Sports and the Pandemic? When do we finally open this up?

Forums: Sports, Sports Leagues, Covid 19, Coronavirus, National Football League
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The loudest advocates for opening sporting leagues are the ones we should be listening to the least. The team owners, who literally will not be putting themselves at risk and will not be working on the field or with the support staff.

Bubble leagues*, at face value, seem like a great idea are just far too convoluted and unwieldy to manage.

*Sequestering all teams and support staff and playing all the games, sans audience in one isolated location.

Are you so desperate to watch MLB or MLS this season even if it kills some of the support staff that will be needed to make it happen?

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Type: Question • Score: 15 • Views: 8,436 • Replies: 145

@tsarstepan,

I'm not following any sporting events until the crisis is over.

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@tsarstepan,

In South Korea sex dolls have been filling the spaces in empty stadiums for behind doors games.

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@tsarstepan,

It will be interesting to see if 70,000 people are willing to sit shoulder to shoulder to watch sports over the next few years. The same is a concern for movie theater owners. The test in the US will be football season which is big at both the college and pro levels. We normally make a couple of college games a year. It will be interesting to see if that will happen come September.

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@engineer,

There is no way this will last "a few years". Much sooner than that you will see people decide to fill theaters on Broadway, and arenas, and casinos and bars. This can not last forever... people will increase pressure to go back to normal until it breaks.

There may be some event that causes everything to go back to normal. Maybe a vaccine would provide a valid excuse.

But vaccine or no, there will be a time where people just declare the pandemic as over. There will be a tipping point that might happen quickly. There may be some hand wringing, but the lockdown will end.

I still want to see Hamilton on Broadway, don't you?

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How many people here have been invited to an in person Memorial day gathering?

Lot's of people are opposed to these gatherings, but they are being planned and the discussions are happening. There is an urge to return to a normal life that it getting stronger every week.

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I can wait untill Texas HS baseball and football restarts, when there's some sort of handle on the pandemic.

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@izzythepush,

Please tell me you are making this up.

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@roger,

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/world/asia/south-korea-sex-dolls-soccer.html

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@Region Philbis,

Thank you, I’m on an iPad and can’t post links.

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@tsarstepan,

Interesting poll of 6000 people on what they would be comfortable doing if restrictions are lifted today.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/05/coronavirus-restarting-business-child-care-travel-restaurants.html

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

There is no way this will last "a few years". Much sooner than that you will see people decide to fill theaters on Broadway, and arenas, and casinos and bars. This can not last forever... people will increase pressure to go back to normal until it breaks.

A major disruption in the relationship between consumers, investors, and business has occurred, and so there are going to be attempts to manipulate each in different ways to make money move.

E.g. people may not want to risk infection, but they want to make money, so they will be claiming that it's worth the risk to stimulate investors to put money into industries so that it flows and creates jobs somehow.

Apple just bought a company that specializes in VR for watching sports, so there is going to be impetus to produce sports content and thus get consumers to buy and use VR headsets.

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There may be some event that causes everything to go back to normal. Maybe a vaccine would provide a valid excuse.

If the virus mutates, as Farmerman has said, then each time a new vaccine is developed, there will still be mutant strains for which further vaccine developments are needed.

Some people have said we just have to accept a 'new normal' of higher levels of disease risk for more vulnerable people, but that is sort of like saying that Europeans in the 1930s just had to accept higher levels of people getting shipped off to slave labor camps.

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But vaccine or no, there will be a time where people just declare the pandemic as over. There will be a tipping point that might happen quickly. There may be some hand wringing, but the lockdown will end.

Don't you think we are technologically ripe for moving forward with economic reforms that require less physical co-presence? Remote-interaction technologies have been thriving for years, so now they are really making a difference in a new way as never before.

Isn't that a good thing?

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@engineer,

So many of these things I might do - it is so hard to tell. It all depends on the rules that are set up as far as social distancing and cleaniness.

I would do almost any of the outdoors activities as long as I am in a situation where you are comfortable that you can be far enough apart. To me this is more than the 6 feet. It is more like the distance that you see your neighbors when you go for a walk or run on the street.

For school - I would send my daughter. For a couple of reasons - she is at a small enough school (it is almost a family as pretty much everyone knows each other) - there are only 17 kids in her class. So they are in a very good position to spread the kids out. In addition she is in high school so it is easier in the sense that they can understand they need to have spacing, they need to wash their hands and so forth more so than say elementary kids. Also, for her it is her mental state. She really needs this for her mental well being. I have been giving her more freedom to meet up with friends - this does not mean she is in large goods but like last night she went to a local small beach and her and couple friends hung out - but with distance.

These hit comments home with me:

“My high school kid is really struggling to focus in online school, and I’m at work and not able to monitor him. It feels like the same result as if he had dropped out, and I’m worried about his ability to keep up.”

“The kids need school and activities. My kids are 9 and 5. They have become anxious, lonely, and bored, all of which contribute to more emotional acting out and some noticeable depression (especially in the older child). It is worth the relatively small risk to send them out so that they can be more socially stable.”

I think each person has to work with what is best for them. I don't think any of these are cut and dry and each situation is so different for everyone.

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@Linkat,

I agree with all of that. The thing is that flattening the curve never meant truncating the curve, it meant spreading it out over a period of time that our health system could handle. Until there is a vaccine, this is going to keep spreading through society.

