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Tuesday, April 28, 2020
So, with the very likely possibility that baseball and basketball — at minimum — will be played to empty stadiums, it begs the question: Will it be as fun?
And before you answer, think about it for a second. No crowd noise. No intensity that builds for the home team or against the away team. Yes, the scoreboard will tell the tale, but the pressure is cranked up when you have a building full of crazy fans screaming their lungs out.
I get that it’s a business and that the money’s at the ML level, but considering crowds, distance from population centers, and the pleasures of relaxed fandom, I’ve been thinking that we might just run some mLs instead.
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Also, I've enjoyed the hell out of the empty-stadium CPBL games I've watched this month.
When I watch my team play on the road, I'm always rooting for a dead silent crowd anyway.
My idea: Use cardboard cutout/inflatable crowd things, but sell "virtual season tickets" or whatever to fans, where you can not only have your face put on a mannequin, but can open up your microphone and it will be mixed into crowd noise (be a bigoted jackass and MLB is keeping your money while shutting your mic off for the rest of the season, and quite possibly giving your mannequin a t-shirt that says "bigoted jackass").
I'm kind of only half-kidding here; it's only slightly more ridiculous than the time the Marlins were selling tickets to a no-hitter after the fact.
(I will personally pay for the kazoo guy in Fenway's RF bleachers)
But sports at home is already a separated experience. Probably the tense moments won't seem as tense which means the joy/sorrow won't be as great. I suspect the average viewer would take less notice of the best defensive plays or the ones where the runner tries to stretch the double into a triple due to the lack of crowd noise signalling that this is a big deal. You probably get more used to it but we've all become so attuned to those "social" cues.
That's a pretty big "at least". You're doing a whole ton of air travel and hotels for all of the players, coaches, trainers, etc.
The thing is, we won't be allowed to get used to it. If they start that way, there will be a ton of columnists, radio hosts, and Twitter users screaming about how awful it is. Even if they are a small minority of fans, MLB will work with the broadcasters to fake the noise somehow.
Appears to be 7 domes right now...
Toronto: Rogers Centre - Built 1989.
Tampa: Tropicana Field - Built 1990. (closed roof, can't open)
Arizona: Chase Field- Built 1998.
Seattle: SafeCo Field- Built 1999.
Houston: Minute Maid Park- Built 2000.
Miami: Marlins Stadium- Built 2012.
Milwaukee: Miller Park- Built 2001.
Now, doing games in either Tampa or Miami would be the same as always - not like they get crowds (10,016 in Miami last year per game, 14,552 in Tampa for a playoff team).
AL East: 2
AL Central: 0
AL West: 2
NL East: 1
NL Central: 1
NL West: 1
So only the AL Central has no stadium that fits the criteria.
Hard to say on rainouts as I can't find an easy source for rainouts per team. The Angels last May had their 12th rainout ever (first since 1995) so their park is a safe one I'd say. Dodgers last one was in 2000, San Diego has had 3 in Petco Park (opened 2004). So that gives us 10 parks in 5 divisions that could be used easily.
Canada hasn't been hit anywhere near as hard as the US by COVID (US 17.2 dead per 100k, in Canada 7.67 per 100k) thus making Toronto attractive by that standpoint, but Canada also isn't opening up much yet (especially the province of Ontario where Toronto is). Big advantage for Toronto though is the hotel that is built into the park so players technically would never need to leave the park.
Still, lets see...
AL East all play in Toronto, AL Central in Houston (same time zone), AL West in Seattle, NL East in Miami, NL Central in Milwaukee, NL West in Arizona or use the Dodgers & Angels & San Diego parks (close together). 2 to 3 games a day in each park easily (if 3 games then 1 team plays a double header each day - give them the first and last time that day). Try to avoid scheduling teams for the last game the day before they have a morning game, or the morning game the day after they play the late game. It could work.
As a Jays fan I know the Jays owners also own their park so that makes it easy for them to set it up. Not sure on the others, but I suspect none would have trouble getting the right to use the park 24/7 if needed.
CWS (on WGN) vs BAL (on MASN)
"Chicago White Sox at Baltimore Orioles Box Score, April 29, 2015 | Baseball-Reference.com"
SABR: April 29, 2015: Orioles and White Sox play for normalcy in empty stadium
This all should be a treasure trove for researchers to look into home field advantage. Does a roaring crowd make a difference?
That's because most of them just aren't funny. (Sure, it's funny to the writers, who come up with the same "let's make fun of you-know-who!" joke over and over again...but for the rest of us, not so much.)
The appropriate names for that would be the Grapefruit League, the Cactus League, and the Armadillo League. They could then pump up the postseason by saying that those three leagues have always been at war with each other.
