NCAA Tournament & COVID-19

[RamblinRed]

Poll on attitudes toward attending games.
https://www.si.com/sports-illustrated/2020/04/09/poll-sports-coronavirus-return
http://blogs.shu.edu/sportspoll/202...-games-without-coronavirus-vaccine-developed/
72% say they won't attend games until there is a vaccine. 12% say they would attend with proper social distancing. 13% would attend just like before.
For those surveyed who described as themselves as 'sports fans' the percentage that would not attend until there is a vaccine 61%

70% said NFL should not start up as scheduled.
74% said it was possible, likely or very likely sports would be cancelled for 2020. (only 28% said likely or very likely)
As a note. Gov Newsom of CA says he does believe the NFL will be playing in CA this fall.
Only 35% thought fans fans should be in the stands (only 12% without restrictions)

 

[684Bee]

Poll on attitudes toward attending games.
https://www.si.com/sports-illustrated/2020/04/09/poll-sports-coronavirus-return
http://blogs.shu.edu/sportspoll/202...-games-without-coronavirus-vaccine-developed/
72% say they won't attend games until there is a vaccine. 12% say they would attend with proper social distancing. 13% would attend just like before.
For those surveyed who described as themselves as 'sports fans' the percentage that would not attend until there is a vaccine 61%

70% said NFL should not start up as scheduled.
74% said it was possible, likely or very likely sports would be cancelled for 2020. (only 28% said likely or very likely)
As a note. Gov Newsom of CA says he does believe the NFL will be playing in CA this fall.
Only 35% thought fans fans should be in the stands (only 12% without restrictions)

Wow. We've all been living with viruses, bacteria, and germs surrounding us and inside of us for our entire lives. For the vast majority of us, our bodies have an amazing way of dealing with all of this and keeping us relatively healthy. This thing has really thrown a lot of people for a loop, and I think it's way too hyped up.

There will be no magic bullet cure for this thing. Even when we have a vaccine, that won't be perfect. We have flu vaccines, but they aren't perfect. There are different strains and mutations that just don't get accounted for. But people accept that and feel safe enough to go about their lives.

So, cooler, calmer heads need to prevail here to lead us back to some "normalcy". There are a lot of people who have this threat built up in their mind and they are going to need to be shown that it's going to be ok.

 

[orientalnc]

Poll on attitudes toward attending games.
https://www.si.com/sports-illustrated/2020/04/09/poll-sports-coronavirus-return
http://blogs.shu.edu/sportspoll/202...-games-without-coronavirus-vaccine-developed/
72% say they won't attend games until there is a vaccine. 12% say they would attend with proper social distancing. 13% would attend just like before.
For those surveyed who described as themselves as 'sports fans' the percentage that would not attend until there is a vaccine 61%

70% said NFL should not start up as scheduled.
74% said it was possible, likely or very likely sports would be cancelled for 2020. (only 28% said likely or very likely)
As a note. Gov Newsom of CA says he does believe the NFL will be playing in CA this fall.
Only 35% thought fans fans should be in the stands (only 12% without restrictions)

Something else you mentioned earlier is the liability exposure that colleges (or NCAA, conferences, NFL) will have to consider before reopening campuses or have games this fall. More and more data are supporting the idea that this SARS virus is not seasonal. If that is the case it will definitely still be in circulation during the summer months. In NC we are hearing talk of a very limited re-opening of some currently closed businesses, but retaining the social distancing restrictions.

 

[MWBATL]

Poll on attitudes toward attending games.
https://www.si.com/sports-illustrated/2020/04/09/poll-sports-coronavirus-return
http://blogs.shu.edu/sportspoll/202...-games-without-coronavirus-vaccine-developed/
72% say they won't attend games until there is a vaccine. 12% say they would attend with proper social distancing. 13% would attend just like before.
For those surveyed who described as themselves as 'sports fans' the percentage that would not attend until there is a vaccine 61%

70% said NFL should not start up as scheduled.
74% said it was possible, likely or very likely sports would be cancelled for 2020. (only 28% said likely or very likely)
As a note. Gov Newsom of CA says he does believe the NFL will be playing in CA this fall.
Only 35% thought fans fans should be in the stands (only 12% without restrictions)

I will be curious to see those poll results at the end of May if the death counts have dropped dramatically and parts of the country are being re-opened. I'll wager that the results will flip. We humans are creatures of the moment.

