die, because the disease reaches so many people and spreads like wildfire, it will kill many more people than other diseases (the law of large numbers).
NY is the perfect feeding ground for a disease such as that because there are so many people packed into such a small area. This is true in Manhattan, but also in the outer boroughs such as Brooklyn, Queens and Bronx. Add to that the suburban communities such as Long Island and Westchester have a large percentage that commute into NYC daily (and ride NYC’s filthy mass transit system along with city residents) and NY presents a unique condition. Completely different from Cali or Wash. but similar to Maryland, Italy, Wuhan, Chicago and Boston, which are also experiencing or have experienced similar curves.
I'll speak on behalf of Washington. We've been social distancing for years now.
Right - +1. CoronaVirus isn't leaving any time soon, but unless this CoronaVirus mutates into either (1) something radioactive or (2) Captain Tripps, we also know what it is.
In that light, I'm getting weary of people saying "humans aren't in control, the virus is in control."
It will only dictate what happens to us if and only if we let it dictate what happens to us.
It's an unwelcome house guest, but it's also a potentially manageable unwelcome house guest. I suppose some married guys may draw an analogy to their mother-in-law. :-)
It's your mother-in-law if she killed 70k Americans in a few months despite them trying to avoid her.
I’m all for football coming back.
the players have every right to put themselves at risk for millions of dollars and the world would love the entertainment.
But Having fans in the crowd is really unnecessary and reckless
Nobody's forcing anybody to go. That's up to you if you feel that way but don't push your beliefs onto others is what we all should be saying. How about letting people decide what they want to do with the information
What about the word ‘contagious’ do you not grasp?
This isn’t like drinking where you can kill your liver and not worry about anyone else catching it. When you go to a crowded place you are putting yourself and everyone you come in contact with for weeks afterward at risk.
This really isn’t hard to understand. So spare me the “I should be able to do what I want because I’m an adult and it’s my life” shit.
how is it that a fanbase affiliated with such a prestigious and generally left-wing university has so many abhorrent, Trumpy people in it?
Because they don’t care about anything related to the school beyond football.
If it happens it's probably going to be without fans in the stands.
I’ll be happy to watch on TV, but you’re not going to get me to go to a stadium. Of course, that was true pre-virus, too.
So they expect a bunch of drunken tailgaters to follow this?
Never shotgunned a beer in a church parking lot before?
NFL == wishful thinking. Doctors just said today expect by June the U.S. to average 3k deaths daily. This is before Wave 2. Everyone wants to run. But the minute cases spike again - across the whole country, you will see consumers do a double down. Wave 2 seems historically to be worse than wave 1.
Need a vaccine.
Doctors just said today expect by June the U.S. to average 3k deaths daily.
Are these “doctors” clairvoyant?
Anyone claiming to know what’s going to happen is speculating based upon a computer model, like the one Neil Ferguson proffered and scared the US and UK into lockdown. These are notoriously inaccurate, and Ferguson himself has a long history of making dire predictions — like foot & mouth in 2001, the Avian Flu in 2005, the Swine Flu in 2009, and Ebola in 2014 — that end up being ludicrously off. Other than those debacles, he’s really good at telling governments what’s going to happen and when.
They’re scientist and experts in data analysis. You simply typed a blog post because “freedom.” Your views are nowhere equal in value.
Your feeble attempt to marginalize my points with a sound bite meme is indicative of one who is wholly ignorant and who is comfortable just playing the, “science!” card without even a cursory look.
I know, I know, you don’t need to look because someone else looked for you and they have a PhD so they must be smarter than everyone else and, most importantly, upon achieving said graduate degree they immediately and completely checked all possible conflicts of interest at the door — it’s all facts and altruism from here on out, right?
It’s also telling that you mock “freedom” as if it’s some antiquated, radical notion that cool “evolved” people like yourself deem worthy scorn. No point in critical thinking, no that would be a waste of time because we got people to handle that for us, and none of this would be a problem is everyone just followed their directives because they know best! Doctors and scientists are never wrong and always altruistic, and governments never do anything that could harm their citizens. Nope, never ever ... oh wait, I just showed you 4 instances in which the “scientist” the “expert” was DEAD ASS WRONG and his predictions had a huge economic impact. Did you check it out?
No, it's not because "they have a PhD", dude. It's because they've spent literally decades studying how infectious diseases behave in the real world. And it's not just one or two doctors. Or 10. Or 100. And virtually all of them agree that there will be a second wave, and that it will likely be worse. But somehow, your "common sense" outweighs all of those city folk with their book larnin' and edjumacation.
It's because they've spent literally decades studying how infectious diseases behave in the real world.
Curious why you think a guy, like Neil Ferguson, who has spent (literally) decades studying how infectious diseases work in the real world creates models that are so often, and disastrously, wrong? This should make one realize that models and predictions are NOT “the real world.” Did you spend a minute or two looking into the instances over the last (literally) two decades that these models fell woefully short? I doubt it because you don’t really want to be informed, do you? It’s so much easier to let other people do your thinking for you so you can focus on hating Jim Harbaugh!
