Balta1701

Representative John Lewis passed tonight.

Puig is now a free agent again after testing positive for COVID-19, his contract was contingent on testing negative.

There's 2 versions of "fighting for the kids". One of them is "making sure they get the best education we can offer". The other one is "keeping them alive with limited long-term damage from a dangerous virus". If kids are getting long-term damage, even in asymptomatic cases, then they are losing out if the virus is passed around. https://www.sun-sentinel.com/coronavirus/fl-ne-pbc-health-director-covid-children-20200714-xcdall2tsrd4riim2nwokvmsxm-story.html

So in person you agree they should get a large hazard pay bonus?

FWIW, I think some of that work has happened, but all that extra skills training over the summer...costs money.

I cannot answer that, I can only tell you how it went for me. I had a 3x a week class at a university level, and I went with asynchronous options for 2/3 of my course meetings because I didn't want to force students to show up if they were having technical difficulties, everything went on Youtube after I recorded it. I had some organized meetings, but group work became nearly impossible. I had some nice outdoor exercises planned that I had to scrap. I also had a "field camp" that i was supposed to teach, which became a virtual class. That one turned into an hour of scheduled instruction per day (recorded for people who couldn't make it), and then 2-4 hours depending on the day of managing office hours, answering questions as well as I could, and working with TAs to get things graded. I couldn't force students to attend it all, but it definitely was not "an hour a week" for anything I did.

Are you ok with a large salary increase as hazard pay?

1. Why is it the teachers' responsibility that all these places opened up when they shouldn't have? It seems like you're angry at them regardless of how well quarantined they might have been. Personal responsibility swings both ways - if people aren't responsible under these circumstances, then they don't get schools opened. They haven't been. Abbott and DeSantis told everyone to go to bars and restaurants, so they did. 2. I don't know what situation you had where your student only got "1 total hour of instruction over an entire month", but that doesn't sum up the final classes i taught. They were pieced together, we had lots of technical issues to struggle with, I didn't get to spend as much time one on one with all 55 students as I wanted, and yeah in the end I lost some who just checked out because I couldn't keep an eye on them, but the last class required the equivalent of weeks of preparation to get ready and I did the best I could. Content was available for several hours a day for that class, if the students chose to access it. I know of others at the grade school level in this area who were spending many hours working on things when they could, and teachers were treating it like full-time jobs. What specifically happened in your district, I don't know.

1. Dude, you're the one who suggested that limiting student activity outside of the classroom for purposes of safety was an option, now you're giving me the legal argument that the teachers can't have any say over that. I think it's obviously not going to happen for a thousand reasons, but you suggested that. 2. If I could provide a great solution I would. By virtue of the US failing to fix this problem over the last 3 months, there is no great solution. If it's not safe to have 25 people in a classroom, why is it safe for 15 to come and go on alternating days? Its not. Given appropriate preparation in an area and low virus transmissioo=n, you might be able to get it there, but where are the billions of dollars it will take to make that happen? Where are the supplies of protective gear, of face shields, how are you going to regularly test anyone who has flu-like symptoms at a school? My wife knows a teacher planning to buy and surround herself with a transparent shower curtain. University faculty councils are telling their instructors to make sure their wills are updated and telling them to have 2 potential "replacement instructors" lined up for every course. 3. It is dangerous going to the grocery store, but reasonable precautions can limit that danger. It is much more dangerous going places where you are with the same people for tens of minutes in a confined area, and at the very least major precautions (hospital-level) are required in that circumstance, that's just how this virus works. The reality is that in either case, it's not going to be a real education. To make it safe, there's not going to be anything resembling group work or social interaction. You're going to be basically learning while in the equivalent of a prison. It's going to be a traumatic situation in either case. But I'm still waiting for the "These need to be open!!!" to explain where the tens of billions of dollars are going to come from to make it happen. Major League Baseball is testing every single one of their players 2x a week, and in the last 2 weeks another 20 or so people have gotten it. That's what has been required to have people 60 feet 6 inches apart, how on Earth can we justify putting 15 people in small rooms? I'm currently an out of work educator. Frankly, I don't feel safe enough applying for any further positions as one, and am looking for alternative careers currently. This virus and the decisions of Republican politicians to let it run wild has basically ended my career as one.

1. Great. Tell me how you're going to put that in writing and verify it as an offer to the teachers unions before you complain about those unions, because literally no one is describing that for any school. Instead you're going to send the parents, especially the low-income parents, back out into the world, where they can pick it up, bring it home, and use a kid as a bridge to infect the teacher. 2. If 1/3 of the teachers have been hiding indoors that would be a lower rate than most of the country. Are you ready to replace 1/3 of the teachers in your kid's school over the next month if they opt out/quit? 3. 50 million is the school population in the US. I guess your school can do an NBA style bubble where all the kids live and sleep on the premises 24/7 and that is a reasonable strategy. Not quite sure the logistics will work out for everyone though.

