The Marlins, who probably have a significant competitive advantage in that they are used to playing to empty stadiums already, have a problem.
#BREAKING: Miami Marlins cancel tonight's home opener after 12 players, two coaches test positive for #COVID19 https://t.co/TAbJxPEutV
— NBC Connecticut (@NBCConnecticut) July 27, 2020
The players are in line to make tens of millions of dollars for each team that completes a 60 game season. The coaches are in line to make hundreds of thousands of dollars. Everyone is in a “bubble” with extraordinarily frequent testing and plentiful support to make staying in a moving bubble as painless as possible. Less than a week into the season, Major League Baseball games are already getting cancelled due to local clustering of new COVID infections among a group that has both extremely strong motivation and the resources to minimize exposure.
How exactly are schools and universities supposed to open in a few weeks with far fewer resources available to prevent community spread?
OPEN THREAD
Ken
They just open, like the president decreed.
Oh, well, if you’re going to add extra conditions…
geg6
We can’t. It’s that simple. Unfortunately, as of right now, the administration of my University and my campus don’t agree with me.
UncleEbeneezer
“I expect you to DIE, Mr. Bond”
Edmund Dantes
They won’t.
Another rousing edition of SATSQ.
Ken
@Edmund Dantes: I think we’re playing SATRQ (R for “rhetorical”), but whatever.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@geg6:
My old suburban school district is opening with in person classes. Masks required. An online option is available, but I think school will be closed in a matter of weeks because of infection clusters.
I feel most sorry for school faculty tbh. A bunch of responsibility and risks are being heaped on them. I guarantee none of them will get a raise because of this.
A lot of stupid people think teachers live high on the hog, but they don’t because everybody has massive student debt they have to pay off
geg6
@Edmund Dantes:
Perhaps you could inform the administration at my large state research university about how stupid David’s question is. They don’t seem to be listening to me.
Jeffro
I just appreciate MLB helping make the K-12 and higher ed communities’ point: no can do, baby.
Now…how about we all do the 8-week-lockdown thing for realz this time and see if we can get to European levels of virus control? Or we could really shoot the moon and go for Japan’s or New Zealand’s levels. But perhaps most importantly: EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD KNOW THAT WE’RE THE ONLY ONES FUCKING THIS UP THIS BADLY.
(Ok not ‘we’…trumpov & Co are fucking this up this badly…but still, y’all get the point.
10/1 or bust, America! Let’s do this!! Starting on Inauguration Day will cost us an extra couple hundred thousand American lives.
Raoul
How exactly are schools and universities supposed to open in a few weeks with far fewer resources available to prevent community spread?
The filthy rich detergent heiress cum Secretary of Education will have lots of answers. All of them bad.
James E Powell
I’ve been trying to make that point for months now. We are in no way ready for this.
geg6
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Faculty are getting to decide if they go in person, online or hybrid. Unfortunately, people like me are told I have to be there every day for the week before classes start (our traditional move-in week) and for several days a week until Thanksgiving. Classes and finals will end three weeks after that but the campus will be closed and everyone will be online until the break. This does not seem sufficient to me.
Paul W.
This is the end game of “American exceptionalism” is that plain and simple application of science and basic common sense of what we know about this disease so far is completely ignored to make a few bucks and in the mean time burn out people lives and put our economy into a multi-year tailspin instead of what Europe is seeing.
RSA
Similarly, Joseph G. Allen publishes a second (or third?) opinion piece in the Post arguing that “We can — and must — reopen schools. Here’s how.”
A commenter observes that Allen is a professor at Harvard, and Harvard will be teaching its classes 100% online.
Cheryl Rofer
Excellent take from the Washington Post sports columnist
The simple answer is that we shut down until we get the virus under control.
Ken
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I suspect most schools will end up closing after a few weeks. I hope they’ve made the necessary backup plans.
If the colleges also close, and send everyone home – it’ll make the spreading after Florida’s spring break fiasco look good.
TinRoofRusted
My daughter is a rising senior at George Washington University. We moved her into an apartment in DC in July because at the time the school was planning on some in person classes. I assumed that would change but did not want her in the dorms if it actually happened plus part of the reason she so wanted to attend GWU was she wanted to live in DC and attend an urban campus.
We just got an email saying all classes will be online. The email called out rising cases all over the country and faculty concerns. My daughter is disappointed but I am somewhat relieved. Of course paying for an apartment in DC when she could be home kind of sucks. But it is her senior year (I keep repeating to myself).
mrmoshpotato
@Jeffro:
“Yeah? But the masks are sweaty and inconvenient, and it’s not going to be me dying. The same way that it’s not my fault Hillary won. I didn’t vote for her.”