 

[orientalnc]

I think there is a bigger risk that colleges will not have on campus classes this fall. The financial implications for athletic departments is huge, but the very existence of some colleges is a greater risk than the football team not suiting up. Would you send your 18 year old off to school to live in a dorm suite with five other teens if the covid-19 vaccine is still months away from coming out of clinical trial? If some of the SEC or ACC schools are not back to on campus classes, can the football team report to camp and get ready for the season? Does it make sense for the school to have football games if there are no students on campus. I know they do that for a few games in basketball, and maybe a game in football.

The NCAA likes to say the students who compete in sports are students just like every other young person enrolled at the school. If the football team is on campus, but everyone else is taking virtual classes and living in their childhood home, does that meme still work? Even at its current questionable level?

A question I do not have any idea how to answer is, could the football team play if the college is offering all, or almost all, their classes exclusively online and the dorms and campus are closed for the semester?

Here are couple of recent articles to read:

https://www.insidehighered.com/digi...etly-fall-semester-without-person-instruction

https://www.chronicle.com/article/6-steps-to-prepare-for-an/248463

 

[mstranahan]

@orientalnc lots of colleges & universities are putting plans together for the potential of a full academic year with no one on campus. Worst case contingency planning, but they're doing it now so they have a plan if they need to go that route

 

[orientalnc]

I hope that will be the case.

 

[RamblinRed]

if you want the really negative view (I mean super negative) on the return of sports (not just college sports) - this is the article. It is depressing reading and I hope doesn't become reality.

https://www.si.com/mlb/2020/04/10/sports-arent-coming-back-soon

 

[orientalnc]

if you want the really negative view (I mean super negative) on the return of sports (not just college sports) - this is the article. It is depressing reading and I hope doesn't become reality.

https://www.si.com/mlb/2020/04/10/sports-arent-coming-back-soon

This is indeed negative. But, I am not so sure it's really off base.

I live in a very small town in eastern NC. 800 people in a county with 13,000. Our whole economy is shut down except for two boat yards, the hardware store and the grocery store. I talked to a business woman yesterday who said our little town will be devastated if we reopen the closed restaurants. She is not a wild eyed liberal. She has a Trump sticker on her car. But, she would rather see her business fail than to reopen too soon. She will not be renewing her UNC football season tickets this year. 30+ years of seeing Tarheel home games.

Maybe my wife & I will hate each other by September, but right now we are enjoying Netflix, doing projects around the house, and cooking together. It ain't too bad. I think a lot of us are really scared of this virus and that will drive our ticket buying this fall. Or, rather, our not ticket buying.

 

[MWBATL]

I think there is a bigger risk that colleges will not have on campus classes this fall. The financial implications for athletic departments is huge, but the very existence of some colleges is a greater risk than the football team not suiting up. Would you send your 18 year old off to school to live in a dorm suite with five other teens if the covid-19 vaccine is still months away from coming out of clinical trial? If some of the SEC or ACC schools are not back to on campus classes, can the football team report to camp and get ready for the season? Does it make sense for the school to have football games if there are no students on campus. I know they do that for a few games in basketball, and maybe a game in football.

The NCAA likes to say the students who compete in sports are students just like every other young person enrolled at the school. If the football team is on campus, but everyone else is taking virtual classes and living in their childhood home, does that meme still work? Even at its current questionable level?

A question I do not have any idea how to answer is, could the football team play if the college is offering all, or almost all, their classes exclusively online and the dorms and campus are closed for the semester?

