Anarchy99
Footballguy
Let me take a stab at this. For starters, IMO, people need to ignore the numbers and stats coming out because they are telling an inaccurate or sometimes wrong story. What is going on with COVID is a regional issue with potential national impact. Since it has yet to spread everywhere, the total national numbers will be low. Again, IMO, the government, the media, and even the health experts are doing a poor job explaining things.
The real issue and concern should be on a local, community level. The math SHOULD be as follows: Total # of people requiring hospitalization (for ALL reasons) in the community divided by the total # of hospital beds available in the community.
Here's why the math being reported doesn't work. Yes, in the U.S., there are more total fatalities in a year from the flu (call it 50,000). Yes, in the U.S., there are more fatalities in a year from motor vehicle accidents (call it 35,000). Combined, that adds up to 85,000 deaths per year. There are 5,600 hospitals in the U.S. There are also 12 months in a year. Now do the math. On average, between the flu and motor vehicle accidents, that works out to an average of 0.85 fatalities per month per hospital. (Yes, some hospitals would see 0 and some may see 20 . . . but that's not really the point.)
Now let's look at COVID. Sure, lots of places don't have much going on so a lot of this looks like the precautions are overkill. But WHERE it is happening is the problem. I live 3 hours from NYC and 1 hour from Boston. My wife (knee deep in this) just got off a conference call. The number of cases and hospitalizations in Boston is doubling every 2 days. There are tens of thousands of people working on this. They have seen a road map of how things have spread in lots of other places by now. We are no different than everywhere else that has had an outbreak. We aren't going to wake up here and have the virus just disappear. The storm is still percolating.
I can tell you that at least around here, they don't really care about testing, who tests positive, who is in quarantine, etc. They only care that when people get sick enough, they need to have someplace to put them. If someone happens to test positive (if they can even get a test and get their results back within two weeks), they are either not sick enough to require treatment or they need a hospital bed. So they mentally have cut out all the testing and test result issues and only care about who needs a hospital bed.
We have already seen in plenty of other places around the world what happens when there are more patients than places to treat them. The other issue is that there are not enough healthcare workers to treat the number of required hospitalizations. Mind you, there are plenty of other sick people out there . . . heart attacks, strokes, accidents, overdoses, emergency surgeries, our old friend the flu, etc. The other concern is if hospitals have to go at 200% capacity (if not more), the workers aren't safe and are likely to get sick themselves (or worse).
If you (or anyone else) happens to live where the virus isn't a problem, congrats . . . for now. Where I live, they are planning this out and mobilizing lots of resources. Within 10 miles of my house, they have emptied out a large nursing home, a high school, and a college and are converting them to temporary emergency hospitals. They are battening down the hatches and are expecting thousands of people needing hospitalization. That may not matter to people that are living in Utah or New Mexico, but it matters a lot to people living smack dab in the middle of that area.
Lets go back to our friend the flu (and his cousin motor vehicle fatalities) As I mentioned, hospitals across the country, on average, saw less than one fatality a month to come up to that total of 85,000. In places with a COVID outbreak, they will see WAY more fatalities in a month than that 0.85 a month number. Italy has been seeing 500+ fatalities per day. Spain and the UK aren't far behind and NYC will likely pass everywhere soon (at least in total cases and hospitalizations). It's also too soon to tell what the fatality rate in NYC is, as it can take weeks for people to either slot into the RECOVERED category or the DECEASED category. And mind you the death rate for other non-COVID medical conditions should also be higher. Similarly, once the hospitals in NYC go past capacity, the death rate will escalate as well. NY/NJ could have ended up having more fatalities on their own than the entire country did for the flu for a year. (Unlikely, but if left unchecked it could have tracked that way). Which begs the question, if there were 50,000 fatalities in a city with 8 million people, that's only a total fatality rate of 0.6% . . . is that such a small number that no one should care?
The reason why all of us are doing a whole lot of nothing right now is to prevent what is happening in NYC in every other city in the country. How to prevent that is above my pay grade. We are already trying the shelter in place and social distancing part (which hopefully will work). I would guess minimizing travel would be next on the list. But I can tell you in my section of the country, no way, no how should they be thinking about trying to play baseball, basketball, hockey, or football right now in places like NYC, NJ, or Boston.
Maybe there is a work around where they take teams from hot zones and make them play a season without any home games. Maybe it's as simple as making New England play as the Boise Patriots for a season. However, those teams might want no part of that, especially if it got to the point where they had to play road games with full attendance and they couldn't play at home even without fans.
But the big concern should be that if they start saying "everything is fine" except for a few places (not just sports . . . I mean everything), and suddenly places like Denver, KC, San Antonio, and Atlanta turn into New York, it will be WAY harder to keep the virus in check if it gets out everywhere.
Overall, IMO, we need to see where we are in a few weeks once the virus gets a head of steam going, not BEFORE it starts going nuts. But IMO, having a sports team play in Boston and then go on the road to Minnesota doesn't seem like a smart thing to do. Like anyone else, who knows when the right time would be to say that would be a safe and good idea.
