I was thinking the same thing. Even though I'd been following this since January and have already been taking it very seriously, Hanks, NBA, and Europe travel ban suddenly make it seem like there's a loud knock at the door.
The U.S. did not suspend all travel from Europe. The WH issues clarifications and corrections shortly after the speech.
First, it's not all of Europe -- 26 of 44 countries in Europe affected. Second, it doesn't include cargo (the president misspoke). Third, it doesn't restrict Americans traveling. Those affected are foreign nationals who have been those 26 countries in the last 14 days.
I agree this is still a bigger deal than Tom Hanks. However, for 99.99% Americans it's the first person they "know" who has coronavirus. So obviously people will see that and it will feel more real to them than a short-term ban on certain foreign nationals who were in 26 countries in the last two weeks.
The restrictions start for foreign nationals who aren't up in the air by Friday night, midnight Eastern time.
It's really hard to process all the information that's available about what's going on; it's changing constantly, there's no consensus on a lot of stuff, the numbers and curves are highly unnatural to think about even if they didn't have massive uncertainty in their variables, and on and on.
As an example, instead let's talk about the lottery. If I hear that a movie star won the lottery, that's pretty surprising. I didn't expect to ever even know the name of someone that wins the lottery. The odds are really, really long and I don't know the names of enough people. And oh, an NBA player won the lottery today too? OK, well maybe this lottery doesn't work the way I was thinking.
Indeed. It would probably be socially responsible to cancel their season too, but I'm really enjoying their games (at least the ones that air on free TV).
Here's hoping the NBA, and whatever leagues might be affected, are able to reschedule their games once this nasty bug finally dies out.
I’m planning on watching the F1 Australian GP this weekend (on tv, not in Australia). So far China is the only race on the calendar that they’ve “rescheduled”. There was news yesterday that 3 F1 team members (not drivers) were in isolation pending test results. But they say everything is going ahead.
After running the 1st race in Qatar with only the moto 2 & moto 3 classes, MotoGP has rescheduled the next 3 races for later dates in the season. That's a lot of money deferred indefinitely.
Edit:
Closer to home(mine), I was sent away at the doors of a minor league hockey game in the midwest tonight. Only team, staff & media personnel were allowed in the doors for the game that was still being played.
One big difference between F1 and the NBA is that in the NBA, players are routinely within 2m of each other. If that happens to F1 drivers during the race, they have problems other than coronavirus to be concerned about.
An F1 driver will spend 4-5 hours on track during a race weekend. The rest of the time is spent in hotels, with the press, with fans and in the track facilities/garage. I’ve been around a few F1 tracks on race days, and they are incredibly packed full of people. The drivers don’t need to worry about catching a virus on track, it’s everywhere else that’s the problem.
But the thing that makes F1 actually somewhat unique in terms of Coronavirus risk, is that it’s supposed to take place across 22 countries (down to 21 now that China’s been cancelled - or “postponed”). Including a number of countries that have high infection rates, like Italy, Singapore and Japan. An F1 team member could theoretically be infected in one country, go to a race in another country, leave and arrive in a 3rd country before they even show symptoms.
So far what the FIA has done is cancel China, prohibit driver > fan interaction at events, limit press interaction, and said that some races will be run without live audiences. They’ve also said that if a team can’t race because of the virus, they won’t hold an official GP, but they kinda implied they’d still hold a race.
I’m a big fan of F1, so I’m happy to see the races. But it seems like a disaster waiting to happen. The FIA also have a terrible history of not cancelling events when they really should be cancelled. Last year when Typhoon Hagibis was forecast to arrive onshore in Japan on the Saturday of the Japanese GP weekend, the FIAs plan was “we think Typhoon Hagibis will be gone by Sunday, so we’ll just run qualifying on Sunday morning”. It did clear up by then, but really just by luck. In 2005 the circuit for the US GP had a corner that was dangerous to take at speed for any car that was using Michelin tires, because they may catastrophically fail. This caused two major crashes during practice. The FIA refused to change the track, refused to cancel the race, and refused to allow the teams to withdraw. The result was that the (7/10) Michelin teams drove one formation lap, and then had all 14 of their drivers retire. In short, they can’t really be trusted to make defensible decisions about cancelling events.