Or if that's too unwieldy, call it the COVID-19 League. Just don't call it the 2020 Major League season.
Hey, if it's 1984 all over again, then the Tigers are back in first place!
My favorite Kirk Gibson World Series home run, complete with Sparky Anderson's running commentary.
Alex [as in A-Rod, the spit diva's boyfriend for a short while] is a really sweet guy. He’s a smart guy. He’s a good person. Alex lives in this world of cash-flow businesses, and Silicon Valley lives in this world of the potential of the future. So it was actually kind of a really fun conversation. Alex was really into car dealerships, and I was like, "We’re all about self-driving cars. Nobody’s going to buy a car. You want to buy a car dealership? I’m going to short your car dealership."
Which just goes to show that common sense isn't really required to start a company in Silicon Valley.
“Ensure” is the right word, unless someone gets paid for the rainout.
In Arizona, Houston, and Arlington, it is more about the summer heat.
In St. Petersburg and Miami, it’s about half rain and half summer heat/humidity.
There was a very good Athletic piece on this game recently and one of the things a number of players complained about was that they could hear the announcers commentating on what they were doing while they were doing it and how awkward that was
- Every Oriole.
That is a shame. Is there no way to limit the posting in a particular thread to certain members? Or exclude others from posting? Beyond just using ignore, I mean.
I don't know you could, other than an outright banning (and I don't think anyone actually did get banned). But the thread had once again gotten back on track. There wasn't any of the vitriol going on when it got shut down.
That's one of the funny aspects of basketball, how the TV/radio commentators sit about five feet from the court.
*I'll cop to replying to YC or Mr. Dot a few times when I shouldn't have. Whatever part I played in the shutdown, I apologize.
just a really foolish decision, frankly, given the alternatives.
makes me reassess if it's worth continuing here at all.
Been a while since I've seen Jim shut a thread down but in the past I've never had to guess why.
Here's Aunt Bea's last post, which is as good a starting spot as any (also has the added value of considering the Hudson Valley "downstate", which this native appreciates).
AuntBea odeurs de parfum de distance sociale Posted: April 30, 2020 at 01:23 AM (#5946055)
If (stay with me...), you assume:
A) the last NY state serosurvey was 4500 people (to get to 7500 people total from the original 3000)
B) 2/3 of those 4500 (i.e., 3000) were from Downstate (because downstate is 2/3 the population of NY), averaging a little over 20%, and
C) 1000 FDNY/EMT (at 17.1%) and 1000 NYPD (at 10.5%) were tested this week, as was supposed to happen per reports Monday,
then you actually get an average of around 18% Downstate.
No idea if that's what really happened. I wish they wouldn't just throw numbers out there haphazardly without explaining them better.
Yeah - I wouldn't discount this possibility.
I'm by no means a DBA, but databases are configured and optimized to meet a standard set of operations with a standard volume within a standard set of parameters. Doesn't mean they can't exceed those parameters, but inevitably, you run into problems and either you change the configurations to adapt or you just kill the outliers because it's just an outlier... 8K posts over 2 months is significant in comparison to 99%.
It's why some of the OT threads were turned into monthlies...
I suspect that NYC residents (particularly in the most ravaged areas) may have substantially worse health than our Swedish friends (USA has 50% more obesity, 100% more diabetes). But come on. Does that account for such dramatic differences?
NYC, with its ~8 million, has ~13,000 official deaths.
Sweden, with its ~10 million, has 2,000 official deaths. (Couldn't find numbers for Stockholm itself)
Area of Sweden: 173,860 sq mi
Area of New York City: 469 sq mi
Theories:
1. They are not counting deaths in the same manner (I don't know if this is true, just a possible explanation)
2. Differences in population health/risk factors
3. NYC is seeing a more deadly strain of the virus
4. Sweden has much better treatment options
#2 is probably true, but almost certainly not enough to account for such differences. If 4 were true, we would see this in hospitalizations, I don't think that's it.
My guess is #3 being the biggest factor.
I think that, at this point, it's probably unknowable. Which is another way of saying that maybe it's #3. But maybe it's not. Maybe there's some environmental factor that hasn't been understood yet.
Naturally, our priors may be wrong. Maybe Sweden is nowhere close to 25% infected. Maybe NYC is way above 25%. These antibodies tests seem pretty sketchy still.
As I've stated repeatedly, I think that Sweden's success (or lack thereof) is basically impossible to analyze. We can't even agree if they have been successful. Agreeing on why is hopeless.
3. NYC is seeing a more deadly strain of the virus
These two factors could easily interact. A particular strain of the virus might interact more with the health problems that NY have more of.
Italy
France/Spain/Belgium/Netherlands/UK
Germany/Austria/Switzerland/Czech Republic
Denmark/Sweden/Norway/Finland
Not all of those have seen the exact same trends and outcomes, but there are definite themes, I think. Regional variation makes a lot of sense.