Here are couple of recent articles to read:

https://www.insidehighered.com/digi...etly-fall-semester-without-person-instruction

https://www.chronicle.com/article/6-steps-to-prepare-for-an/248463

You might turn out ot be correct. But that doesn't mean it is the right decision or even logical.

Riddle me this....what is the likelihood of an 18-20 dying from China coronavirus vs dying of, oh, I don't know....driving?

I think if you will examine the statistics, that young person is safer in that college dorm room and walking around campus where they don't drive around nearly as much.

 

[MWBATL]

I think a lot of us are really scared of this virus and that will drive our ticket buying this fall. Or, rather, our not ticket buying.

My suspicion is that therein lies the fundamental problem. People are reacting based on fear and not on data. Happens all the time, unfortunately. So, I am not doubting that you may turn out to be accurate in your predictions. People don't look at the underlying facts and they don't do the math most of the time. They listen to the pundits and believe whatever they hear.

I am assuming certain things....I am assuming that our medical professionals will figure out some decent treatment regimens for this virus by the Fall. I think that will happen, given the huge number of controlled studies now underway. A vaccine will not be available by the Fall. But if adequate treatment is available, then catching this virus could become no worse than the seasonal flu in terms of its impact on your life.

But [sigh] so much will depend on whether the news media decides to cover it factually and logically. So much will depend on whether it becomes politicized in an election year. I despair over our ability to avoid sensationalizing this whole thing.It's just *great* for ratings, and everyone can play the blame game and the public comes out (as always) the loser in terms of getting true information to make decisions.

 

[MWBATL]

FYI

(CNN)People in the Czech Republic can now shop at hardware and bicycle stores, play tennis and go swimming. Austria plans to reopen smaller shops after Easter. Denmark will reopen kindergartens and schools from next week if coronavirus cases remain stable, and children in Norway will return to kindergarten a week later.

These nations are the first in the West to start feeling their way gradually out of the limits on daily life imposed by governments to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

 

[mstranahan]

catching this virus could become no worse than the seasonal flu in terms of its impact on your life.

I don’t read or watch the news very much at all, preferring to get facts from independent and objective sources like CDC and WHO. That said, if you think COVID-19 is anything like the flu, you aren’t thinking factually or logically. Absent a vaccine, COVID-19 kills people at an alarming rate. Seasonal flu has very low mortality. Two things help with flu numbers: there is a vaccine and the flu virus only lasts for eight weeks. No one knows why and it’s not due to any “treatment regimen”. That’s just the genetic wiring of the flu virus and we have no idea how long COVID-19 will last.

 

[684Bee]

I don’t read or watch the news very much at all, preferring to get facts from independent and objective sources like CDC and WHO. That said, if you think COVID-19 is anything like the flu, you aren’t thinking factually or logically. Absent a vaccine, COVID-19 kills people at an alarming rate. Seasonal flu has very low mortality. Two things help with flu numbers: there is a vaccine and the flu virus only lasts for eight weeks. No one knows why and it’s not due to any “treatment regimen”. That’s just the genetic wiring of the flu virus and we have no idea how long COVID-19 will last.

You don’t know this. No one does, until we can do widespread testing and get clearer understanding of what the denominator is. Even then, we won’t fully know.

I can make an assertion right now that it doesn’t kill people at an alarming rate (whatever alarming is), and neither one of us can truly back up our claim.

 

[tsrich]

My suspicion is that therein lies the fundamental problem. People are reacting based on fear and not on data. Happens all the time, unfortunately. So, I am not doubting that you may turn out to be accurate in your predictions. People don't look at the underlying facts and they don't do the math most of the time. They listen to the pundits and believe whatever they hear.

I am assuming certain things....I am assuming that our medical professionals will figure out some decent treatment regimens for this virus by the Fall. I think that will happen, given the huge number of controlled studies now underway. A vaccine will not be available by the Fall. But if adequate treatment is available, then catching this virus could become no worse than the seasonal flu in terms of its impact on your life.