I hope so too. The season exceeded my expectations and it’d be sad if this black swan event is what kills any chance of summer football for another two decades.
The original XFL had some different rules around certain types of hits, and it also emphasized the players' personas more by letting them choose the names on their jerseys, trash talk, take their helmet off for celebrations, etc. It was and is still run by the same people behind WWE.
Now I take it they're moving in a different direction. Is there generally more or less concern for player safety in the XFL now, compared to the NFL?
WWE = Fake Wrestling as Entertainment. Lots of drama, lots of chugging beers, throwing people tables, etc. I'm known to watch a Smackdown once in awhile for a good laugh.
They could trying going spectatorless like the NCAA is doing for basketball. The difficulty will be that tv rights are a huge moneymaker for the NCAA with ticket sales being some extra gravy on the top. The XFL gave away the tv rights for free to promote the new league. While they have planned to lose money for several years, ticket sales and in game concessions was to help offset the expense. Don't know how much this will increase their burn rate but it certainly won't help.
I have (had?) tickets for a game on Saturday. It's not happening any more. I don't know if that's because of the WA state ban on any gathering of 250 people or more or because of another reason but I'm somewhat sad.
Less gross stuff like sending cameras into the cheerleader locker room. More of the cool stuff like players climbing up into the stands and high fiving fans after a TD
Can't help but wonder if the new XFL would be better off if they had been able to ditch the tainted name. Even many people who don't follow football closely have heard of the old XFL and only seem to have the worst memories of it. The new league doesn't deserve all that baggage - most of which isn't even related to the actual on-field football.
Asset prices are based on forward looking projections of the business, not on current revenues, or even next quarter's revenues. This is why S&P 500 companies trade at an average valuation of 15X their current-year earnings. If anything, they're way oversold already.
Nothing's fundamentally or structurally changed in the US economy. There were no bad mortgages. We hit the brakes for a bit, but before you know it we'll be back up on our feet and working our asses off, and if we're lucky, we'll get some mandatory paid sick days added to employment law out of it.
[edit] well actually, something has fundamentally changed: the cost of borrowing got somehow even lower meaning an eventual recovery may be turbocharged. The Fed is very unlikely to raise rates as we move past this.
Well right now the trailing 12 month PE average for S&P is 20. So still above historical norm after this 20% drop. I wouldn't say things are oversold, rather everything was way overvalued.
And people are overlooking the fact this is just the herald wave, and probability of a catastrophic 2nd wave this fall/winter is pretty damn high. This isn't going away. This more than likely will move through the population a few times over the next few years until the vulnerable are "sifted through" so to speak. I want to believe in our scientific and technical capabilities but nobody should hold their breath for an effective vaccine in the next year or two. This has the potential to fundamentally and structurally change more than just the economy.
But I feel you..99x out of 100 you're spot on. Unfortunately, it's looking like the potential reality we might be facing is something most can't or don't want to comprehend. It at least deserves real consideration and thought.. we'll get through it and move on, but I don't think people grasp or want to believe what might be to come.
fwiw I doubt we'll see a vaccine anytime in the next years.
no doubt China tests very aggressively and trials the drugs on their prison population. They have a head-start because no human rights. (And now they also have more reasons to justify these crimes).
I wouldn't want to know how many were disappeared into body bags while they were still breathing just to keep reported numbers down.
For a forum of ostensibly intelligent people, it's amusing to see the rise in anti-china sentiment brought about by the coronavirus.
Sure, China has a poor human rights record in many regards. But objectively, their handling of the coronavirus has been phenomenal, especially when one considers its hugely dense population.
And regarding the fake video supposedly showing a live person being body bagged: even Facebook "verified" the video as fake, and you know that.
