That would be the Washington DC definition of a Gaffe.

What are the other players saying? Further reporting needed here.

Something weird about this story. Why would MLB be communicating directly with Renfroe about COVID testing for the Red Sox team? If this is information he came by second hand, I'd be interested to know who he heard it from.

Also, "the MLB"? Westerholm is a basketball reporter so I can understand him making this mistake, but he changed it in Renfroe's quote (Renfroe just called it "MLB" on the radio show). JFC.

What are the other players saying? Further reporting needed here.

I was listening to Rob Bradford on the pregame show last night, and he seemed to confirm what I had thought had happened. Basically:

(a) MLB communicated that their policy is for reduced testing for vaccinated players. Basically, don't test vaccinated players unless they have symptoms. Further, if someone has COVID symptoms, treat them; don't wait for the results of a subsequent COVID test to determine what to do. This was communicated early in the season, if not before.

(b) Boston has been following that approach all season. For example, earlier this year JD Martinez was put on the COVID IL and quarantined because he had symptoms. Subsequent tests showed he was negative for COVID, so after like a day he was back in the lineup.

(c) When Boston's recent outbreak took off, Cora, Kennedy, and the medical staff decided screw the MLB protocol, we're testing everyone, we don't care if they're vaccinated or not. MLB didn't tell them not to do it; they just decided on their own it was the thing to do.

(d) The team told the players they were doing (c) in spite of (a), and Renfroe's interpretation appears to be that (a) came after (c) - in other words, that the MLB communication was in response to the team deciding to test more. But (a) has been the policy all season long.

In short, if Renfroe is saying MLB's policy is to refrain from frequent testing of vaccinated players, and Boston is now testing them frequently, he's both absolutely correct on both points and saying nothing new about MLB's policy. If he's saying MLB told them to stop testing vaccinated players during this outbreak, then that goes against what MLB, team management, and team medical staff are saying about it. I would have to assume that the message Renfroe got would have had to be conveyed ultimately through at least two if not all three of those groups, so if they're all saying he's wrong and inaccurate, I'm gonna go with he's wrong and inaccurate. Maybe he heard it through Cora, who heard it from them; and maybe Cora misinterpreted it. But it still appears to have been misinterpreted.

What Bradford didn't confirm, or even discuss, is the talk-radio tendency to approach such things with a "This is so unbelievable at face value that I have no choice but to believe it" perspective. When I heard this whole thing started in an interview with Lou Merloni, I was not shocked. Bradford at least has standards.

Thanks #4, that makes sense. And your criticism of the talk radio approach is spot-on.

Yawn, It is tiresome to have any non-medical professionals talk about COVID at all. At least my medical professional wife keeps telling me that! Hey, how about those two throws the other night, though? And that bomb ovah the monstah!

Thank you, VI.

If wins are worth 8 or 9M (in FA), what will arb eligible players get who made 3M and produced 2.5 WAR? I hope they keep him, and not punish him for being honest, if not accurate.

Thank you, VI.

yeah, good stuff.

With that other channel entry locked, this seems as good a place as any for new developments on the COVID front.

Who blew up the other thread?

Renfroe probably heard it 5th-hand in the jacuzzi.

Well, I twisted the steering wheel a little on the direction of OT:P but no more than I'd seen elsewhere in the thread, I don't think.

Did it just get too big?

Did it just get too big?

It's possible. We've never had one get that large before, I don't think. It's also possible it timed out.

There's no indication from our absentee landlord that it was shuttered.

Sounds good to me. I tried resubmitting the old thread's article as a new item; had forgotten about this one.

Now I have to remember the questions I wanted to ask. The "natural immunity" evidence is at once hopeful and symptomatic in that it rests on the same Israeli data as the boosters, but the data itself has in many circles become pick-and-choose. Sigh.

I recall "too big" was the theory for why the first thread was locked, but the second was much much larger.