But [sigh] so much will depend on whether the news media decides to cover it factually and logically. So much will depend on whether it becomes politicized in an election year. I despair over our ability to avoid sensationalizing this whole thing.It's just *great* for ratings, and everyone can play the blame game and the public comes out (as always) the loser in terms of getting true information to make decisions.

I don't know, 2000+ deaths a day (and climbing) seems pretty real to me. It is already the number 1 cause of death in the US. Without the shelter in place rules, most of our cities and towns would look like NYC pretty quickly.
The young and healthy generally (but not always) survive it, but even in those cases we don't know if there's longterm damage done.
I think our best scenario would be to get to where Taiwan and SK are now. Flatten the curve, massively ramp up testing ability so we can identify outbreaks quickly and isolate them. Then gradually reopen society with the expectation of more isolated shelter in place occurrences until we have a vaccine.

 

[MWBATL]

I don’t read or watch the news very much at all, preferring to get facts from independent and objective sources like CDC and WHO. That said, if you think COVID-19 is anything like the flu, you aren’t thinking factually or logically. Absent a vaccine, COVID-19 kills people at an alarming rate. Seasonal flu has very low mortality. Two things help with flu numbers: there is a vaccine and the flu virus only lasts for eight weeks. No one knows why and it’s not due to any “treatment regimen”. That’s just the genetic wiring of the flu virus and we have no idea how long COVID-19 will last.

Did you miss the part in my original post wherein I made the assumption that one of the many treatment options succeeds by the Fall?

You are looking to the data today. I am looking at that the data i likely to be with a successful treatment regimen.

Huge difference, dude. I do not assume our medical professionals will make zero progress in coming weeks and months. I think it is an unreasonable fear to assume that.

 

[MWBATL]

I don't know, 2000+ deaths a day (and climbing) seems pretty real to me. It is already the number 1 cause of death in the US. Without the shelter in place rules, most of our cities and towns would look like NYC pretty quickly.
The young and healthy generally (but not always) survive it, but even in those cases we don't know if there's longterm damage done.
I think our best scenario would be to get to where Taiwan and SK are now. Flatten the curve, massively ramp up testing ability so we can identify outbreaks quickly and isolate them. Then gradually reopen society with the expectation of more isolated shelter in place occurrences until we have a vaccine.

Again, the data today and the data in a few weeks may be dramatically different. We are all projecting to next Fall in this thread, and (of course) we are all guessing. I think it is quite unreasonable to think today's data will maintain until the Fall.

I do not believe any approach that assumes you can test 300 million people is doable. That may not be what you mean, but I think the better hope is that we have treatments that minimize the disease's impact until we get a vaccine. As I have said, given how many approved tests are going on, I think that is our best hope.

 

[73CAV]

Wow. We've all been living with viruses, bacteria, and germs surrounding us and inside of us for our entire lives. For the vast majority of us, our bodies have an amazing way of dealing with all of this and keeping us relatively healthy. This thing has really thrown a lot of people for a loop, and I think it's way too hyped up.

There will be no magic bullet cure for this thing. Even when we have a vaccine, that won't be perfect. We have flu vaccines, but they aren't perfect. There are different strains and mutations that just don't get accounted for. But people accept that and feel safe enough to go about their lives.

So, cooler, calmer heads need to prevail here to lead us back to some "normalcy". There are a lot of people who have this threat built up in their mind and they are going to need to be shown that it's going to be ok.

Well, it is a bit more complicated than that. For most pathogens, there is the element of 'herd immunity'. We have acquired a degree of resistance through years of exposure. And, even if the vaccines for the flu are imperfect in some years, they will still lessen the severity of the disease. Essentially, this virus is new. It just jumped species. So far, there are no vaccines, and 'herd immunity' is a ways away. Matters are further complicated by the fact that it is twice as contagious as the typical strain of influenza, and it has a much, much higher mortality rate. The threat is very real. Social distancing is flattening the curve, but it would be a mistake to believe that a 'return to normalcy' will take place overnight.