China's done many things poorly in recent history, but containment of the coronavirus isn't one of them. Resorting to unsubstantiated xenophobia in times like this really says more about you as a person than anything else.
> Illegal activities (time, location participants and numbers, problems and outcomes):
> Posting untrue statement "7 confirmed SARS cases at Wuhan Hua'nan Fruit and Seafood Market" on the WeChat Group "Wuhan University Clinical Class of 2004" on Dec 30, 2019.
> [We are] now filing an official warning and admonitions to you on the illegal issue of posting untrue statements on the Internet according to the law. Your behavior severely disrupts social order. Your behavior has exceeded the scope permitted by the law and violates the relevant provisions of the Public Security Administration Punishment Law of the People's Republic of China, which is an illegal act!
> Resorting to unsubstantiated xenophobia in times like this really says more about you as a person than anything else.
Give it a rest.
Hospitals in Asia generally demand payment before checkout, so I wouldn't want to find myself a semi-conscious plague patient with no cash left.
What do I mean by demand? They post a guard outside your door until somebody pays the bill in full. God help you if you say you can't pay, especially if there's a lineup of new patients. You actually could get a bag over your head.
If you want to read more about how hospitals work in China, google "big sickness". There's some socialized medicine, but cancer and organ transplant bills are similar to what an uninsured US citizen would face - sign over the house.
> Hospitals in Asia generally demand payment before checkout, so I wouldn't want to find myself a semi-conscious plague patient with no cash left.
America would like a word with you. One of the biggest real risks to spread in America is that 30 million Americans have no health insurance, and can't afford a day off work.
> What do I mean by demand? They post a guard outside your door until somebody pays the bill in full. God help you if you say you can't pay, especially if there's a lineup of new patients. You actually could get a bag over your head.
not to worry my xenophobia is limited to the CCP regime not against the Chinese people. I have a record of criticizing the CCP, the GOP, the AfD, National Rally, and every other political terrorist system out there ... and I was like this long before Covid19 became a topic.
You should find some Uyghur friends and see how this white-washing goes down with them.
This is a global recession, spending is drying up. You may or may not have seen the dot com bust, but this to me looks like that except across the globe. Many companies will die because they rely on cash flow and that will dry up. Restaurants, and entertainment venues will be dead until May 2021, unless we find a vaccine that treats this. As more and more celebrities get infected and possibly die it will hit the psyche a lot more than the financial crisis ever did.
It really is different this time, and it frightens me, not the virus itself but the economic ramifications.
The best case scenario is that summer stops the virus from spreading, panic lessens, and then a treatment is found before September that is effective and quick. Then a vaccine comes out next March 2021 and everyone is happy again.
You're right that it's different, but this is nothing like the dot com bust. People could still do other work when that happened. Also note that equity busts are quite different from credit busts.
This really is a massive bomb under the economy. Credit is stretched by years of low rates and now a lot of things have to stop.
Other commentators hint at postponed spending, which would be good. But many things in the economy do not work that way. If you skip your holiday now, it's not coming back and the hotels and restaurants will not get that money later. Same with a number of other businesses.
Some will, but many won't. There's a fair few frictions in that. Say you couldn't get a refund for whatever reason. Or your boss won't give you the time. Or whatever occasion you went for is passed.
It's not that I'm saying it's all lost, but you have to count on some share being lost.
> Restaurants, and entertainment venues will be dead until May 2021, unless we find a vaccine that treats this.
Just because people over 70 won't be going to them, doesn't mean the rest of us won't be. Besides, once I've had cornavirus - which could well be inevitable - I'll no longer be scared for it and will head back out. So will everybody else.
To be honest, the best way to avoid a severe economic impact is to accept you'll most likely get it, and rather than killing businesses by staying inside, just got on with your life, stay fit and healthy, and hope for the best. You're more likely to be killed driving your car, so carry on living!
