NCAA Tournament & COVID-19

[kg01]

God imagine that shxxshow lol

I only laugh to mask the hurt from not being invited.

Congrats, btw.

 

[slugboy]

If she likes this idea, it was your idea. If she starts to hit you over the head with a bow, it was @kg01 ’s plan. Here it is:
1)Do a remote ceremony, with an online viewing RSVP passworded for the guests. Only live attendees are: Mr. & Mrs., Best man and woman, Ordained official, two rings or bands, all become the show. The main principals.
2)Not on a Sunday. Have all guests go through the local designated Chick-Fil-A drive thru. They drop off their presents and give a/or a few coupon(s) to the window employee and get the “reception food,” which comes with a brownie in lieu of cake.

Imagine the savings? Should leave some funds for the Bachelor Party and the new pad.

I’ve got a wedding to attend around the same date, and virtual wouldn’t shock me right now


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[RamblinRed]

Unsurprisingly MLB has postponed the start of the season to at least mid-May. I doubt that will be their last postponement.

 

[RamblinRed]

This is a fantastic behind the scenes article on what was happening with the NCAA and particularly the Selection Committee from Tuesday to Thursday last week as the COVID-19 crisis burst into our consciousness.

interestingly, they never got even close to have 68 teams picked and seeded. Actually they didn't get any teams seeded. They got only as far as their initial ballots which had the 13 auto qualifiers at that point and the 31 teams all 10 members agreed on in their initial ballots (some of whom would have become auto qualifiers by the end of the week). Just a good read of how quickly everything was moving.

https://www.cbssports.com/college-b...d-to-the-cancellation-of-the-ncaa-tournament/

 

[Ramblingon]

Caught the end of The Price is Right today (no sports to watch) with an apparent early shoot as the winner won a trip to Atlanta including hotel and tickets to the Final Four. Bummer.

 

[slugboy]

On second thought, look how many teams won their last game this season:




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[66TechGrad]

So what is Pastner doing now? https://www.ajc.com/sports/college/...his-kids-the-driveway/s31e2fSCwPpdaipToHBySN/

 

[RamblinRed]

FWIW, i'm getting very settled with the idea that not only will their not be college football this fall, there won't be college basketball next winter.

Unless an effective treatment is found very quickly we are probably looking at a situation like 1918 with multiple waves over 18 months.

 

[RyanS12]

FWIW, i'm getting very settled with the idea that not only will their not be college football this fall, there won't be college basketball next winter.

Unless an effective treatment is found very quickly we are probably looking at a situation like 1918 with multiple waves over 18 months.

Good friend of mine is the head vascular surgeon here in Flint Mclaren Hospital. Travels all over the world and had some good colleagues he regularly attends conferences with. What he was telling me, based of discussions with his friends, the worst is yet to come this summer. They’re expecting a 1918 type situation and a possible Great Depression type fall out.
I joking asked him about football season because we’re both huge fans and he said we have a better chance at this all going away tomorrow than we do having a football season. Said Leagues like NFL, NBA, etc are just putting stuff out for league start up to keep people positive. It’s not looking good for anything right now.....

 

[MWBATL]

FWIW, i'm getting very settled with the idea that not only will their not be college football this fall, there won't be college basketball next winter.

Unless an effective treatment is found very quickly we are probably looking at a situation like 1918 with multiple waves over 18 months.

I actually don't agree with this outlook, as much as I respect your opinion on basketball topics. Partially because I do not want to believe it, and partially because the world is SO much better prepared in general for such things than we were back in 1918, and finally because the mortality rate is FAR lower than the estimates for the Spanish flu on 1918. We now have antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections (which did not exist back then). A vaccine will, alas, be 18 months away. But overall, our health systems are so much better that I think we will get past hit much quicker and still expect to be done with the severe magnitude by the end of this Spring.

There will still be a virus out there, and people will still die from it, but no where near the numbers that should cause continued panic. Heck, we lose 50,000 Americans every year on the highways, so losing a few of our elderly will be nothing. Unless it is thrashed around as an election issue (always possible). America has a short attention span these days. I don't think it will stay that bad for that long.

 

[orientalnc]

I actually don't agree with this outlook, as much as I respect your opinion on basketball topics. Partially because I do not want to believe it, and partially because the world is SO much better prepared in general for such things than we were back in 1918, and finally because the mortality rate is FAR lower than the estimates for the Spanish flu on 1918. We now have antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections (which did not exist back then). A vaccine will, alas, be 18 months away. But overall, our health systems are so much better that I think we will get past hit much quicker and still expect to be done with the severe magnitude by the end of this Spring.

