Will COVID-19 be the needle that finally bursts the sports bubble?

We haven't yet figured out a plan to manage the virus in any other walk of American life. Why would sports be any different?

And no sports writer anywhere wants their livelihood taken from them, so the idea that journalists are wet blanketing sports reopening to death is inane.

Also, "can't make an omelet without breaking eggs" is not a plan.

 

Saw some pictures of the Austrian Grand Prix. I desperately want a Ferrari racing team mask. I wonder if they sell them.

 

Maybe they can play the NBA playoffs on aircraft carriers, like they do those silly early-season college basketball games.

 

The NBA and NHL are on the clock for some sort of comment. They have a plausible claim in any case. They can say they're shutting it down in an abundance of caution or they can say the WHO doesn't yet agree with the assessment referenced in the Times. But don't they have to say something?

 

You're arguing laissez faire. But to accomplish that requires little to no outside intervention, and we're basically 180 degrees from that right now.

The current situation is not a free market (and I'd argue it has never been, but that's a different topic). The only way the flower shops, car washes and schools can stay in operation over the long term is with massive compliance to whatever guidelines supplied by health professionals, technological advances in medicine and continuation of supply chains.

Sport is a product of humanity's competitiveness and inventiveness. Incans threw rocks through hoops long before Naismith nailed a peach basket to a wall. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and Scots all had a hand in the evolution of what we call sport. It's only in the last 150 years that people found a way to professionalize sport, and only since mass media that sport became a massive money-making proposition.

Yes, politics and economics are the cornerstones of what we call modern sport. To believe otherwise would be foolish. But "games" -- which at their core are fabricated inventions -- are still nothing more than entertainment. Now, more than ever, we need escapes -- and there are plenty of ways to do that safely and without endangering other people's lives and livelihoods. But we have so many other priorities much greater than new movies, concerts, comic-cons and sporting events.

 

Which also makes the point that sports are returning in other countries - because those other countries have done better against the virus.

You want sports?

Make a plan to stop spreading the virus.

 

"Airborne" is an interesting word to use for "lingers in the air."

This is a massive (and interesting) pissing match, for the most part, that's going t benefit companies that deal in air quality and UV technology.

What makes your post intriguing? Sports *can* afford the technology for the best air quality. The NBA bubble could be outfitted with any technological advance one can imagine.

Back to the science...you can see why the WHO is reluctant to make this call, for it involves all kinds of worldwide changes that are, by large financially onerous for small businesses. We're already have a boondoggle because of "don't wear masks because just taking them off wrong might be worse than never having one at all!" and "sanitize every square inch of your Amazon packages" and "take a shower every time you return from somewhere else" like coronavirus was radioactivity.

Good graphs in the story:

First:

Many experts said the W.H.O. should embrace what some called a “precautionary principle” and others called “needs and values” — the idea that even without definitive evidence, the agency should assume the worst of the virus, apply common sense and recommend the best protection possible.

“There is no incontrovertible proof that SARS-CoV-2 travels or is transmitted significantly by aerosols, but there is absolutely no evidence that it’s not,” said Dr. Trish Greenhalgh, a primary care doctor at the University of Oxford in Britain.

“So at the moment we have to make a decision in the face of uncertainty, and my goodness, it’s going to be a disastrous decision if we get it wrong,” she said. “So why not just mask up for a few weeks, just in case?”

Then:

But if the W.H.O. were to push for rigorous control measures in the absence of proof, hospitals in low- and middle-income countries may be forced to divert scarce resources from other crucial programs.

“That’s the balance that an organization like the W.H.O. has to achieve,” he said. “It’s the easiest thing in the world to say, ‘We’ve got to follow the precautionary principle,’ and ignore the opportunity costs of that.”

Now, somewhere in here we have a fib. Or something close to it. The first perspective wants the principle to lead to indoor masking. Hospitals and doctor's office already do this, and it is not cost prohibitive.

The second perspective relates to the principle leading to significant costs. Masking is the argument of the 239 scientists. "Eh, no, there are onerous costs" is the argument of the WHO.

My instincts tell me mission creep is always presented as the smallest thing.

Back to airborne: When I think of the colloquial definition of that, I think of radioactivity being taken by the wind to other places. Or mustard gas. I think of things moving in the air, one place to the next.

I do not think of particles lingering in one place and falling than experts suggest they fall.

 

There it is. We need to earn sports.

What else do we need to earn? Floral shops? Car washes? Sporting good stores? Amazon - since packages shipped by Amazon exist in warehouses? Meat - since meat is packed in houses affect by the coronavirus? Should we boycott Brazilian products until Brazil earns our purchase of them with a better containment strategy?

 

Got it. Which priorities supersede your "we love life more" theology?

Do you mean attending sporting events - or merely playing them? Because NASCAR and PGA is happening now. Are we suffering a public health penalty for it?

 

Your response to this is so weird. It's a public health problem, not a referendum on politics or morality or the cools.

We've instituted protocols at meatpacking plants and Amazon warehouses.

Make a plan to interrupt the transmission of the virus - then we can return to doing a lot of things safely. Like going to school. Or sports.

 

Posterity is going to ask that question as well.

All together now: This didn't have to happen here.

As the mercenary Steve Schmidt says, you are more likely to die of COVID-19 in our country than anywhere else in the world. Good going on that.

 

Ford Vs. Ferrari was a desperately disappointing movie.