The NHL should pick a single city, book out hotels, invite only select media. Test all personnel on every team multiple times to ensure no one is infected. And then just play the playoffs in front of zero fans. Close circuit the entire process so no one gets infected
Why: this is the least popular major sports league, with the best playoff intensity and there will soon be a captive audience globally watching on TV. Every sports channel would be dedicated to the NHL only. This is a once in 100 year opportunity to grow the game.
No, you're not going to break the gathering restrictions currently in place in most of North America - and risk the health of your players - out of some completely misguided effort to "grow the game." In fact, the NHL would get rightly criticized by everybody if they did something so stupid.
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I like Fox Sports approach with NASCAR and making the drivers play it through a video game. I mean it's obviously not the real thing, but at least you know it's the actual drivers like Dale Earnhardt Jr at the controller.
It'd be fun to make every team pick 5 players to play the rest of the season and playoffs out through NHL 20, 5v5 position lock (6 if you want to include the goalie but user goalie is hard and Ritter would be breaking controllers instead of sticks). Just for fun and minor bragging rights and to give the fans something to tune into. Maybe some charity donations involved, like NASCAR did.
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Formula One did the same thing and I was really pumped. They pulled a bait and switch however, with only one F1 driver showing up with the rest being youtubers and gamers.
The NHL should pick a single city, book out hotels, invite only select media. Test all personnel on every team multiple times to ensure no one is infected. And then just play the playoffs in front of zero fans. Close circuit the entire process so no one gets infected
Why: this is the least popular major sports league, with the best playoff intensity and there will soon be a captive audience globally watching on TV. Every sports channel would be dedicated to the NHL only. This is a once in 100 year opportunity to grow the game.
That would be a waste of tests.
Sports just isn't that important right now.
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Location: Wondering when # became hashtag and not a number sign.
Exp:
The
@CFL
will announce today that it is postponing the opening of training camps indefinitely. Main camps were to open May 17th, rookie camps as early as May 11th. #CFL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6MZy-2fcBw This doesn't have to do with sports, but it is an interesting perspective on this pandemic... I've been hesitant to post this elsewhere because I want to hear what other people think of this... I'm having a hard time poking holes in it, but I haven't really dug into whether his claims are correct... but he is a Stanford professor so I think he's pretty reputable.
When we get back to the new normal in May, games will be played in empty arenas
That's optimistic. My company has already announced the earliest our office will re-open is June 1.
MLB is not expecting to start until late June or early July at the earliest. It's highly probable that neither the NBA nor the NHL expects to restart until then - at which point you may as well just cancel this season and prepare for a 2020-21 restart.
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I’m always amazed these sportscasters and announcers can call the game with McDavid’s **** in their mouths all the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6MZy-2fcBw This doesn't have to do with sports, but it is an interesting perspective on this pandemic... I've been hesitant to post this elsewhere because I want to hear what other people think of this... I'm having a hard time poking holes in it, but I haven't really dug into whether his claims are correct... but he is a Stanford professor so I think he's pretty reputable.
He makes a lot of good points. I think we all have to realize just how little we understand about this virus - our data is woefully incomplete, so it's hard to make informed long-term policy decisions.
In the short term, we have to do two things:
1) Ramp up the social distancing + lockdown measures until the spread stops. Figuring out what it takes to get this under control in a bunch of different countries will be crucial data to inform long-term decisions.
2) Ramp up serological testing until you can make an accurate assessment of the real infection rate.
Lots of studies out there with conflicting data and we really need to hone in on the truth. There's a huge difference between a virus with r0 = 2.5 and a 2% mortality rate from a virus with r0 = 7 and a 0.1% mortality rate, or a virus with r0 = 25 and a 0.05% mortality rate (and I've seen studies estimating it at all 3 places).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6MZy-2fcBw This doesn't have to do with sports, but it is an interesting perspective on this pandemic... I've been hesitant to post this elsewhere because I want to hear what other people think of this... I'm having a hard time poking holes in it, but I haven't really dug into whether his claims are correct... but he is a Stanford professor so I think he's pretty reputable.
Thanks for posting, it's a worthwhile watch and I'll give my 2 cents from the perspective of a physician comfortable evaluating medical evidence (and as someone who has read a lot on Covid):
His points on population studies and why they are so important are salient. He gives a good summary on what as been done in Iceland and the small Italian town (don't recall the name). The cliff notes version is that by looking at large random populations, there are a number of asymptomatic individuals testing positive, who in turn lower the true mortality of the disease. He also discusses the Princess Diamond, where of 3500 aboard, 700 get infected and 7 die. He highlights how much we don't know about the virus. The actual mortality rate is most certainly below the 2-3% originally cited by the WHO, and most likely will fall below 1% in post hoc analyses.