Old people in nursing homes don't get out much, and yet they're the ones that are dying. The fact is that the virus spreads because people don't always die from it, and so they go around spreading it to people who will. Most people probably won't know that they have it until they've spread it to 3 more people.
Your strategy will probably keep you alive, but the same is not guaranteed for many millions of people that are old or with immune system complications.
All players need to be tested. Thankfully they are young and healthy so the risk is low personally. Think about how many players lick their hands before a free throw and then pass it around, the refs touch the ball for tip off, etc. Damn a pandemic really makes you aware about how many microbes are out there.
I'm a little bit sick of hearing stuff related to age. "oh but they are in their 30's they will be ok" etc.
It doesn't change the fact they are now carriers and are potentially going to infect a child, or an elderly, or someone with a compromised immune system.
The death rate for everyone under 50 is 0.1%, or 1 in 1000.
The death rate for those over 80 is 12% or higher.
Now, if everyone shuts down their life and somehow society can survive for 3 weeks with nobody allowed to move anywhere, maybe this virus goes away.
But, I think the economic consequences of that will be a lot worse than just continuing on with normal life and making sure people over 80 and people with chronic diseases are cloistered away and cared for.
It seems like you're really underestimating the severity of the situation
I implore you to read up on what the situation in Italy is like at this moment, and to look into why the Danish government just declared Denmark in lockdown mode.
Denmark went from 30 diagnosed cases to over 500 in 5 days. This is with an aggressive testing protocol that includes tracking, testing and quarantining every person each new case has been in contact with.
To think that the US with their limited and delayed testing is at anywhere below 20000 actual infections by now seems extremely optimistic
Everyone will get sick -at the same time-. That's a really really big deal
On a side note, I'm from Denmark and I'm reading the international news, the decree that the danish government made last night is being framed as "closing all schools". Which is massively underselling it.
Every government worker who's not in a critical role or healthcare is being sent home. Most bars will close for the next two weeks, all sports activities have been cancelled, all gyms are closing down. Everyone who can work from home is working from home. Any gathering of people is discouraged
"Closing schools". Why is the media trying to undersell this so hard?
The death numbers are only one component of the problem.
The other problem is the 10-15% ICU rate. That swamps healthcare systems. Italy's healthcare system has nearly collapsed in the north, from just 12,000 positive cases so far. They're having to let patients die, which is why their mortality rate is so extremely high. The Lombardy region has one of the better rated healthcare systems on the planet and it can't handle what's happening. Unconstrained, Italy's healthcare system nationwide would collapse rapidly as their cases ballooned into the many tens of thousands. I'm not picking on Italy here, merely using them as a clear example of how serious this is. Every country should be treating this like a severe, immediate threat to their healthcare system continuing to function.
COVID-19 is a disease. The virus is SARS-CoV-2. You're not even right at being pedantic. Illnesses don't need to be treatable or curable to be called diseases.
I never said they need to be treatable nor curable to be called diseases.
What I am, is wrong about it not being a disease. All these are listed as diseases: SARS-COV, MERS-COV, and nCOV. Even, also, the common flu. I never thought of that as a disease before now, since it's a viral infection. Thank you for making me learn a little more tonight.
"Coronaviruses (CoV) are a large family of viruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV). A novel coronavirus (nCoV) is a new strain that has not been previously identified in humans."
The naming is actually a bit confusing to me, as the CDC has this to say[1]:
"On February 11, 2020 the World Health Organization announced an official name for the disease that is causing the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak, first identified in Wuhan China. The new name of this disease is coronavirus disease 2019, abbreviated as COVID-19. In COVID-19, ‘CO’ stands for ‘corona,’ ‘VI’ for ‘virus,’ and ‘D’ for disease. Formerly, this disease was referred to as “2019 novel coronavirus” or “2019-nCoV”."
I'm not sure where the separation between virus and disease is or was, of if that even matters in the end.
Viruses are the physical thing which makes you sick. The disease is the sickness the virus (in this case) gives you. The problem is that nobody in the media* knows the difference or pays attention to it when reporting it.