EDIT: also, tied to factor 2., I'm betting air pollution in NYC is a lot higher than Sweden, and it has been a linking factor behind many of the worst-hit cities. Milan and Madrid have long-term problems, London's the same. This is a respiratory issue, after all.
Not all of those have seen the exact same trends and outcomes, but there are definite themes, I think. Regional variation makes a lot of sense.
Of course, given the different strategies, you'd expect Sweden to have more deaths now. Their approach is going to front load the deaths by letting everyone get exposed quickly. If Sweden is at 30% exposure and Norway is at 5%, it's pointless to discuss deaths per capita.
The data I have seen indicate that while NYC's population (86% <= 65 y.o.) skews slightly younger than does Sweden's (80% <= 65 y.o.), but that the percentage of deaths <=65 years old through early April in NYC was much more than Sweden, like 30% vs 5%.
[ETA: IIRC the largest observed factor of COVID-19 deaths has been age >=65.]
1. Did Sweden shelter the 65+ year olds earlier and better than NYC?
2. Is the differential impact on the younger NYC population due to socioeconomic differences?
Totally true. It also has a material faction of schoolmarms and weirdos and eccentrics and unfortunately the weird and schoolmarmy and eccentric side of the place has come to predominate. My syllogism is essentially:
1. I'm a humanist.
2. Humanism is the study of human beings.
3. A subset of human beings are weird and eccentric.
It's going to wind up being mostly 1 and 2.
Maybe. But if the premises of the lockdown hold, Sweden should have far more infected.(*) If we went through all this, and we have a higher infection percentage, it's been a dreadful failure.
(*) I don't see that they've recanted or watered down the prediction that they're "weeks" from herd immunity.
I'd bet the same way, but air pollution has gone down dramatically in NYC since the lockdown, which should have been an accelerant/tailwind for the effectiveness of the lockdown. It doesn't seem to have been that at all, and you could likely say the same thing for places like Milan and Madrid. You get people sheltering *and* you get reduced bad respiratory air. Still doesn't seem to have made much of a difference.
Wouldn't the air quality issue be more of a long-term exposure leading people who catch the virus to be less likely to fight it off, rather than the population suddenly benefiting from cleaner air?
That is correct. Air pollution could be a risk factor in that people exposed to air pollution during their lives could be at higher risk.
I would think that's a big factor. Not just current income levels, but where people grew up. If a huge chunk of your population grew up in what were at that time third world countries, with significant malnutrition and rampant childhood disease, their baseline health is always going to be worse than a population that grew up in an affluent Western country.
This is true. However, without reliable evidence on whether Sweden has actually managed further exposure - there was data circulating around Stockholm's exposure rates, but it was reportedly withdrawn due to math/data mistakes - it's even harder to know this.
I would have assumed that too. However, one estimate from the UK was that the reduced air pollution since the lockdown has saved approximately 1,700 lives. That seems extremely high to me, but they did the science, not me. (Low air quality in several parts of the UK is an un-remarked-upon scandal in my book, as the husband of an asthmatic.) Short-term effects could be material too.
One satirist/hauntologist I follow on Twitter lives less than 10 miles from Berne, the capital (EDIT: of Switzerland, duh). He regularly posts photos of his daily exercise, which is basically 'tour some Alps'. That's got to be good for the lungs.
Even this is difficult to evaluate. NYC easily could have had a way, way larger dose of the virus around March 15 than Stockholm did. Maybe OOMS larger. It's been 6 weeks, and exponential growth moves fast, but possibly Stockholm is only now catching up?
The proper comparison for NYC is not Stockholm, it's what NYC would have been like absent the lockdown. Which might have basically been an Escape from New York situation. Or not much different. We don't know.
That's certainly true, but there's no real "absent the lockdown" to use, so it has to be proxied. (Or modeled, I guess. The lead, influential modeler in England had the (allegedly) modeled effect of the lockdown as something like reducing from 550K to 20K deaths, and the experience of the last six-odd weeks shows that that's flat out cray-cray.)
Ugh. Don’t be That Guy.
Unless you're Johannes Brahms, who was this guy. Then definitely be that guy.
But the UK has also tried for herd immunity and has lost 0.053 percent of its population, yes, about a third of NYC but less slowind down, I do believe and certainly a different set from Stockholm.
Just as a reference point; overall I agree with Fish that there are too many variables to account for to meaningfully compare cities by death rates.
They gave that up pretty rapidly; I think there were only a few days where that was a detectable strategy. They're now much closer to a full lockdown than that, though not as extreme as Italy has been.