Where he fails in his analysis is his evaluation of Italy (attributing disaster there to age, smoking, the soccer match, yada yada), and the appreciation to the degree Covid can potentially devastate ANY community. This is where Fauci has been much more astute. Mortality numbers at the end of the day may be more encouraging (between 0.1-1.0%), but there is so much more unquestioned morbidity from Covid than any Flu virus we have encountered. Every large city is seeing numbers of people age 30-50 admitted to hospital, many even needing ICU or intubation. See New Orleans (Mardi Gras?) See New York right now. See Seattle. See Wuhan. See Spain, see France. Don't think it can happen in Calgary? See what's happening in the town of Albany, Georgia, a city of less than 100k.
No one really knows, but right now by enforcing closures and social distancing we are buying time to hopefully start figuring this out. You do not need to be a doctor, scientist or epidemiologist to recognize that Covid has the ability to COLLAPSE a health care system like no other virus we have encountered in our lifetimes. I'll be back when I have a little more time to give my thoughts on where I think this is headed, again for whatever little that's worth...
Last edited by 2macinnis2; 03-30-2020 at 10:45 AM.
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Thanks for posting, it's a worthwhile watch and I'll give my 2 cents from the perspective of a physician comfortable evaluating medical evidence (and as someone who has read a lot on Covid):
His points on population studies and why they are so important are salient. He gives a good summary on what as been done in Iceland and the small Italian town (don't recall the name). The cliff notes version is that by looking at large random populations, there are a number of asymptomatic individuals testing positive, who in turn lower the true mortality of the disease. He also discusses the Princess Diamond, where of 3500 aboard, 700 get infected and 7 die. He highlights how much we don't know about the virus. The actual mortality rate is most certainly below the 2-3% originally cited by the WHO, and most likely will fall below 1% in post hoc analyses.
Where he fails in his analysis is his evaluation of Italy (attributing disaster there to age, smoking, the soccer match, yada yada), and the appreciation to the degree Covid can potentially devastate ANY community. This is where Fauci has been much more astute. Mortality numbers at the end of the day may be more encouraging (between 0.1-1.0%), but there is so much more unquestioned morbidity from Covid than any Flu virus we have encountered. Every large city is seeing numbers of people age 30-50 admitted to hospital, many even needing ICU or intubation. See New Orleans (Mardi Gras?) See New York right now. See Seattle. See Wuhan. See Spain, see France. Don't think it can happen in Calgary? See what's happening in the town of Albany, Georgia, a city of less than 100k.
No one really knows, but right now by enforcing closures and social distancing we are buying time to hopefully start figuring this out. You do not need to be a doctor, scientist or epidemiologist to recognize that Covid has the ability to COLLAPSE a health care system like no other virus we have encountered in our lifetimes. I'll be back when I have a little more time to give my thoughts on where I think this is headed, again for whatever little that's worth...
Thank you, I really appreciate the thoughtful response and a physicians perspective. When looking at statistics it doesn't appear that very many people age 30-50 are reacting severely to the virus, not much more than regular influenza. The average age of death from COVID in Italy was 81... that is pretty much average life expectancy, and as he says it can be very difficult to tell whether it's death by COVID or death with COVID. I guess time will tell, and I think the main conclusion to draw from that video is that in order to ensure we react appropriately the data need to be properly analyzed.
The NHL should pick a single city, book out hotels, invite only select media. Test all personnel on every team multiple times to ensure no one is infected. And then just play the playoffs in front of zero fans. Close circuit the entire process so no one gets infected
Why: this is the least popular major sports league, with the best playoff intensity and there will soon be a captive audience globally watching on TV. Every sports channel would be dedicated to the NHL only. This is a once in 100 year opportunity to grow the game.
How are the soccer leagues that are running able to function right now? Just saw that someone from PIT tested positive and all I could think was how its going to be nearly impossible to ensure all players are COVID-free when they are playing.
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How are the soccer leagues that are running able to function right now? Just saw that someone from PIT tested positive and all I could think was how its going to be nearly impossible to ensure all players are COVID-free when they are playing.
Well....its the Germans so likely with meticulous planning and careful attention to detail.
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Crowds will be permitted to attend the opening round of Super Rugby Aotearoa this weekend, after New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern confirmed the country would shift to Alert Level 1 from midnight Monday [NZT].
YAY
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