caulfield12

The big difference is roughly five million out of an eleven million population left Wuhan (for Chinese New Year) from the end of December through the morning of January 23rd on planes, trains (Hankou Railway Station is literally 200 meters from the Huashan Animal market epicenter) and buses. That was a huge factor. They also held a public banquet on the 18th of January with over 40,000 attendees and 12,000+ shared dishes...trying to set a world record locally when Beijing already was well aware of the outbreak but didn’t want to create a public panic before the holidays. Now it just came out that 19 crew members and two passengers out of the 46 they tested have the virus. Only 3700 on board...that all have to be tested before they can disembark. The problem is that 1/4th to 1/3rd of those people who pass the initial test...if this follows the trend...will end up developing and/or passing along the virus to others. https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-06/chaos-at-hospitals-due-to-shortage-of-coronavirus-tests This pretty much encapsulates the width and breadth of the problem, and frustrations on the part of patients, doctors and nurses alike.

There was a lot of pushback on both sides of that SXSW argument. Until they have enough test kits distributed, we won’t know the full effect...and, even then, many people will be asymptomatic carriers/spreaders but not tested or reflected in the numbers. What about all the people who are sick but underinsured and afraid of hospitalization costs that definitely aren’t going to be covered? One of the nursing home deaths in Kirkland isn’t reflected because she hadn’t been tested and the daughter wanted to have it done posthumously. We had/have many deaths here in China that weren’t reflected in official stats but go down as pneumonia or flu instead. As of last night, nobody inside that center...staff or residents, had been tested. You’ve also got another yet cruise ship issue. Right now, the death rate seems abnormally high compared to even Wuhan (3-4%) because not enough testing has been done yet....so those denominator numbers are lower in the formula. But, as mentioned above, they’re already missing some of the deaths in the very beginning stages as well. Just in that two medical screeners at LAX have come down with the virus, which is also very scary in terms of community spread ramifications. Finally, there’s lots of anecdotal evidence here that people can get sick twice...many of the released/recovered individuals still are unable to go home, or are even bring refused by their families who don’t believe or trust the doctors that their previously ill grandparents can return without getting children and grandchildren sick as a result.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/health/2020/03/06/anthony-fauci-millions-of-tests-coronavirus-town-hall-sot-vpx.cnn Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says there were missteps in regards to the CDC's initials tests for coronavirus and that he believes "millions and millions of tests" will be needed. Source: CNN https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/05/coronavirus-drug-industry-prices-122412

Someone is $5 million off...

Over the past year, general manager Rick Hahn has pushed back on the idea that the White Sox should consider all baseball decisions with the view that at the end of the 2023 season, Yoán Moncada would potentially walk out the door and drag their contention window shut on his way out. On Thursday, the Sox and Moncada eliminated that possibility entirely by agreeing to a five-year contract extension with a club option for the 2025 season, per The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal. The deal is for $70 million and the club option could bring the total to $90 million. The Sox now potentially have contractual control of Moncada through the next six seasons, at the end of which he would be 30 years old. Who knows how high the oceans will be by then. https://theathletic.com/1657284/2020/03/05/white-sox-extend-yoan-moncada-lock-up-yet-another-member-of-the-core/ This was the original story, attributed to Ken Rosenthal, that is/was off by just $5 million on the option year.

The Chicago White Sox have agreed to a five-year extension with third baseman Yoan Moncada worth $70 million, a source confirmed to ESPN on Thursday. The contract includes a sixth-year club option worth $25 million and includes a $5 million buyout. It also buys out two years of Moncada's free agency. So 6/$95 or 5/$75 (including buyout). Story credits The Athletic with having the story first. https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/28845150/sources-white-sox-yoan-moncada-reach-5-year-70m-extension

https://www.yahoo.com/news/california-man-self-quarantined-returning-173042979.html

Here’s three people who are very knowledgeable on this, and each represent different positions/viewpoints. Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Laurie Garrett. Listening to politicians on either side of this doesn’t do much good. What do want me to say? I haven’t left my apartment since the 23rd of January. Can you even imagine that? Can any American? And we’re still at least 2-3 weeks out before they will contemplate essential workers returning. Even Hong Kong, with more or less 100 cases, has pushed back classes until April 19th. Can you imagine your kid not actually going to school once from January 8th or 9th until April or May? Working at home/online that entire time while trying to manage a five year old who’s bored out of his mind...looking outside and seeing spring weather but trapped or imprisoned? No Americans are so willing to surrender their freedom/s. If I went out without a mask on, I would probably last for 2-3 minutes before authorities showed up and forced me into a quarantine center with hundreds of other strangers...where I would have one doctor, two nurses, mo medicine, no working electricity and one shared/common bathroom for 800-1200 people. That’s the harsh reality...and the testing there is so far behind or non-existent (South Korea can manage to test hundreds of thousands and even has improvised with “drive up” centers like a McDonald’s), there will likely be another Wuhan in Seattle or California or New York, simply because most people won’t react until it’s too late since there is so much conflicting information out there.