There will still be a virus out there, and people will still die from it, but no where near the numbers that should cause continued panic. Heck, we lose 50,000 Americans every year on the highways, so losing a few of our elderly will be nothing. Unless it is thrashed around as an election issue (always possible). America has a short attention span these days. I don't think it will stay that bad for that long.

A few elderly? How many have to die before it can no longer be called "a few."

 

[kg01]

I actually don't agree with this outlook, as much as I respect your opinion on basketball topics. Partially because I do not want to believe it, and partially because the world is SO much better prepared in general for such things than we were back in 1918, and finally because the mortality rate is FAR lower than the estimates for the Spanish flu on 1918. We now have antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections (which did not exist back then). A vaccine will, alas, be 18 months away. But overall, our health systems are so much better that I think we will get past hit much quicker and still expect to be done with the severe magnitude by the end of this Spring.

There will still be a virus out there, and people will still die from it, but no where near the numbers that should cause continued panic. Heck, we lose 50,000 Americans every year on the highways, so losing a few of our elderly will be nothing. Unless it is thrashed around as an election issue (always possible). America has a short attention span these days. I don't think it will stay that bad for that long.

Businesses don't purposely lose millions of dollars for something that will lose our attention spans in a couple days or weeks.

 

[mstranahan]

as of this afternoon, there are 235,000 confirmed cases globally and 9,786 confirmed deaths. That's a 4.2% mortality rate. The flu is normally 0.2% mortality. This thing is tracking at 20x the mortality of the flu and the mortality rate will likely increase before it comes down again due to the number of cases being diagnosed by the hour. (US has added 1300 cases this morning. That's a 14% increase in confirmed cases from yesterday -- 9415 -- to noon today.)

New York state now has more confirmed cases than all but seven COUNTRIES. This is not a virus that will just "go away"

 

[augustabuzz]

FWIW, i'm getting very settled with the idea that not only will their not be college football this fall, there won't be college basketball next winter.

Unless an effective treatment is found very quickly we are probably looking at a situation like 1918 with multiple waves over 18 months.

The drug for Malaria seems promising. 40 out of a group of 40 cured in Spain.

 

[YlJacket]

as of this afternoon, there are 235,000 confirmed cases globally and 9,786 confirmed deaths. That's a 4.2% mortality rate. The flu is normally 0.2% mortality. This thing is tracking at 20x the mortality of the flu and the mortality rate will likely increase before it comes down again due to the number of cases being diagnosed by the hour. (US has added 1300 cases this morning. That's a 14% increase in confirmed cases from yesterday -- 9415 -- to noon today.)

New York state now has more confirmed cases than all but seven COUNTRIES. This is not a virus that will just "go away"

This Wuhan virus is more virulent/lethal than the flu but those numbers are misleading at this point in time. For flu we have widespread testing through multiple cheap and effective methods so we know the denominator a lot better for flu than we do Wuhan. For Wuhan we have a specialized testing method (PCR) which has been ramping up but is still only doing 25K tests per day. We don't know the incidence of the Wuhan virus yet.

Most experts believe the mortality from Wuhan will be 2-3X the flu when the data is "normalized" over time.

 

[orientalnc]

This Wuhan virus is more virulent/lethal than the flu but those numbers are misleading at this point in time. For flu we have widespread testing through multiple cheap and effective methods so we know the denominator a lot better for flu than we do Wuhan. For Wuhan we have a specialized testing method (PCR) which has been ramping up but is still only doing 25K tests per day. We don't know the incidence of the Wuhan virus yet.

Most experts believe the mortality from Wuhan will be 2-3X the flu when the data is "normalized" over time.

You are 100% correct. The problem right now is the lack of any defense other that separation and careful personal protection. Since some COVID-19 carriers are asymptomatic, it is not possible to know for sure who in your social circle or student body or co-workers might be infecting others around them. They might not know themselves. Given that so many are trying to find a vaccine and an effective treatment, I feel we might be able to climb out of this before we reach some of those numbers.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/chloroquine-malaria-drug-treat-coronavirus-doctors/story?id=69664561

 

[OlaJacket]

I actually don't agree with this outlook, as much as I respect your opinion on basketball topics. Partially because I do not want to believe it, and partially because the world is SO much better prepared in general for such things than we were back in 1918, and finally because the mortality rate is FAR lower than the estimates for the Spanish flu on 1918. We now have antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections (which did not exist back then). A vaccine will, alas, be 18 months away. But overall, our health systems are so much better that I think we will get past hit much quicker and still expect to be done with the severe magnitude by the end of this Spring.

There will still be a virus out there, and people will still die from it, but no where near the numbers that should cause continued panic. Heck, we lose 50,000 Americans every year on the highways, so losing a few of our elderly will be nothing. Unless it is thrashed around as an election issue (always possible). America has a short attention span these days. I don't think it will stay that bad for that long.