 

[RamblinRed]

I would agree that to have any sports this fall there would have to be some sort of treatment that works. Without that there won't be sports or any large gatherings - probably won't be students on campus. If there is no students on campus there will be no college sports - you can't say it not ok for students to be in close spaces but it is okay for student athletes to be physically interacting.

I am watching closely what happens elsewhere. Some places are getting ready to slowly start opening things up a little. Others (like Italy and Spain) are extending their lockdowns.
Singapore has activated a 1-month lockdown after thinking they had it licked.

That story is an excellent read.
In order to make this work, a few things are going to have to happen. First, the number of cases and deaths are going to have to drop significantly and stay down for some period of time.
Second, you have to have testing ready so that any time you even start to see any sort of uptick you can quickly get in front of it before it can get out of hand.
Third, then you have to have a very orderly and very slow re-opening of the economy.
Fourth when you do have an outbreak then you need to do contact tracing very quickly and you need some sort of treatment to help people recover.

The fact that the issue in Singapore is being driven by dorm living is not the greatest of signs for colleges.

This is a much more serious virus than the flu. Even with the flu shot anywhere from 10M to 50M Americans get the flu each winter. But only 16K to 50K die from it.
If we allowed this to run rampant and infect 10-50M people in a couple of months the deaths would be in the millions.

FWIW, I think we are going to see a national experiment in terms of how fast this can spread. My belief is that there are going to be some states that decide to largely re-open and other states that will decide to stay closed longer. We'll probably have a sense in July/Aug. of how well we are doing since it seems to take about 6 weeks to 2 months for it to ramp up and get really out of control.

The other thing to look at is what do some big states do. The Governor and head of the Health Agency in CA have said they don't see sports returning in CA before Thanksgiving. If they hold to that it is going to make it alot more difficult for sports to resume. Think how many professional and college sports teams reside in CA. CA decision on Name, Image, Likeness basically forced the NCAA's hand in taking it seriously.

Here is a good article with the AD from Ohio State.
https://www.cbssports.com/college-f...mes-without-fans-but-player-safety-is-at-top/
He is hoping to play games but he is also preparing for a potential $50M loss (the lost revenue from 7 home games - does not include TV revenue). He makes it clear they are working toward the idea of playing games, but if a decision is made that students are not on campus then there will not be college sports. He says they will not play games without fans allowed in the stands. If its not considered safe to have fans then he doesn't think it is safe for the student athletes.

Finally, I have little belief that this isn't going to turn into a political football. You are already seeing individuals and organizations on both ends of the political spectrum trying to use this and we haven't even gotten past the mid-point yet. Multiple states (in GA) are weeks away from their peaks.
Having a couple of nurses (including an ICU nurse) in the cul-de-sac can be helpful since GA isn't really providing any real information on how many patients are using ICU beds. Basically my neighbors are saying that hospitals in Atlanta are full in their ICU wards with COVID patients. Not to a breaking point yet, but full. Any significant spike will cause an issue.

 

[684Bee]

Well, it is a bit more complicated than that. For most pathogens, there is the element of 'herd immunity'. We have acquired a degree of resistance through years of exposure. And, even if the vaccines for the flu are imperfect in some years, they will still lessen the severity of the disease. Essentially, this virus is new. It just jumped species. So far, there are no vaccines, and 'herd immunity' is a ways away. Matters are further complicated by the fact that it is twice as contagious as the typical strain of influenza, and it has a much, much higher mortality rate. The threat is very real. Social distancing is flattening the curve, but it would be a mistake to believe that a 'return to normalcy' will take place overnight.

Didn’t say overnight. Nice straw man.

You don’t know, nor does anyone, that it has a much, much higher mortality rate. Won’t be known for a while.

You say it is twice as contagious, but that we are a ways away from herd immunity. This is also impossible to know. We could be closer than you think already, if it is, in fact, as contagious as most think.

The major unknown is the denominator, how many total cases.