The situation has been handled extremely well here...after 4-6 weeks of government coverups, lol. The problem is the US doesn’t have a population that will easily accept losing their freedoms (people here invariably live in gated apartment communities with CCTV surveillance ubiquitous), the culture of working or not going to the doctor unless you’re basically on the precipice of dying prevails...and the country is so difficult to unite behind a common cause when it has been so terribly divided, which goes all the way back to 2006. Those three factors make the ultimate outcome such a great unknown. The government here in the very beginning decided to make treatment free (but only if you test positively for the virus.) On the US side, it often seems the focus is just as much on potential profits for drug vaccine and private test kit companies as general public health...whereas the Chinese idea is always focusing on courage, sacrifice and patriotism. Basically, both systems have terrible flaws in dealing with a situation like this. My wife saw a video that’s circulating online of some dude basically demanding an apology or reparations from China...I tried to tell her that having these wild animal markets that sell endangered species for questionable benefits in Chinese Traditional Medicine and just as “culinary delicacies” would never happen in America. In the end, undoubtedly, some Americans will believe it was manufactured by the government here and accidentally or even intentionally released. In the end, we’re a truly globalized tribe...her retort was “what about H1N1?” as she blamed that on the US and not Mexico. Everyone sees what they want to see. Confirmation bias.

Source: cnn.com Delays in testing: However, the government has also hit snags. There are widespread concerns about the accessibility of testing kits, while a botched roll-out of US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) testing, and strict criteria on who could be examined, caused a delay in testing. The US has only been able to perform about 3,600 tests so far -- especially striking when compared to countries like South Korea and in Europe, where thousands of tests are being run daily. The FDA commissioner initially said the US should be able to perform about 1 million tests by the end of this week -- but clarified later that there was a difference "between the ability to get the test kits out to the laboratories with the ability of the labs to actually do the tests." Confusion between federal and state levels: There is also confusion around other federal policies, like quarantines and travel restrictions; the Trump administration announced new rules in early February, but offered few details, leaving local officials scrambling to figure it out. San Antonio, Texas has even filed a lawsuit against the federal government over a disagreement in quarantine protocol. Among citizens, anxiety over the virus appears to be rising. Face masks and hand sanitizer have sold out in many places; one California woman told CNN she visited 15 stores over two days, only to find a single box of masks available.

Weren’t we associated with a Y.Cespedes trade or signing in there as well...? Let’s look at the Rangers, for example. They made some of the best FA pitching decisions of any team on the market, and still have come up way short because you can’t build an entire roster that way when younger prospects like Odor, Profar and Mazara are failing and veterans are close to retirement age. Many have criticized the Padres for some of their signings like Hosmer, Myers and Machado...at a time when they had/have one of the top farm systems in the game. At any rate, this is an argument that always comes back to teams like TB, Minnesota, Oakland, Milwaukee and Cleveland...who almost never make those $100+ million “over the top moves” because of risk mitigation.

By the way, does anyone know the commercial cost of those coronavirus test kits if you don’t have health insurance? As far as Greg’s question, we are able to order SOME basic staple foods online and then they get delivered to our apartment gates within a matter of 1-3 days. I’d just say to make sure to have all the meds you need, at least two weeks’ food and dietary needs, bottled water...toilet paper and hand sanitizers and N-95 masks are probably the three items where there are runs on them and shortages/price increases.

Very few teams have ever successfully dealt with that issue of complacency and/or wear and tear on the pitching staff from postseason play. The Giants and Red Sox are perhaps the two most successful overall, but winning it all inevitably changes motivation and brings about a sense of malaise, a lot of times brought about by off-field distractions. (The Dodgers, too, but they have’t won it all....Astros’ grievances aside.) For whatever reasons, basketball and football teams have been more successful at mitigating these factors.

Seconded...Ms. Moss is becoming one of the most well-rounded actresses in the business. The whole movie basically revolves around her character and its attendant believability.

Slowed him down getting to first on a wild pitch...was at roughly the same speed as one of the Flying Molina Brothers.

Or Leury....seems Engel and Delmonico could both make it.