Ok, as long as we put all 50 million school children in NBA style bubbles away from their families, we're in good shape. Now we have a plan.

Absolutely no part of that quote refers to other teams throughout the sport. You're literally making up things Reinsdorf didn't say because what he did say cannot be supported with reasonable numbers.

Again, that's not what Jerry Reinsdorf said. He said nothing about the other teams. He specifically said that his franchise was going to take "losses" that were in the "9 figures". I currently find those numbers to be false and unsupportable.

Not when there's a minimum amount of virus that you must inhale in order to actually become infected. That's why masks are potentially effective in the first place; if the tiniest bit of virus got you sick (measles does this), then a mask does very little because it can't block every virus particle. Instead, the masks drop the dose that a person exhales, so that even if a person is walking around giving off the virus, there are fewer people likely to receive an infectuous dose. This is why restaurants and bars and gyms are such hotspots. You are in single spots, with people talking/exhaling, for tens of minutes at a time, maybe more than an hour at a time. You get a large dose, and being 6 feet away doesn't really help you. This is why it is doesn't create super-spreader events outside, because air mixes rapidly so even if 1 person gets an infectuous dose, the surrounding crowd is unlikely to do so. That isn't to say grocery store workers can't get it, if they have someone come through with no protection and they spread it into the full store environment, they could be inhaling it from that one person for hours - that's how we've gotten major outbreaks at a few grocery stores. But this is why restaurants and bars are things people are commenting on as transmission sites far more than grocery stores. Masks are pretty effective over a few minutes even if a person is sick. They're not very effective over tens of minutes in confined spaces, you need true isolation/full medical PPE in that case.

I'm not arguing that. I'd argue instead that less than 1/2 of the team's revenue comes from money earned directly at the ballpark, the team has already removed large expenses including 60% of this year's player payroll, and TV and sponsorship money will still come in if they play these games. If you want to tell me that they're going to play all 162 games next year with no fans the whole time and paying full salaries, in that case yes I believe 9 figure losses are possible, but we had a multi-month negotiation this year because that wasn't going to happen. There's no way the losses this season are anywhere close to 9 figures, not when MLB itself got to choose the season length as a rough "Break-even" number.

No we don't, the people at grocery stores interact with the people they pass for minutes at a time, not hours. They are also getting protective gear, including shields, which each union has every right to make a similar complaint about...and if 1/3 of the people at a grocery store quit because they have health concerns, they can be replaced rather quickly, unlike with teachers.

Would you go every day right now into 8 hours of meetings in a conference room with 12 people at a time, swapping in and out every hour?

Nope, he specifically says losses due to "Stadium expenses". There's no way I can possibly get to $100 million in losses based on the Forbes numbers without basically 0 revenue whatsoever. $220 million in expenses for a full year last year, $80 million in MLB payroll reduced by the shortened season, leaves $140 million to pay all the other costs. They'd have to still be paying every beer vendor and everyone else who normally works there seasonally a full salary and all the police overtime and everything else to get losses that high, and that's still assuming 0 revenue, which will not be true if they offer an MLB.tv package because I'm gonna go ahead and buy it so revenue will be nonzero.

Given that they're not paying much in taxes on the parking lots, that's not an expense though right? A loss of revenue isn't a loss of money if there's no expense associated with it? Yes they have less revenue to the TV network they own, but if they're not running in the red on the team, that's just "Less profit", not "loss of money", you need to be spending money on something to actually be in the red.

This is easier done with the Forbes numbers. Last year's revenue at the gate estimated by Forbes was $46 million. That all goes away clearly. Last year's player salaries $120 million. Cut that by 60% since they get 2/3 of a season and that's $70 million in savings. Obviously revenue down substantially from advertising and from people buying stuff at the ballpark, but costs down by a nearly comparable amount since they never hired the seasonal staff at the ballpark. The expenses on "everything other than the players" estimated by Forbes for this franchise were $99 million. Without having to open the ballpark to the public, let's just conservatively estimate that costs are down 50% - still leaves $49 million to pay all the rest of the staff. TV Revenues down, but playoff revenue still expected. So if the owner is claiming $100 million in losses, and payroll is down by $70 million, and opening the ballpark costs are down by $50 million, and last year their total costs were $220 million, the only way to square that equation is to have total revenue this season be $0. https://www.forbes.com/teams/chicago-white-sox/#67492a476e87

JFC. If he can get ahead of a hitter in the count they have no shot.

It's been rumored for a few days, but the Washington Post just now dropped their hammer on Dan Snyder and the Washington Football Franchise ownership group.

I think right around .500 is a good bet, but I wouldn't be surprised by anything. Literally every line of logic any of us have got could be correct in this situation.

You're also going to have a lot of young guys who are moderately out of practice at this. It's not unreasonable to think that after basically a 9 month layoff a 37 year old Verlander might be able to find his groove a lot better than a 26 year old Giolito with 1 good season under his belt.