I agree with you 100%. I also respect Red's opinions and commentary on most things but to compare this to the Spanish Flu is ridiculous. So many factors went into the death toll, namely WORLD WAR 1 where troop movements caused most of the deaths. Not to mention that the Spanish Flu was a much more aggressive strain. There were many reports of people being fine one minute and then getting sick and dying 12 hours later. Let's take this serious but not fear monger. If we just stay away from each other for 2 to 3 weeks this trend will be reversed. Get those stupid Spring breaker kids out of Miami and Ft. Lauderdale and quarantine ALL of them. What a petrie dish that is gonna be.

 

[MtnWasp]

It doesn't matter what the virulence of the bug is. Epidemics of infectious disease is part of the human condition and the greater the density of the population, the greater the effects will be.

What is salient is that human labor is an intrinsic and critical component of the infrastructure for all people living in civilized society so that we may meet our required material means of subsistence (food, roof, etc.). Without human labor, the social infrastructure breaks down and the effects of that would make Wuhan look like Mr. Rogers.

Telling 6 Billion people to just hunker down in the hovels for months on end 'til the thing blows over or until the someone comes up with a vaccine isn't practical even in the short term.

The measures taken to date do not have the goal of stopping the epidemic but only to slow it down. The concern is the slope of the curve of infection and that a huge initial wave of infected could overwhelm the healthcare system, costing more lives than if the infection spread more slowly.

I asked an epidemiology type squarely yesterday if the area under the curves for both the rapid spread and the slowed-down spread would be different. She said she looked at that and said there was not much difference. That means that the TOTAL number of infected will not change between the measures taken and letting it run its course according to their predictive models. That means the same proportion of us are going to be exposed sooner or later, with these measures just trying to spread it out with the SPECIFIC goal of avoiding running out of beds and fluids in the short term.

But public policy should be based on utilitarian principle whereby we try to find the avenue of doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Therefore, those deaths to the vulnerable demographic that may have occurred due to a swamped healthcare system must be weighed against those deaths that are associated with unemployment and poverty that will ensue with this open-ended program of social suspension. Able laboring classes will be devastated by these measures and the social impact might be felt over a long haul compared to the inevitable losses of an epidemic while we sanction borrowing (printing) enormous sums to bankroll people to hide in their homes with no end-game even defined.

I've rolled over the formula, the greatest good for the greatest number, and the measures taken seem to only make sense given extremely narrow tunnel vision.

BTW, influenza epidemics tend to peter-out on their own. There is some thought that a threshold of infection is reached where there is a collective immunity to the bug, or that the bug mutates to a lesser state of virulence. What is more certain is the influenza virus does not like Summer. Infection rates plummet in the warmer months. It is not known whether the Corona Virus has the same susceptibility.

From the numbers I've seen, I am much less afraid of being exposed to the bug than I am of the prospect of social disruption that is the wake of attempts to deal with the bug. Epidemics of infectious disease are not only possible but inevitable for herd animals. If we figure one out, mother nature will cook up something new for us to deal with sooner or later. It isn't preventable and some of us will fall to these onslaughts and it will be no one's fault whether or not we maintain our human dignity through it or do what we are doing now.

 

[cyclejacket]

Very well written Wasp, thank you for a thoughtful contribution to the difficult decisions we and our leaders are facing.

 

[MtnWasp]

A couple of potential ironies of our approach to slow the epidemic:

As mentioned, one of the the ideas of why influenza epidemics peter-out spontaneously over time is that once a certain proportion of a community has been exposed, a threshold might be reached where there are enough immune individuals to disrupt person to person transmission and the bug dies out.

Wouldn't it be ironical if that initial high frequency spike of infection of Covid-19 that public health care officials are throwing us under the bus to control would be the key to reaching that communal immunity threshold and that by slowing down the infection rate they might actually perpetuate the epidemic by keeping society under the immunity threshold and end up costing untold more deaths?

What if our attempts to protect the elderly from the virus ends up causing a major depression that deals a much larger portion (1,000 - 10,000x) of that demographic to endure horrendous losses to their retirement funds that they spent their lives working for (and being the second such hit they would take in 12 years after the subprime fiasco of 2008) and that costs more lives than the virus?

My father had a sister he never met, she died as an 8 year old to Diptheria. It occurs to me, based on statistics even just 100 years ago, that societies endured the devastation of infectious disease to an extent we cannot even comprehend. They would have a good laugh at our hysteria over this bug. As world population continues to explode exponentially, we may see us go back to a time where infectious disease re-emerges as a big player in our daily lives.