Being cynical, I'll dissent. I think Furtado shuttered it. I submitted Pujols' post-shot IL stay and explicitly stated it was meant as a new COVID thread yesterday as well. Maybe 7 pm? Maybe it will show up. Maybe not

Necro'ing things from the previous thread, some things aren't partisan when there's a clear right answer and those who are opposed to it are simply wrong.

Endangering others when there are known and approved preventative measures is simply wrong.

Anti-vax, anti-mask folks are clearly unable to think beyond themselves and think of others. Or they're sociopaths.

According to his profile, Jim hasn't been on the site since mid-July. I don't know how the hamster wheel that is the BTF system truly works, so it may be possible to nuke a thread without coming on board, but I'm leaning toward a less nefarious end.

As someone with keys I'll tell you a couple of things;

1. Threads sometimes, for reasons I don't know, get expiration dates and times on comments. These dates and times seem pretty random (e.g. whenever I post a soccer thread it gets an expiration time) and there is one shown in that thread. So I suspect that is just what happened.

2. I have activated the thread about the Pujols' IL stay Lassus referenced so y'all can shout at each until your heart's content. Along those lines I killed the resubmission the Mayor made on the assumption that the Lassus thread is sufficient.

3. I approved a couple of other submissions (Juan Soto's second half, couple others) as well. I don't check often but I can try to do so more frequently.

I’m sure I and others appreciate Jose approving some user-generated threads, since it appears that no one else views that as their responsibility. However, would it be too much to update the time stamp when green lighting such submissions? That used to be done, back when the site was semi-functional. Not much point in making submissions if they are going to show up a day (or more!) later, if at all, buried by more recent content from those who seem to have no interest in approving any content other than their own.

EDIT: It appears that those threads were somehow italicized, so a further fix may be needed.

What do you mean those threads were italicized? They look right to me, commenting is allowed, no italics to be found. Or did someone else fix it already?

Did it just get too big?

It's possible. We've never had one get that large before, I don't think.

That's what she said.

Was it bigger than PETCO? I can't imagine it would be, but I only lurked.

Absolutely fine with me, Jose. Thanks.

Necro'ing things from the previous thread, some things aren't partisan when there's a clear right answer and those who are opposed to it are simply wrong.

Though anything can be made partisan by challenging the existence of truth, as those postmodernists (heehee) on the right do: Koch-backed group fuels opposition to school mask mandates, leaked letter shows

I think the Petco thread was in the pre-registration days and predates the site redesign.

What do you mean those threads were italicized?

Strangely, most articles are italicized on the Newsstand page, but not when you click on them, at least for me.

I’m seeing the italics thing, too. It looks like there’s an unclosed italics tag in the header of the Juan Soto thread.

Actually the issue is that the open-itals tag is near the beginning of the header, but the close-itals tag is in the extended part of the header, so it doesn’t show up on the News Stand front page. If you click the link to the Soto thread, the italics there are closed. But the News Stand front page is busted right now because of it.

So this is gonna be the new Covid thread? Can it somehow be pinned so as we can all find it?

i know there are some people who got a problem about their own selves wearing masks but like exactly what is their problem with OTHER PEOPLE wearing masks?

i definitely remember pre covid seeing people ( i am guessing cancer patients because they didn't look real too healthy) wearing masks into stores and drugstores and nobody said a thing to them

I think the Pujols thread will be the new COVID one, BBC

the News Stand front page is busted right now because of it.

I've shortened the quote at the top of that article so it won't mess with the page formatting any more.

That aside, I can verify what Jose said in the first part of #19. I'll also add that, based on what I see behind the scenes for that thread, it is far less likely that someone willfully closed the thread, and extremely likely that the thread would have closed over a year ago if not for someone having intervened to prevent it (and apparently not intervening again before the clock struck figurative midnight yesterday).