We truly are a nation with way too many selfish fucking children in adult bodies.
Baud
This is funny because it’s true.
lgerard
baseball has been very bad to me!
mrmoshpotato
@RSA: See my response to Jeffro at 17.
Joe Falco
First the teachers will get sick so they send in the substitute teachers. Then the substitute teachers will get sick. Once that happens, school’s out forever.
WaterGirl
@geg6: Is your position secure enough that you could take a leave of absence? As an added bonus, perhaps that would get their attention.
Calouste
@RSA: Just another datapoint that people from Harvard should be considered idiots unless proven otherwise.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
The Kentucky Supreme Court gave in to the drawling set of patriots – criminal jury trials to resume August 1, civil jury trials October 1. It’s gonna be a shitshow.
randy khan
The first thing to remember here is that this is the Marlins, a remarkably dysfunctional franchise run by someone who is way over his head and doesn’t realize it because he spent his entire career being treated like a god by Yankees fans who appear to believe he was the best shortstop ever. (And, by the way, he ranks 91st in career wins above replacement, 32 spots behind Mike Mussina.) So it wouldn’t shock me if they did a lousy job with mask-wearing and everything else.
But the crucial question from the perspective of whether baseball can continue is whether it’s just the Marlins. For all the discussion about possible outbreaks on other teams that have played the Marlins, it’s important to remember that baseball is played outdoors (or effectively outdoors given the size of a stadium), that players on opposing teams don’t really spend much time close to each other, and that there have been special efforts to keep teams apart when they aren’t actually playing. Up until now, baseball has done very well – the positive tests for the Marlins, if the worst reports are right, would be maybe 40% of the total positive tests so far – and teams have been diligent about isolating players who test positive, even when they immediately test negative again. But we’ll see soon enough.
RSA
@mrmoshpotato: An observation more general than I wish were the case.
JPL
Has Mitch offered thoughts and prayers for Herman Cain yet? He’s been in the hospital on oxygen since 7/2.
Steeplejack
I talked with a friend this morning whose spouse is peripherally involved in minor league baseball and so has access to the rumor mill. Word is that the Marlins knew before the weekend that some players were positive and decided to play the games anyway.
Again, rumor, less than anecdata, but it will be interesting to see what comes out.
Shana
@TinRoofRusted: And, as I’m sure you know, DC and the MD and VA suburbs around DC have things fairly well under control. VA’s numbers look bad because of the Hampton Roads area – well outside of NoVA – not close to DC.
Geoboy
@JPL: “Hit him the chair! The chair!”
Shana
@mrmoshpotato: My book group is reading Camus’ The Plague and I’m struck by how little things have changed.
jl
The prevalence of the infection is too damn high! As a infectious disease physician said in an interview, if the prevalence is too high it’s like transmission bombs are going off all around you all the time, it’s like a bombardment of explosions. All you can do is hunker down, and no room for maneuver needed to undertake risky big projects, like running team sports.
Getting prevalence of disease low solves so many problems, it is the primary directive, or should be.
Also, research coming out from experience in UK and Germany, that bubbles are fragile, and not good for transmission control. They are good for outbreak control, but little else. And the higher the prevalence the more likely they are to make things worse. Bubbles and pods work well for small groups, in low prevalence, where strict separation between groups can be easily and strictly controlled by central authority. Denmark’s use of pods in schools has been successful so far. But they have low prevalence, small groups, dispersed instruction in schools, library, rec and community centers so very small probability of transmission between pods in staff, teachers and students.
All control measures lose effectiveness rapidly as prevalence increases, unless they are very strict. As in strict shut down, or very strict enforcement of universal masking, always, for all close contacts and in all indoor public spaces. References available upon request (trying to not be an ass, but I wish to avoid snotty responses)
mrmoshpotato
@JPL:
Why would McFascistTurtle? Was Cain shot in a school?
In all seriousness, I hope Cain pulls through. I don’t wish death on anyone short of charges, American Nuremberg trials, convictions and being sentenced to hang.
jl
I think Cole was correct, just can the damn season. If baseball can’t do it, I don’t see how basketball, hockey or especially football can do it. My idea was to just hold exhibition games, some contests (one day home run derby) if they wanted a season, do a short tournament widely spaced over the summer and put a damn asterisk on everything for the whole year.