Well, when you haven’t been able to leave your apartment once in six whole weeks now, live 2 km from the epicenter ...and have witnessed this whole thing from ground zero, it’s pretty challenging to be optimistic. If the Chinese govn’t intervened a week earlier, there would only be +/- 25,000 global cases. If they delayed the lockdown another week, there would arguably be 250,000 global cases and around 9000 deaths. The reality is more or less 80,000 now. Doubling every six days or so now, the real numbers of people carrying the virus in the US asymptomatically has to be in the thousands if not tens of thousands. The CDC is just way behind catching up because they were originally only looking at travel-related and not community transmission.

How did they go from just a few hundred being tested to one million by this Friday? Any basis in reality? Really feel for those stuck in the political warfare in Texas between courts, local government and CDC...Bexar County/San Antonio. Saw another refugee from Wuhan and his daughter were charged around $2800 for ambulance costs upon arriving via airplane...luckily, his story got into the NY Times gofundme.com subsidized him with almost $20,000. He will probably spend most of the remaining money to pay for healthcare on the private market in the US, since he apparently left his job and health insurance back here in Wuhan. Can we really rely on gofundme to permanently subsidize health insurance issues in the US, especially with the S.C. posdibly undoing the entire ObamaCare framework in the middle of a global pandemic as early as October?

Tatis, Jr., definitely overachieved offensively, but was negative on most defensive metrics and missed half the season and still bested that. 2.5-3.5 seems to be a pretty accurate reading on what the majority of informed Sox fans were projecting for Robert. With Madrigal, maybe 1.75-2.5ish.

The Cubs have basically doubled their regional broadcasting rights revenue from $66 million to $132 million... That said, does potentially losing many of those fans on Comcast, YouTube.TV and Dish Network justify it? According to The Athletic, the “Cubs were looking at a year-to-year increase of less than 10 percent in rights fees in 2020 when you included their share of NBC Sports Chicago profits (and I assume all the costs of setting up the network) into the conversation.” So a 10% increase in profits to piss off, what, at least half of Chicago???...if you count Sox fans who don’t want to pay extra for the Cubs (since NBC Chicago is still charging the same as previously), Cubs’ fans themselves and then non-sports fans who also don’t want to pay an extra $4-8 per month.

Probably something in between...but it’s always better to be prepared, than to bury your head in the sand and hope/pray for the best outcome. https://multimedia.scmp.com/infographics/news/china/article/3052721/wuhan-killer/index.html?src=pm&fbclid=IwAR3BeSMW5c0cb7MVRLRQ2nHziAYiXgXyiXoWUvdX94YSY-rzKy2Zi5WB4lM If you really want to understand it, Greg, read this.

“Bloomberg Businessweek published a story Thursday about RSN woes and noted Marquee is paying the Cubs $132 million this season, about twice of what NBC Sports Chicago paid the Cubs last year, which piqued some interest around Chicagoland. What was unclear is how that money is divvied up between the Cubs and Sinclair and whether it’s just an accounting trick for the former. Last season, I was told the Cubs were looking at a year-to-year increase of less than 10 percent in rights fees in 2020 when you included their share of NBC Sports Chicago profits (and I assume all the costs of setting up the network) into the conversation.” This according to an Athletic piece...of course, it’s also without Comcast, Dish and YouTube.TV as part of the Marquee network, so it’s not clear if that $132 million is fixed or could be increased.

Fine, Pablo Sandoval or Domingo Santana.

Do we really need another Dayan Viciedo, a position-less player? It’s better to find five tool athletes and invest that money at a younger age that bid at the top of the market...it seemingly worked out well for Robert, but there have been just as many flops when you look at guys like Y.Tomas, Castillo and Olivera. The whole two-way thing is intriguing, sure, but it feels more like a marketing gimmick to compare him to Shohei Ohtani...whose stuff is a completely different league.

Sure, because it’s in his personal interest...and about protecting the stock market, which he directly correlates more than anything else to the positive/favorable ratings on handling of the economy. That said, what is needed now is science, coordination, a unified message and listening to experts instead of political appointees. Politics at the local vs. national level here is what allowed this whole thing to spin out of control. Attempting to muzzle the truth and weakening local/regional governments because all of the power/intimidation is in the hands of one person just doesn’t work in this new era of instant information connectivity. Tens of thousands of internet censors here couldn’t stop it...it would require millions, and those resources are best allocated to fighting the problem, like building two hospitals in 10-14 days. The US is so polarized right now, maybe this is the only way to unite the country again, because it’s hard to imagine a hospital getting built in even 2-3 years, let alone less than two weeks.