Balta1701

Texas was at about 500 cases per day when it reopened. We crossed 10k yesterday (woo!). It took a whopping 2 months, that's doubling basically every 2 weeks. So I ask again, if it's about level, staying at 500 cases per day, with most things shut down, no bars, restaurants at 20% capacity...are you planning to stay at that level of closure forever? If not, what are you going to do to prevent it from spiking as things re-open?

I'm thinking that if teams aren't sure there will be fans come December 1, they're not going to put any solid offers on the table early, so the only real chance at a multi-year deal might be to wait until the end of the offseason to hope that the virus situation improves, and if it doesn't - that's a situation where no multi-year deals might be available. Or at best, a multi-year deal with a much lower salary in 2021 than you'd want to accept. Someone will still pay for Betts, but the other guys, if teams are staring at a 50% revenue reduction in 2021 are they going to be committing $25 million a year multi year deals to these guys? What's better if you're say LeMahieu or Semien, signing a 2/$20 million deal with an opt-out after 1 year or taking the QO earlier in the offseason?

Just random brain droppings here. If we're at December 1 and there's no vaccine yet/no obvious hope of one in the next few months, and some of the big names like Springer, Semien, LeMahieu etc. are sitting there with qualifying offers - do a bunch of them just accept the QO to make sure they have a guaranteed contract for the next year and try again after the disease and labor issues are both dealt with?

The Texas Education Agency yesterday required schools to open (parents can opt out). Meanwhile, the Texas Education Agency will be meeting remotely at least through the end of 2020 because it's not safe to gather in groups.

If I had enough money I'd buy an entire section and fill it with an army of Klingon soldiers.

Business people in this country don't have to be very good at business.

It’s no secret. Someone from Stormfront.org summarized it by saying “he’s making the white nationalist talking points better than they have.” https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/son-stormfront-founder-my-family-watches-tucker-carlson-because-they-feel-he-making

Although there's one major mutation that has been monitored in the spike proteins that occurred between China and Italy, so far viral mutation has not given us something that is unlikely to respond to treatment. Plus, some of the vaccine candidates target the key spike proteins that, if those change, would be unlikely to make the virus more effective at attacking us, since those are about as well evolved for that purpose as you can find. The immunity lasting only a few months is more because of how our immune system works than because of the virus itself. We know other diseases like that and how to handle them - we use booster shots. With more than 1 vaccine candidate available, training the immune system to attack this thing is quite plausible, it might just take a few shots.

Speaking of which....WE DID IT TEXAS! 10K IN A DAY!

Yes, I think there's a very good chance that there is at least a vaccine in limited availability (going to health care providers first) by early next year. There are too many promising candidates and too many good scientists on this, and too many positive signs early. The first vaccine may not be perfect, but temporary immunity that shuts this thing down for 3-6 months or just turns this from potentially catastrophic into a moderate flu would be incredibly useful. If one isn't developed, then the United States specifically is in awful shape because we have refused to do what is necessary to at least get this under control. Texas right now is having about 10k real cases per day, and that's enough to overwhelm hospitals, basically leave no way to open bars or restaurants, turn every business into a facility requiring full medical protective gear. Over the course of a year, that rate would give Texas 3.65 million people having this disease - that's 12.5% of the state's population. Texas could maintain the current rate of illness for 5 years before something resembling herd immunity is reached, and that's assuming strong immune responses and maintained immunity. Could Texas sustain its economy for 5 years with 0 elective surgeries in hospitals, a continuing crisis in day care facilities, all its universities closed, its schools all allowing students 2 days a week, all its bars closed, and restaurants at 50% capacity limits? Hell they're not going to be able to sustain this for even a few months, let alone what it takes to get to herd immunity. We have to get this thing under control. The answers are still the same they were a couple months ago. We might be able to be smarter about businesses being open curbside, outdoor activities, sanitation and masks, but we need to get new cases down to a manageable level (a couple hundred per day in large states like TX or IL) and we need an organized contact tracing program to keep it from flaring back up every time a restaurant allows 50 people in. Texas, Florida, Arizona, Southern California in particular, plus about 1/2 the country - these states need stronger shutdowns now, more complete mask mandates that are enforced, and plans for actual contact tracing right now. They're working hard to export it back everywhere else, so I can promise we will send it back to Illinois soon enough.

