Chisoxfn

I don’t like these things. Doesn’t that just push more issues into the future. Paces philosophy is always to rob from the future and this team isn’t good enough to do that for.

Its okay - Everyone ignores when I hit on the 10-50 times greater and impacts it has (or rip me for those views - even though they are as substantiated as all the other stuff posted). None of these new facts downplay the importance of what we are doing (in terms of social distancing / slowing the curve). It just points out that the higher end of the models was likely VERY VERY wrong. The facts also remain that mortality rates in high risk and elderly is VERY VERY high. In those non high risk demographics, it very well might be more closely aligned to the flu (the problem is...no one has enough data to know for sure and there seem to be some extreme outliers where very healthy individuals get hit and harder than anyone would ever suspect). The big difference is we do have treatments for the flu & vaccines (albeit not always effective).

I don't get this. Burton is just dead money anyway. Weren't they better off spending the small benefit they had on seeing if he was able to get back on his feet and be productive?

This

Not when those companies can’t be as productive when this is going on. Not to mention the PR boom for whatever company or companies deliver on this. All kinds of large companies are driving and making decisions to try and help the broader country. Stating that big pharma would rather burn down hospitals than help the cause is absolutely absurd and downright deplorable.

Where do you guys jump to all these conclusions that US is going to rapidly going to reopen everything. If you look throughout this thread, everyone has stated multiple times that Trump was going to be overly aggressive. If we listened to everyone in here making these reactions, Fauci would have been fired 10 times, everything would have been reopened for a few weeks (and all our hospitals would be back logged, etc). Mistakes were made but the plan outlined seemed to jive with what many other countries have laid out and it doesn't put a hard timeframe on everything. Basically lays out all the qualitative considerations to open things up. As I always say...arguing about all of these random nuances plays right into Trump and his supporters hands. Guy is crazy and his strategy is to get everyone to follow the roller coaster vs. button down on the real things that matter (such as the fact that we don't have the testing & antibody programs yet to really get past this). The good news is social distancing is working...but the initial social distancing really did one thing...BUY time. If we weren't able to get our ducks in a row while buying that time, than we have more issues because what comes next will end up being a W shaped recovery vs. a V or U shaped recovery.

Michael Finley wasn't on the original list of GM candidates from Woj, however, Cuban was interviewed and he seemed to imply the Bulls had asked for permission and gave a nonchalant answer. Seemed to imply that Cuban would support Finley. This is different than Riley who is blocking all of his guys from interviewing with Bulls (maybe because he has bigger plans for them in his front office or because he just has a grudge from the Jordan era). He should be thankful, its because of the glory Bulls that the term 3 peat (which he coined) became a thing. Of course Riley thought it would end up being the Magic led Lakers who had its 3 peat...but you know...Jordan

This drug has had very favorable results thus far. A lot of optimism on this one. Would be huge.

I thought one of the Bucs TE's would have been a good fit before they got Jimmy G. Now that they paid Jimmy G, I don't really know how they can acquire a TE, unless it is via the draft. They still have a major need for a young TE, but they don't have the draft picks to acquire one via trade nor do they have the cap space to be too aggressive (they probably have the most money of any franchise in the NFL allocated to TE right now).

I LOL'd.

Agreed with you and MLB has deep coffers, they can figure something out. I would suspect sports will see upticks in ratings as well and globally you could see a resurgence in baseball if they could pull it off and truly be one of the main distractions for a nation going through a unique event. Wouldn't any of us do the same?

I think given the unique circumstances of what is going on, I am 100% good throwing the traditions out the window and doing something unique this year. Heck, could turn into a thing where every 10 years MLB has a one-year shake-up type of deal. I still think NBA should throw out its traditional format to some hybrid March Madness style format (with a caveat I would not have the final 4 a one-game elimination).

The one worry is some of these Knicks connections (cause LOL...Knicks). Hughes I actually like (and Clipppers front office is very diverse and obviously just having the logo to learn from is awesome) and Lloyd obviously had a ton of success with Chicago so maybe it is more of an issue that Orlando just has more macro challenges that in his role, Lloyd can't address.

Exactly - Pax knew what was going on the whole time. Doesn't mean he is going to straight up say it to the media. They were laying all the groundwork for the eventual search at the All Star Game. And I am very excited at who they have brought in and how they are going about this change. My caveat is, I wasn't thrilled with the 3 leaked names the Bulls are looking at from a GM perspective (hopefully this is an initial list and we see better names emerge). Lloyd was the best one (and obviously was very successful in Chicago)...but whether to his own fault or not, Orlando has not exactly excelled during his tenure there. Marc Eversley of the Philadelphia 76ers, Mark Hughes of the Los Angeles clippers and Matt Lloyd of the Orlando Magic.

