Coronavirus and sports

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by CSharp

I don't think rhino is being ignorant. I think the Coronavirus or COVID-19 is just a bit blown out of proportions by the media as another "Shock-and-Awe" to get the everyone all riled up and running with at least some fear or with some emotions. Although this virus is quite virulent and spreads fast, I don't think the majority of the populations in this world needs to push the panic button. As long as you're younger than 60 and don't have any respiratory or health concerns, if you get the virus, you'll live to get another strain of virus or some other flu virus. A bonus to catching a virus and living through it is that you'll be immune to the virus after your body recovers from the illness.

It's ridiculous for people to go out to Costco and buy out all the toilet papers and bottled water! Seriously, I actually saw people getting mostly those two things when I went to replenish my pop stash. Talk about people freaking out for nothing! My co-worker caught the H1N1 virus back in the day when the Bird Flu struck North America and he didn't even travel outside of Canada. Funny thing was, his wife didn't catch it. And he said it was just like catching the cold.

So, like, almost everything in your post is wrong.

1. Covid19 isn’t the flu. It’s a coronavirus, akin to SARS and MERS.

2. Your coworker didn’t catch bird flu: H1N1 is the far less deadly (but still quite dangerous) swine flu. I can almost guarantee that if he thought he had a cold, he didn’t get H1N1; if you’ve ever had the flu, it’s not much like a cold. I can definitely tell you that he didn’t get Bird flu (H5N1); H5N1 has/had a colossally high fatality rate, but did not spread globally the way Covid19 is.

3. We have no idea how much immunity we will get from what may become “seasonal Covid” from being exposed once. It’s novel; one of the things that means is we don’t have much immunity to it right now. The thing about the flu is that as dangerous as it is we DO have substantial immunity to it as a population as variations of it come around every year.

4. Being young and healthy doesn’t mean you shouldn’t worry. Apart from the callous shortsightedness of that view it also ignores the knock-on effects on our health care system as a whole when the number of people who need ICU beds and intervention for ARDS (an extremely high percentage of Covid19 cases) begins to exceed the number of beds that are available.

I’m writing this post from the Children’s hospital where my son has just gone through a serious secondary infection to influenza. He is getting better now, but he needed life saving treatment in the ICU here last week. He was the definition of young and healthy—and that might have kept him safe from coronavirus, relatively, but it didn’t stop him from getting very sick from something else. In this case that something else was good old influenza A, which is still a real bitch of a virus.

Thank god an ICU bed was available, and thank god for the amazing doctors and nurses at Children’s Hospital. But what if we’d been in the midst of a coronavirus outbreak? Would the same resources have been available to him? I don’t know. I don’t like to think about it.

I’m also not particularly sympathetic to this Trumpian attitude of “it’s just the flu,” having almost had my boy taken from me by the flu. The flu is no joke.

With all of that said I do agree that buying up the bottled water and TP at Costco is stupid. But it’s not stupid to take steps to try and slow the spread of this illness. We likely can’t stop it but slowing it may allow our health care systems to be in a better position to respond and that could mean saving lives—including the lives of people who need those health care resources for things other than coronavirus.

[Reggie Dunlop]

Thank you sharing that, Iowa FF. I learned a few facts reading that.

I'm glad your son is better, and I can't imagine what you went through as a parent.

[Itse]

I recommend reading this linked thread. It should shake the nonsense out of people.

This is from Lombardia, Northern Italy. This is as first wold as it gets, a very wealthy area.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1237142891077697538

Couple of quotes:

4/ We’ve stopped all routine, all ORs have been converted to ITUs and they are now diverting or not treating all other emergencies like trauma or strokes. There are hundreds of pts with severe resp failure and many of them do not have access to anything above a reservoir mask.

5/ Patients above 65, or younger with comorbidities are not even assessed by ITU, I am not saying not tubed, I’m saying not assessed and no ITU staff attends when they arrest. Staff are working as much as they can but they are starting to get sick and are emotionally overwhelmed.

Staff gets sick so it gets difficult to cover for shifts, mortality spikes also from all other causes that can’t be treated properly.

This is what it looks like when the epidemic gets out of control. Medical facilities, equipment and staff just runs out. Since there's no vaccine, there's no protection for anyone. Getting corona is virtually guaranteed if you're a nurse or a doctor, it's just a question of how bad you get it.

Mortality rate for COVID-19 has already been updated from 2% to 3.4%, which is significantly higher than Spanish Flu... And that's with patients still mostly getting quality hospital treatment. If COVID-19 turns into an uncontrolled epidemic, that mortality rate is going to go up even further.

With treatment the mortality rate for 80+ is over 14%.

COVID-19 is serious business. As in, "potentially world record breaking pandemic".

[Scroopy Noopers]

Originally Posted by CSharp

As long as you're younger than 60 and don't have any respiratory or health concerns, if you get the virus, you'll live to get another strain of virus or some other flu virus.

Why does this keep getting parroted as helpful information?

[Itse]

Originally Posted by Scroopy Noopers

Why does this keep getting parroted as helpful information?

Yeah I mean it can still get you into intensive care. Something fairly common like diabetes is enough to make you extra vulnerable.