The problem remains: If we don't fix this, everyone is screwed. If schools can't safely open in the fall everyone is screwed. Every city that depends on them basically goes bankrupt along with all the businesses in every college town. Parents can't go to work, so businesses are out so many of their workers. Day cares in Texas are having a pretty ugly looking outbreak right now, so day cares are out. The health care industry here is a mess because the only thing they can treat is COVID right now, they're back to shutting down all "nonessential" treatments, so the health care industry collapses if this goes on too long and that's what, 15% of the economy? If we can't get this under control bars and restaurants won't be open for what, 9-12 months? Every landlord goes bankrupt because they can't have all their tenants pay 0 rent for 12 months. Tourism is a mess, do you want to go to Florida and visit Disneyworld and hang out on indoor rides right now? You can keep going up and down the list, everyone is screwed. We have basically 3 choices. 1. Get this under control now. Stop messing around and get it under control nationwide. 2. Keep an awful lot of things shut because they're simply not safe, and massively increase government assistance. Probably needs to be done anyway to get it under control. 3. Economic collapse.

As I'm pretty sure it's part of my official role now...should note that the whole concept of this thread assumes fans are possible next year.

Didn't Bauer previously say he wanted to go for only 1 year deals for the rest of his career?

Plus he's in the best shape of his life, and he went to Driveline in the offseason to work on his wind-up.

I thought the 2nd bubble was thought to happen after the first season was mostly complete?

Worth considering how big of a challenge this is going to be. Counting players, staff, coaches, they’re probably going to test more than a thousand people per day. That means on any given day, Major League Baseball alone is demanding 0.2% of the entire US testing capacity, at a time when testing centers in Texas and Arizona run out of appointment times 5 minutes after they open. Plus, they need concierge service level 24 hour turnaround times on everything, at a time when regular people go a week plus before they hear their results. Even if everything works well, that’s not easy.

Riley Cooper famously threatened to “fight every n——— in here” and had his contract extended. Same team. I don’t disagree with you but why did Cooper get a pass?

He’s so small he could have just been standing behind Abreu.

Right now no they aren’t because of the testing and shipping issues. This is why several teams closed everything on Monday, they didn’t have results from tests last week back yet.

My twitter feed currently is non-stop people using the F word at ICE and everyone else involved in this decision.

Put a couple things together: 1. More than 1/2 the people who get this spread it to no one 2. A large fraction of the cases where spreading occurs are due to super-spreading events, where it is the right person at the right time in the right situation and 10+ people get infected all at once 3. Infecting people depends on the dose 4. The dose gets concentrated indoors and diluted outdoors I think what's going on outside is that it's probably easy to spread it to people you're close to if you're contagious at that point, but you can't spread it to someone 15 feet away because the wind dilutes it. Thus, you get some infections of family members, someone you're near, but you don't get 50 people infected very often - the superspreading events stay indoors. We have some cases traced to a pool in the next neighborhood over right after they opened, for example. So IMO outdoors isn't automatically safe, but the chances of big spreading events like you get indoors are lower, and keeping 6+ feet of distance is far more effective outdoors.

I don't think the players bail at one person getting really sick. Some extra ones might opt out, for example Markakis just opted out from talking to Freeman about how bad it was, but a good number will stay in. I think either it takes a rash of people getting seriously sick or, more likely, it takes this thing hammering 2 or 3 teams all at once and the safety procedures being proven to just not be enough, before they pull the plug.

FWIW, I think there's pretty good evidence this is wrong. The "generally in good shape" part should help most of the players, but even then there are people who get substantially sick. Maybe not requiring hospitalization, but either they're hit hard, or they have potentially major side-effects. Posted in the other thread that on average, among people who are "healthy" and in this age range, the death rate is probably ~0.1% or so, and may be improving using the steroids to suppress the immune system. That's still enough to potentially have a player die, but furthermore - some players are all but certain to have some medical issues they are handling, diabetes, cardiac issues, etc. But even beyond the deaths, we can see right now that the age group that is getting this in Texas and elsewhere is younger and healthier than the first population that was hit, and we're still seeing several percent of the patients hospitalized. And anecdotally, we're seeing several percent of the people who get it have had lingering symptoms for months, sometimes minor sometimes major. Rudy Gobert - we all know exactly when he had it - and his sense of smell hasn't returned 4 months later. That's telling you right there that even for very healthy, NBA caliber midseason form athletes, this thing can do some major internal damage.