I’m not saying that there isn’t going to be a “second wave” but any time I hear someone point to a computer model as “fact” and claim they know that this will happen because the model told them so, I’m deeply suspicious. Models are research tools designed to help scientists test a hypothesis. They are NOT predictive tool meant to be guiding policy. Any ingenious doctor or scientist will tell you as much. How often do you hear, “we think ...” or “based on the leading hypothesis ...” versus, “we know ...” and then trotting our the “consensus numbers.”? No true scientist EVER says they know something is fact. It’s ALWAYS a “best guess” based on information at them moment that could be different tomorrow.
Just admit that you’re afraid to think for yourself — as is, again, evidenced by your need to belittle me for daring to question the gods in the white coats. I looked into the epidemiological models, who created them, and their accuracy ... have you? I’ve other scientists who have directly admonished the use of models as predictive tools, have you? I doubt it based on your attempt to frame me as ignorant. I find it the height of irony that people try to frame someone open to all information as ignorant, when they themselves are knowingly and intentionally making a choice to disregard any information that doesn’t fit into their preformed world view.
The post that I originally responded to said, “... a doctor said ...” as if by adding that phrase before a statement it is automatically elevated to the highest of truth and profundity. I simply asked if said doctor is clairvoyant, because he/she is making a very broad statement of fact before the events unfold. Again, how ironic that you paint me as ignorant, while accepting such an outlandish statement as undeniable fact. The new “modern” free thinking, in a bizarre Orwellian double-speak, has morphed into unconditional acceptance of anything proffered by “experts” and vehement chastising of anyone thinking for themselves. Peace is War ... Thinking is Not Thinking and Accepting!
“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled.”
— Mark Twain
Please link to this information where virtually all experts agree that there will be a second wave and that it will likely be worse. I'm buying that many in the field think there will be a second wave, but as for it being worse than the first; I call BS on that.
Meteorologists are great at analyzing the weather coming today
Predicting the weather 7 months away, However, not so much
They are scientists, not fortune tellers
If ifs and buts we’re candy and nuts there wouldn’t be a pandemic. The NFL is deluding itself. They are going to be eaten by their own hubris.
If ifs and buts we’re candy and nuts there wouldn’t be a pandemic. The NFL is deluding itself. They are going to be eaten by their own hubris.
If ifs and buts we’re candy and nuts there wouldn’t be a pandemic. The NFL is deluding itself. They are going to be eaten by their own hubris.
You can say that again.
Honestly, no one actually knows what will happen.
On the underestimation side, we were supposed to peak at 60,000 deaths by August because we handled the virus.
On the overestimation side, many states should have had their hospital capacities breached resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths by now.
All the modelling sites now have their scary graphs peaking in June (which is the new April).
If you don't catch this at the very beginning, unfortunately you're going to have to live with it. Lots of the European countries that have been hit worse, equally as bad or bad but not as bad are in the process of re-opening society (France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Switzerland as examples).
That's the situation we are in, so we've got to figure out a way to do it as safely as possible. I'm glad people are at least putting plans out there to try and figure out how we can do that.
Wave 2 is coming no matter what we do. The only question is when.
Sure in aea perfect world waiting around for a vaccine would be the answer but it's completely unrealistic considering the timeline and the damage that will come with it by waiting. It's funny how most Americans don't even pay attention to what's going on outside their world as it's being reported that millions will die from starvation in countries like India that have only had thousand or so deaths from this so far. Explain to me how waiting awaiting for a vaccine there make any sense.
It’s adorable the nfl thinks it will be their choice
Oh, it will be. It will be!
Yeah about that......
With models now projecting we lose 3k people a day when we get to the summer, and many thinking we’ll get hit even harder with a second wave once we get to flu season, it’s still a bit hard to envision football season happening. As much as we all want it to.
Not saying it isn’t smart to at least have a plan in place, but whether or not the season happens isn’t really up to them. COVID don’t give a fuck how much money is on the line.
Good news. Love to hear it.
Too much good news to be pissed today
1. Gavin fucking Newsom announces plans to ease restrictions. Newsom, Whitmer, Cuomo, and Murphy are the four horsemen of lockdowns.
2. MLB plans leak that outline spring training take two in June and opening day July 1
3. The NYT is a shit rag so that pokes a hole in the 3k projection
4. Hard Rock/Joe Robbie Stadium in Miami rolls out plan to admit 15k socially distanced fans (albeit with stupid fucking masks) into dolphin games.
So shocked you named 4 Democratic governors.
Why are you shocked? Given today's political climate, I'm certain the case would be the same for people on both sides of the spectrum. I would completely expect anyone from the left to name Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Brian Kemp, and Ron DeSantis as potential Boogeyman (I even left out Trump!). Very few people can be honest and name someone from their "side" as wrong. Just where we are today.
This has certainly shone a light on the various Governors --- from my POV, there have certainly been good and bad on each side:
Good Dems (IMO): Polis Colorado, Bullock Montana, Inslee Washington
Bad Dems (IMO): Northam Virginia, Martinez New Mexico, Brown Oregon.
Good Repubs (IMO): Lee Tennessee, Abbott Texas, DeWine Ohio
Bad Repubs (IMO): Kemp Georgia, Stitt Oklahoma, Reynolds Iowa.
---
Going against the grain, I actually think DeSantis has done a decent job in Florida.
The MLB rumor was a joke started by ex-players who have a podcast.
No decisions have been made about starting.