Mart
St Louis County (burbs around the City) Commissioner Sam Page has announced a brilliant 7 step plan to limit the spread. This includes restaurants at 25% capacity (why open the doors?), bars close at 10 PM, gatherings limited to 50! people, and quarantine will be provided for Covid infected teachers. His wife is on the TV in a campaign ad saying what a great Covid job he is doing, and lets us know both she and Sam are MD’s. All the while cases are exploding in the county. This covidiot is a Democrat. No problems opening schools, when the teacher gets it, free quarantine!!!
geg6
@RSA:
That piece is some real stupid pie in the sky bullshit from people who have apparently never stepped foot in a college classroom, let along a high school, middle school or elementary classroom. Or never encountered children or young adults. Or all of the above. WTF????
Mart
@Shana: My college roommate and I traded books after our last year. His included Camus Plague. I read it on a Saturday morning. Early that evening I had a 104° fever, and the doc on the phone said to get me in a tub of ice water now. Put the book down.
Poe Larity
It’s the uniform, morans!
If they just played in those Covid space suits, everything would be fine. It might be even entertaining, make the Monty Python song the new anthem.
mrmoshpotato
@Shana: How’re the Zoom gatherings to discuss? :)
I’ve never read it myself. (Hadn’t heard of it.) But it sounds interesting for after we’re out of this century’s pandemic.
geg6
@WaterGirl:
I would not be paid for said LOA. Can’t afford that, sadly. Wish I could. Then I’d just say fuck it and retire. I’m 61 years old. I was waiting until 65, but 62 is starting to look good. Sadly, I need to have 25 years in order to get the group health insurance benefit that entitles me to. So I need another three years to get that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
we may yet be saved from the consequences of his malevolence by the magnitude of his stupidity
jl
Nice map of prevalence of severe disease. Show how the epidemic is really a collection of local outbreaks, and from geographical patterns, they reflect very different types of transmission in different places.
https://ritholtz.com/2020/07/10-monday-am-reads-269/
Heard news report today that penetration of CA epidemic control program is still almost non-existent in agricultural areas, Imperial Valley, entire western San Joaquin Valley. Almost impossible to access testing at all, and waits of two to three weeks to get results. SJ Valley Farmer who seems responsible, provides health insurance for his permanent crew, put money into safe housing, said his workers cannot find testing, he can’t find testing for them anywhere in western SJ Valley. Positivity rates near 20 percent in tests that are done. Newsom is making this area a high priority. But, high spread in ag areas has been known for almost two months now, why such delay in response? Evidence has been coming in that it is not outdoor work, but crowded transportation, housing, indoor work in packing sheds and food processing that is the problem. Data’s been coming in for at least two months, nothing done about it.
The US just absolutely stinks at epidemic control. Even in states like CA that have been claiming they have a pandemic response plan. Really, do they? Or was it just marks on paper?
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I bet he also has the truckers and the choo-choo train drivers. Credit where it’s due.
dmsilev
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I still think the Biden campaign should sponsor one of those gigantic rubber-duck flotilla launches.
WaterGirl
@geg6: At my university in Illinois, you could buy extra years if you met certain criterion. Like if you taught while in graduate school, you could buy those years of service, etc.
I don’t know if you have anything similar, but it might be worth the research to find out?
jl
@Baud: “I bet he also has the truckers and the choo-choo train drivers. Credit where it’s due.”
I remember a photo where Biden was making inroads with biker chicks. Trump is playing defense on all fronts.
mrmoshpotato
@jl:
How and where? You couldn’t do it locally for some teams – Cubs sending baseballs out on to Waveland and Sheffield or farther? Nope.
TinRoofRusted
@Shana: Yes. That is why I was comfortable with her moving back. We are in the NYC metro area so I know how competency in government makes a difference ( that statement applies to pandemic response only. NY has plenty of incompetence in other areas). Anyway the main reasons they gave were students traveling to school and possibly needing to quarantine and how to enforce that. Plus faculty concerns about college students and their ability to social distance. My daughter and her friends are pretty responsible. But not all are.
mrmoshpotato
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: What the fuck is “internal polling?”
“Everyone in the White House says I’m tremendous bigly at the loser virus!”
Another Scott
True? Dunno. Very bad, though, that the presumption is apparently to play unless there’s a specific rule about it even though that means potentially infecting dozens of others.
(via dick_nixon)
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@mrmoshpotato: my understanding is that internal polls– which don’t exist in this case and The Beast is just babbling about something he heard about on Fox– are the gold standard, because campaigns are willing to spend far more than the media outlets that most people see.
trollhattan
@jl:
IIUC California’s testing and tracing are presently overwhelmed in several regions–test results are badly delayed and tracers as a result are getting assignments too late for tracing to be effective.
Family gatherings, megachurches, bars…that stuff needs to be shut down with sanctions for enforcement. Our city had to remind everybody that parks are closed to large gatherings–I routinely see big groups and sports being played, including tackle football.