[Scroopy Noopers]

Originally Posted by Itse

Yeah I mean it can still get you into intensive care. Something fairly common like diabetes is enough to make you extra vulnerable.

That and I don’t have to be concerned about my own health to be fearful of the virus. There are plenty of people I care about who fall into the “at risk category”.

[GirlySports]

Lets just have a knockout tournament. Done in a week.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by Scroopy Noopers

That and I don’t have to be concerned about my own health to be fearful of the virus. There are plenty of people I care about who fall into the “at risk category”.

My best friend has had a kidney transplant. He's been hospitalized by a seasonal flu before. COVID-19 could very well kill him. The mother of my child (and still a dear friend) has asthma. Another very good friend has a permanent heart condition. Yet another friend just mentioned in Facebook she has both asthma and diabetes.

So yeah.

[Sidney Crosby's Hat]

If the playoffs were played to empty arenas, what would even be the point of travel? Why not just mitigate risk (that being travel) and play all the games in neutral sites?

This would also certainly put a massive dent in HRR for this year and next I'd think. What percentage of the NHL's revenue is made in the playoffs? I would think a lot.

[DeluxeMoustache]

Originally Posted by Sidney Crosby's Hat

If the playoffs were played to empty arenas, what would even be the point of travel? Why not just mitigate risk (that being travel) and play all the games in neutral sites?

This would also certainly put a massive dent in HRR for this year and next I'd think. What percentage of the NHL's revenue is made in the playoffs? I would think a lot.

This confuses me. As all teams are located in different cities, they have to travel to play each other.

And to a neutral site, two teams travel for the game

[Lubicon]

Originally Posted by Sidney Crosby's Hat

If the playoffs were played to empty arenas, what would even be the point of travel? Why not just mitigate risk (that being travel) and play all the games in neutral sites?

This would also certainly put a massive dent in HRR for this year and next I'd think. What percentage of the NHL's revenue is made in the playoffs? I would think a lot.

Interesting concept. One neutral site for the entire league playoffs? Neutral site for eastern and western conference and then meet for finals? I guess you could do it a lot of ways.

Regarding the comment about Stockton (farm teams in general). Would be interesting to see what happens if travel is restricted and how that would affect player movement between the parent and farm team.

[tvp2003]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

Lets just have a knockout tournament. Done in a week.

A less drastic option could be to change to a best-of-3 rather than a best-of-7. Might take 3 weeks.

Either way, I'm not sure I'd be in favor of awarding a Stanley Cup in either scenario -- i.e. winning an abridged tournament isn't the same as winning four best-of-7 rounds...

[Strange Brew]

Originally Posted by DeluxeMoustache

This confuses me. As all teams are located in different cities, they have to travel to play each other.

And to a neutral site, two teams travel for the game

I think the poster is suggesting the teams play each other on xBox or Playstation from their own living rooms.

Or maybe a tournament style playoff at one location, or just a few vs. traveling back and forth.

[Kovaz]

Even if you're young and healthy, the hospital capacity problem is a huge deal. Very few people below 50 are dying, but a proportion of them (I've seen as high as 15%) end up needing some sort of hospital care. If we run out of hospital beds, that 15% goes from basically all recovering to a lot of deaths. That's why the preventative measures are so important - if you slow the infection rate, you reduce the peak number of people sick at the same time, and you dramatically reduce the number of people that need care to survive and can't get it

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by Tsawwassen

I wonder why the Golden State Warriors and Sacramento Kings are continuing on as usual with crowds at their NBA home games?

They are in different counties, so aren't under this same order.

[Toonage]

If the GSW are still playing, is that new arena in SF set up for hockey?

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Kovaz

Even if you're young and healthy, the hospital capacity problem is a huge deal. Very few people below 50 are dying, but a proportion of them (I've seen as high as 15%) end up needing some sort of hospital care. If we run out of hospital beds, that 15% goes from basically all recovering to a lot of deaths. That's why the preventative measures are so important - if you slow the infection rate, you reduce the peak number of people sick at the same time, and you dramatically reduce the number of people that need care to survive and can't get it

Even beyond those who need care for Covid 19, everyone's health will be at risk when the health care system gets swamped. Alberta hospitals routinely run at capacity already, with long wait times and beds lining hallways when things get busy. It won't take much to severely overload the capacity of the acute care system.

The next few months is going to be a very bad time to suffer a heart attack, pneumonia, or appendicitis.

[Table 5]

Honestly, that's what Im most worried about. We've had a couple serious health scares in the family that require more complex care. The current waiting times are already really long...and overloaded health system due to Covid will just make things so much worse for every other health issue.

[Scroopy Noopers]

Originally Posted by Table 5

Honestly, that's what Im most worried about. We've had a couple serious health scares in the family that require more complex care. The current waiting times are already really long...and overloaded health system due to Covid will just make things so much worse for every other health issue.

Yup. Including burn out on staff. These are the things we are trying to avoid, not a smug 35 year old catching the virus.

[Incogneto]

Originally Posted by Toonage

If the GSW are still playing, is that new arena in SF set up for hockey?

I was there last Thursday. It is definitely NOT set up for Hockey.

(But it is AMAZING!)