That's probably true, but it's the wrong question. This isn't just an academic study we can take our time on. The lockdown is such a massive step -- 30 million new jobless claims in 6 weeks, massive decline in production, food and supply runs and shortages, massive loss of first amendment and other basic human freedoms, elections cancelled, looming threats to proper electoral functioning in a presidential election year -- that its effectiveness has to be almost blatantly obvious and scream out at you in the way that Mike Trout's stats do.(*) If you have to the tease the data, run a bunch of multiple regressions, model, stroke your chin, debate, contemplate, and deliberate and you still can't come up with anything remotely definitive or compelling, the answer is: No, it didn't work.
(*) I have little question its designers believed the numbers *would* go "pop" and the impact ex post *would* be obvious -- but they didn't and it wasn't ... and now they're just floundering. At this point, we're essentially locking down for the same reason we stayed in Vietnam. Not good enough.
Yeah, this is definitely not settled science here. I have no idea what the true rate of Sweden is. But I strongly doubt the NYC rate is over 25% - they've tested firefighters and police, seemingly high risk groups who have a lot of interaction on their jobs, and they aren't even testing at 25%. I have to assume that the stock traders who have been forced from big offices to day-trading are going to bring the overall rates higher than that.
If the Sweden rate was correct then you cannot keep the death rates as equal by assuming the NYC infection rate is higher - you'd have to go well over 100%.
But if you chart actual deaths against those predicted by the models - not the fanciest models, just X*2.5*2.5*2.5*2.5... - the world has perhaps already saved millions of lives. Pull up that graph, and it's not a chin-stroker. The death rate in many places climbed just as the models predicted in March, then slowed, and now has reversed.
Again, Sweden isn't really not in a lockdown. It's a moderate lockdown, an attenuated lockdown. They've closed colleges, halted domestic travel, huge numbers of people are working from home, etc. They are not just letting the virus burn through the population as quickly as possible. It's possible that they've hit on the best mix of open/shut, and that we should've done the same thing as them. It's also possible that a Sweden style response in NYC would have been an unmitigated disaster. It's impossible to know.
(I support the effort to re-open economies in the US, on a community-by-community basis, as long as we are prepared to constantly evaluate the success of such changes, and are ready to pump the breaks and re-close when necessary.)
If you can't easily regress effect versus lockout time in days among US states and find a clear impact, the lockdown didn't work. "Not working" doesn't mean "no effect whatsoever," it means "nowhere near enough effect to justify continuation." (It's still quite possible there was "no effect whatsoever," but it's neither here nor there at this point.)
(*) Are Belarus nationals traveling and if so, are they subject to automatic quarantine far in excess of travelers from lockdown countries?
And in certain places the curfews are imposed and enforced by local gangs. Curfew violations are beyond risky there.
This is not convincing.
It always strikes me that the only 2 times the Padres made it to the World Series, they ran into the buzz-saw of a team of destiny -- the 84 Tigers, who started the year 35-5, and the 114 win 1998 Yankees.
I have to wonder how things are managed in Sweden, and whether that makes a difference.
If retail businesses do choose to open on Monday, the province said they must ensure staff and customers keep a distance of at least two metres, except for brief exchanges. All businesses will be limited to 50 per cent of normal business occupancy, or one person per 10 square metres – whichever is lower.
Staff must use the self-screening tool before coming to work, and they must stay home if they are ill. Customers are not allowed in if they are showing symptoms of the virus.
Businesses must post external signs explaining the physical distancing measures, and post floor markings for line ups.
Businesses must have only one entry, and entry into the business has to be regulated to prevent congestion. Hand sanitizer must be available at the entrances and exits.
The limit of no more than 10 people gathering in common areas remains in effect, and any congregation of people should be discouraged, the province said.
The province also said cashless and no-contact payment should be used whenever possible.
oh come on.
the coronavirus thread got shut down?
He was on fire, and it's a travesty his work was ended. Who are the people who actually "complain" about the threads? Do they even exist? Is one of them the weirdo who often bursts into threads with something like "Please close this thread. Thanks."? Very strange that the response to anonymous complainers would be anything other than, "Get a grip."
And I'd advocate a continued no groveling, no begging, no negotiating approach. Liberals don't beg book burners.
As an Orange County NY* resident, I always say that "Upstate New York" begins at the sign that says "Welcome to Yonkers".
*8,650 cases as of this writing; if we were a state, we'd be 22nd or so...
What is this?
A shotgun.
BBTF is the on-line community I go to for information and camaraderie during events like this.
As was pointed out, even with the problem posters, it is still so much better than what lurks in too many parts of the internet.
Basically a questionnaire asking if you're sick or have traveled recently:
https://sharedhealthmb.ca/covid19/screening-tool/
I grew up in Rockland. For us, upstate began at Harriman State Park.
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