Ken
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Actually even the Fox polling is going badly for Trump, and he’s called them fake several times recently. I assume “internal polls” are being made up by the White House staff to keep the toddler happy.
opiejeanne
@Baud: Oakland says “hi”.
I swear, I wanted to reach through the screen and tell Mike Trout to sit farther away from the other players yesterday. They practiced social distancing in the dugout during the first game and it sort of fell apart after Trout hit a HR in the second game. They’re all just so chummy it worries me.
sdhays
Cain is a man with no authority or responsibility. I don’t like his politics, but I don’t bear him any ill will.
People who have used their authority and power to force people to risk their lives, like Brian Kemp or the Lt. Governor of Texas (especially that guy, Mr. “Grandparents should throw their bodies on the pyre to appease the economy god!!”)….I don’t wish for anything, but I think if they did contract it and got the BoJo treatment, at least, it would be a small modicum of justice.
jl
@trollhattan: Some Northern California counties put out a general social bubble policy that blew up on them. As noted above, research is showing that bubbles don’t work in high prevalence setting with reproduction number above around 0.8. No place in CA got it much below 0.9 at the height of the shut down. They blow up and put reproduction number well above one. These county people are now chewing out their populations for following official public health advice, using horrible dangerously band health education and communication practices. Nothing but scolding and shaming.
The US just stinks at this. We should just look at successful countries in Europe and copy them. Many of most successful countries adopted what they call a ‘2+2+mask’ policy: 2 meters separation, no more than 2 people having a close interaction at one time, always were masks in public places. Simple, easy to remember, adaptable. You see their guideline, and they just plop it in everyplace for opening up personal care, low intensity recreation and gym activities, retail business. Seems to have worked well so far. They also had universal limits on group size, usually 5 or 10.
The attitude of too many in the US population is not ideal. But you go to a pandemic with the population you have, not the one you’d like to have. And public health agency performance has not been ideal either.
marklar
As a Pennsylvania resident, I’d like to extend a hearty “thank you” to Ron DeSantis and to MLB for exporting COVID into the region, making it less likely that the College at which I work will host in-person classes!
raven
@WaterGirl: I bought three years of Army.
WaterGirl
@raven: I hope there is something like that available to geg6.
edit: It wasn’t cheap, and it didn’t get me as much of an increase in my pension as I expected, but if it can get geg6 health care without having to work through COVID, I would think it would be totally worth it.
randy khan
@Steeplejack:
I would not be surprised. It’s kind of hard to imagine that they *suddenly* had all of those positive tests. It’s not like food poisoning when everyone who eats the fish gets sick.
And, for what it’s worth, I thought that MLB’s guidelines explicitly prohibits having anyone who tests positive from playing until he gets two negative tests, at least 24 hours apart, in a row. So what were any of those players doing on the field?
mrmoshpotato
@WaterGirl:
A bit past draft age, isn’t she? ?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WaterGirl: I know so many people who make major life decisions– not just when to retire, but where to live, when and how many kids to have– based on work-chained health insurance. I can’t believe there isn’t more demand for a giant decoupling. But… I remind myself as I’m quick to remind others: A lot of people are just desperate to stay afloat, and don’t want the boat rocked in any way.
different-church-lady
WISHFUL THINKING, YOU STUPID LIBTARDS!!1!
different-church-lady
@jl: Just test everyone every day until there’s only one guy left in the entire league who doesn’t have it, and whatever team he’s on wins the championship.
mrmoshpotato
@different-church-lady: HA!
Ken
@different-church-lady: If your plan were instituted, Toronto would be kicking themselves for ever sending the team to the US.
geg6
@WaterGirl:
I didn’t get my grad degree at my place of work and didn’t teach while doing it as I was then working at the local community college. I’m pretty much stuck for the next three years unless they offer a really good early retirement package.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, it all needs to be decoupled. So much work to be done, but first we have to save our democracy.
WaterGirl
@geg6: Here in Illinois, I think they would let you buy back from when you worked at the community college. It doesn’t need to be the same institution, just the same state, I think. Or military service, like Raven did.
It might be worth investigating to see what the rules are for buying time. It can’t be more than a phone call to find out.
Pararllax
@randy khan: Mattingly a shortstop? If you don’t know he was a first baseman, and a great one at that, you know nothing about the guy. He was a great ball player and that’s while playing clean in an era when others were cheating. If his career hadn’t been shortened by injury, he’d be a sure fire hall of famer.
Steeplejack
@Pararllax:
I’m way late to this thread, but I can’t let this pass. Randy Khan was referring to Marlins owner Derek Jeter, who “runs the franchise,” not to manager (coach) Don Mattingly.