Except for this doesn't align to what has been reported. Maybe that was the straw that told the Reinsdorf's they would get rid of Gar. But Paxson apparently went to the Reinsdorf's in December (well before the All Star Game) and told them basically that the front office had failed, hadn't kept up with the evolving NBA and that they were too stuck in their ways at this point to make the necessary changes (I think this was more that everyone has too many ties to the equation and therefor unable to make the necessary changes). I also think Paxson was tired of his role, etc and he told the Reinsdorf's he would do whatever they needed but they should make the change. Basically Paxson fell on his own sword to drive this change. It is why he is still around as a special adviser too because that is pretty rare and it shows he cares for the organization and he realized that a change at the top (and throughout) was needed.

Very high.

Pax staying on as a senior adviser (but again...follows narrative that Pax would do as much / little as he wanted).

Death numbers are pretty legit. Case numbers are not. And balta...when I used the 1 in x and than shifted out I was purely making an example so anyone who read the post could understand what I am saying. No one believes mortality rates for this virus are 2-3 percent. Those are grossly inflated numbers. They also aren’t .1/.2 percent which is the flu. They lie somewhere in between and if I were to get, they are somewhere between .5 and 1 percent (in a controlled setting where you have ventilators and equipment).

I don't think you and I are saying the same thing. There are emerging views that with a larger portion of the population being asymptametic (potentially as high as 50%) and just general underst-estimating of the overall count (much more so than initial estimates), that the mortality rates may be massively elevated (still well in excess of the flu so I'm not doing some flu comparison here). Obviously...if you don't social distance, you have more infected, hospitals crash, and mortality skyrockets (but that is a different variable driving the mortality than the variable I am discussing). That said...basic math says if I think 1 person dies out of every 100 (if hospitals are safe) but instead, it is actually 1 person per 1000...you end up at a dramatically different point of the basic mortality curve. And from there, you tweak mortality based upon the stress & capacity of the hospitals, including relevant equipment, etc to treat and ventilate, etc. You have to look at all the independent factors and then when you run the model, you blend in the components to come up with new projections. Social distancing is the single biggest reason we have contained it and you can't lax very much. The widely held wisdom is you need 90% social distancing to shut this thing down in 3 months (doesn't mean you have killed it...but that is what you are probably talking about). If you are only at 80% of population doing Social Distancing...it is going to take 4 months. Anything 70% below and you just flat out won't contain it. That is why it will be paramount once we do knock this down that everyone is ready to rapidly identify and respond (including rapid shutdowns of borders, etc) until they actually have a cure and/or an effective way to treat this thing. Further, the R0 has been fundamentally lowered due to this measures (moving from 2.5+ to 0.6). R0 < 1 would indicate the virus will continue to dwindle and eventually die-out over time. To go a little deeper, there is also emerging research being done on select comorbidities and what is driving such the high rates of mortality within subsets of the population and an emerging UK study is believing the COVID virus is getting into the body by latching on to ACE2 receptors. Specifically patients with hypertension, diabetes, and other cardiovascular diseases tend to take groups of drugs which are known as Ace Inhibitors and/or angiotensin receptors, which cause an individual to put out more ACE2 receptors, which increase their susceptibility to the infection (and depth of the infection). This only explains these particular comorbidities, but obviously research is being done broadly and who knows whether any of this holds or not.

Welcome back. Hell of a memory you have. I hope you can say the same thing about logging on to ST 50 years from now Also as owner of Soxtalk, just want to tell the rest of you, welcome aboard. Make this place your home and feel free to venture to the other parts of the board too. Go Sox and stay safe during these unique times!

Bulls did officially hire Connelly (former asst gm in Phoenix and was scouting more recently for Nuggets). No word on the role but more exciting is reports that Bulls new front office will have multiple asst. gm’s and that Reinsdorf has evidently vowed to open up his pocket book. Also it sounds like Booth, Philly VP, Clippers Asst Gm and Matt Lloyd (former Bull) all targets for GM role. No word yet on Nazr but he might be another potential asst gm or have a seperate front office role. I like Booth and Clips exec best but have no beef with Lloyd (hasn’t been as good in Orlando but was great in past stop in Chicago) None of this may work but man it is extremely refreshing and exciting. Lots of fresh blood coming and a heck of a lot of depth being added. Fact that our new pres has tons of global credibility is huge too (going back to his days leading NBA international scouting).

Social distancing absolutely has worked (and is buying us time for sure). The specific factor I am aware they are looking in to adjusting is a revised mortality rate to reflect new views on under reporting. I am sure they are also modifying projections based upon emerging data/trends on social distancing.

Oh I agree with you entirely. There is nowhere that already has herd immunity (aren’t we talking about a pretty high percentage needed for full herd immunity 80-90%...albeit even 50% would help). I have seen some emerging data indicating current data seems to indicate pretty heavy underreporting with conservative estimates falling within 10-50 times. My understanding is the imperial college (or whatever the uk school is) is in the midst to a large refinement of their study.

Man...McMahon ruined it. I thought XFL was even better this time around. Loved some of the new concepts they introduced (I will admit I didn't watch near enough after first couple weeks...but that was more due to my busy schedule than not enjoying the games).

Also some smoke, from Cowley, that Griffin might be emerging as a front runner for the head coach gig. I'd be 100% okay with that.