The current default on threads appears to be that comments close 2 months after the thread is submitted and the thread is archived 6 months after submission (if comments are closed). On the thread in question the comments were set to close almost 18 months after submission. Someone gave y'all 16 extra months by moving the expiration to 9/30/21.

update: to replace closed thread, the new open covid discussion thread
-30-

Did it just get too big?

It's possible. We've never had one get that large before, I don't think. It's also possible it timed out.

As I remember, this was the second giant thread about COVID-10. The previous one also stopped working at somewhere around 13-14,000 posts.

As I remember, this was the second giant thread about COVID-10. The previous one also stopped working at somewhere around 13-14,000 posts.

I'm not aware of any limitation on the number of posts. But what I'm aware of I shared (and also interpreted from) in #31.

#34 You are correct about default thread length, but Jim has also mentioned that Expression Engine has trouble with threads that grow beyond a certain size. Which is probably why there's a default thread length.

Did it just get too big?

It's possible. We've never had one get that large before, I don't think. It's also possible it timed out.

the original NBA playoffs thread had at least 21,000 posts.

21142. Jim Furtado Posted: December 13, 2010 at 07:19 PM (#3709626)
As humorous as it is seeing the page count increase, I plan on closing this thread in the next week. If someone would like to volunteer to post a new basketball thread every other week (like the [OT] Soccer thread), please drop me an email. Thanks.

- 21170. Jim Furtado Posted: December 13, 2010 at 10:18 PM (#3709776)
I'm closing the thread to commenting. I won't be deleting the thread. The thread will not disappear. You'll be able to continue to talk about basketball just as the people continue to talk about soccer in the biweekly soccer thread. (Is anyone directly commenting on comment 14347?) Sorry but anyone disappointed with the closing of commenting on this thread is just looking for something to be bothered by.

The thread will stay in Hot Topics. Hot Topics refreshes every five minutes. Even if the soccer and new football thread both have a recent comment, there are still seven baseball stories. If someone waits a few minutes, there may be ten baseball stories.

As for site performance, as all you regulars know, the site's servers are in need of an upgrade. New servers will be online in February. Even when they are online, display of this thread requires a query of a two-million record comments table to find and order the 21,000+ comments. It's not a killer but it does take more effort than pulling up something with 50 comments that doesn't require pagination. I suggest it will be easier to recall previous conversations tied to the different links rather than trying to remember which page a topic showed up in.

The current default on threads appears to be that comments close 2 months after the thread is submitted and the thread is archived 6 months after submission (if comments are closed). On the thread in question the comments were set to close almost 18 months after submission. Someone gave y'all 16 extra months by moving the expiration to 9/30/21.

The topic was supposed to have disappeared, like a miracle.

The topic was supposed to have disappeared, like a miracle.

I get the sense you're suggesting I'm full of ####. Maybe not (and bad on me if that's not what you intended), but I'll address it anyway.

As of now, here's the Newsstand page with threads from 6 months ago and older. It goes back to April 5 (as of now), and then it shows no more for 2021, and 4 threads total for all of 2020 (all of which had manipulated expiration dates, two I can confirm because I had overridden the default dates when I posted them). Within a dozen threads from there you can find threads posted by Repoz from nearly a decade ago, which is I assume around the time the expiration defaults were put in place. Over 27,000 threads were submitted to this site in that time, and the Newsstand now only shows about a dozen. Most threads disappear after 6 months, not as some nefarious plot of tyranny and censorship and intolerance toward free expression, but because, like, nobody overrode a default. They were supposed to have disappeared, not like a miracle, but like a normal thing that happens to threads on this site all the time.

vi, I think he was simply making a joke about the famous Trump quote.

I'm not aware of any limitation on the number of posts. But what I'm aware of I shared (and also interpreted from) in #31.

I meant no criticism, but was just pointing out that there was a previous very long thread on this topic that stopped working at around the same point. I would be fine with a new thread every month or two, just to keep the threads from getting so large. Almost anything on a computer slows down when the numbers get large.

Sorry I missed 38. Yes, vi, it was indeed a play on trump's great prediction.