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@Linkat,

Linkat wrote:

For school - I would send my daughter. For a couple of reasons - she is at a small enough school (it is almost a family as pretty much everyone knows each other) - there are only 17 kids in her class. So they are in a very good position to spread the kids out.

Kids talk, eat lunch together, share communal bathrooms, etc. Even if they are spread out, they are still exchanging exhaled air. Think about 17 people in a room with one person smoking. All 17 are going to be breathing the second-hand smoke.

Would you want your kids in a classroom everyday if there was just one person smoking in it? If not, why would you expose them to COVID19 or any other pathogen that is not part of a normal healthy immune system-building pathogen diet?

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In addition she is in high school so it is easier in the sense that they can understand they need to have spacing, they need to wash their hands and so forth more so than say elementary kids.

Social distancing isn't going to work if the frequency of contact is daily, as in a school situation. You have to figure that every student in a school is also interacting at home, and the parents are all mostly going to workplaces while the kids are in school. So each of those venues is a hub for viral exchange, and even if people are social-distancing, that high-frequency of venue-attendance is going to bring up the speed with which any virus can work its way through a population.

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Also, for her it is her mental state. She really needs this for her mental well being. I have been giving her more freedom to meet up with friends - this does not mean she is in large goods but like last night she went to a local small beach and her and couple friends hung out - but with distance.

Young people are the people most drawn to social contact away from their families. It is the time when they are programmed to leave the nest and seek out prospective mates and new friends. So of course young people are going to be the most mentally affected by contact restrictions, but they are also the most prone to spreading viruses.

In this case, it is worse than in the past when you could just rest assured if your kid avoided sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. Now we have to worry about pathogen exposure that's airborne. This is a whole new dimension of vulnerability.

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“My high school kid is really struggling to focus in online school, and I’m at work and not able to monitor him. It feels like the same result as if he had dropped out, and I’m worried about his ability to keep up.”

It is going to be a huge challenge to incentivize and/or discipline students to work and progress without interactive supervision.

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“The kids need school and activities. My kids are 9 and 5. They have become anxious, lonely, and bored, all of which contribute to more emotional acting out and some noticeable depression (especially in the older child). It is worth the relatively small risk to send them out so that they can be more socially stable.”

The only way it's going to be a small risk is if the parents of the kids all work in the same place and so the kids' families basically all form on single super-household that is isolated from other households.

This could work if people create combination office/schools where adults can work remotely from the same venue where their kids go to school. That way, you establish a limited network of contact that doesn't extend out through multiple workplaces where other adults have other kids in other schools.

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I think each person has to work with what is best for them. I don't think any of these are cut and dry and each situation is so different for everyone.

Pathogens go wherever they can, using whatever bodies will host them.

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@roger,

Keeps people stuck to their seats.

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@livinglava,

yes under all these circumstances I would allow her to attend.

For her, it would be better than what she is experiencing now. Each person/situation is different. I would suspect some students would not attend - I know at least one student that as asthma and I would expect he would stay home and continue with zoom classes.

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or any other pathogen that is not part of a normal healthy immune system-building pathogen diet

Well she has been doing that for the past 11 plus years. That is what they have been doing in schools for years.

My daughter has mental health issues that are above the average for other teens her age. Like I said you need to weigh the pros and cons of each.

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@Linkat,

Linkat wrote:

yes under all these circumstances I would allow her to attend.

For her, it would be better than what she is experiencing now. Each person/situation is different. I would suspect some students would not attend - I know at least one student that as asthma and I would expect he would stay home and continue with zoom classes.

At first, I thought the main purpose of keeping schools closed was to prevent them from being vectors that transmit the virus to vulnerable people, but recently I've read that there are after-effects like lung-scarring and that healthy people don't necessarily just recover completely without long-term effects.

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Quote:
or any other pathogen that is not part of a normal healthy immune system-building pathogen diet

Well she has been doing that for the past 11 plus years. That is what they have been doing in schools for years.

My daughter has mental health issues that are above the average for other teens her age. Like I said you need to weigh the pros and cons of each.

Obviously I don't know you or your family situation, but I hope you realize that there are going to be lots and lots of parents and kids who rationalize their kid 'needing' school in whatever way they can get away with.

The schools are already ruled by 'special needs' regulations and all the people who figure out how to take advantage of such regulations regardless of whether their kids might actually strive harder without them.

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The thing to watch on these polls is the movement. As covid fatigue sets in, people will be more and more eager and willing to go back to normal.

Early April was peak panic. Almost everyone was on board with social distancing then. People have been slowly but steadily going back to normal since.

There will also be economic incentives to go back to normal. People need to work. But, also... people who are less worried are going to be enticed with great prices on tickets to Broadway shows, concerts and airline trips.

https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/erfgfy1ib0crrtuiwvehlw.png

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

The thing to watch on these polls is the movement. As covid fatigue sets in, people will be more and more eager and willing to go back to normal.

Early April was peak panic. Almost everyone was on board with social distancing then. People have been slowly but steadily going back to normal since.

There will also be economic incentives to go back to normal. People need to work. But, also... people who are less worried are going to be enticed with great prices on tickets to Broadway shows, concerts and airline trips.

How long ago was it that you were predicting the death curve would continue rising exponentially?

No question that as people get more accustomed to the threat, they will venture out more; but we have to watch how the infection rates change.

People may be getting enticed with discounts, but every discount comes with a free ticket in the COVID19 lottery as well.

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Sports and the Pandemic? When do we finally open this up?

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