Wikipedia calls diseases "medical conditions that are associated with specific symptoms and signs".
Thank you for the insight. It's been an interesting night; never before had I thought of chicken pox or a cold as a disease, but that's what they're classified as.
In my worldview, up until tonight, my understanding of a disease was something that won't go away on it's own. Heart disease, Huntington's, etc.
I agree about the media. While I've seen COVID-19 everywhere; I didn't know anything about the nomenclature in this field and have only heard references to a virus, not a disease.
I wonder how risky just walking outside is if you don’t talk to or touch anything and you’re not in a crowded area. Certainly more than sealing yourself in a room but I wonder if walking past someone briskly with your hands in your pockets has a significant risk of transmission?
It's not particularly risky in itself, but what activity are you proposing? Most people aren't heading out just for a stroll around the block. It's whatever's at the end of the walk that's the problem.
If he tested positive after participating in practice and being with the team, I wouldn’t be surprised if other Jazz players end up testing positive too.
Good thing the Jazz-Thunder game was called off because with all the physicality and contact during an NBA game it would have been so easy to spread the virus to other teams even if Gobert wasn’t in the game.
I'm assuming you mean beyond inducing the host to aerosolize infectious fluids via sneezing and coughing.
Here's a fun fact: Toxoplasma gondii causes rats to like cats (feces) instead of fearing them, making them prone to being eaten by cats - which is great for the parasite as it reproduces in cat's alimentary system. Incidentally, humans with Toxoplasmosis are over-represented in traffic accidents, which may suggests some of that recklessness effect carries over.
This was in the story "saviour of the plague years" in a 1995 Wired magazine futurist fiction compilation. They called the desire to run around and spread the disease the "Hong Kong Jog."
The guinea worm spreads via drinking egg-infested water. When the parasite becomes fully developed in the human body, it migrates to the skin where it causes blisters accompanied by burning pain. The pain induces the host to immerse the boil in water; immediately relieving the pain - and allowing the parasite to release its eggs for the next host to drink.
I think this kind of behavior does increase your risk of getting the disease, but I imagine there's a strong selection bias.
People that don't do this, won't have a viral moment when it's announced that they have the disease. People that do this kind of thing can have a viral moment when it's announced.
I would be a little hesitant when making that claim. It would certainly be a shorter than usual incubation period, but I don't know how many sigmas away from the mean it would be.
Three days is considered the minimum to be symptomatic.
It's possible, of course -- maybe very high activity accelerated the timeline -- but he spends his days around hundreds of people, and then occasionally tens of thousands of people. Just walking out of the tunnel he is under the respiratory cloud of hundreds of people.
It seems deeply improbable that this event was the cause, not least because the timeline isn't among the probable set.
One of the Utah sports journos has said that their feeling at the time was that Gobert was saying he had no fear of contact with the journalists (forced to be 8'+ from him) rather than wasn't scared of dispersing the virus. Doesn't help much in hindsight and this incident may define him from here!
While that was a stupid thing to do and in poor taste. Rudy Gobert did not know he had covid-19 until tonight and the NBA cancelled the season within an hour or so.
There's this standard case for law students (here in Germany): A man wishes his wife was dead. He sends her out to the mailbox on rainy day, muttering "I hope you get hit by lightning" under his breath. She does get hit by lightning and dies. Murder?
Same. Didn’t go crazy but got more of the less-perishables that I’m going to eat anyway. Maybe 90% of the rice was gone, ditto for cooking oil and other staples (mid-atlantic us south). Fresh vegetables and meats and everything else really seemed in normal stock for now.
Yes, because that was the game where Gobert was in, and the only game postponed today. The game next on ESPN, Pelicans Kings is still going to be played. The article claims that all other games today will be canceled, which is incorrect.
Edit: Now it's suspended. Refs and players off the court with the last game tonight.
You were incorrect both times you replaced the widely reported information with your feelings. Misinformation is problematic, maybe slow down and check more sources before going that route again?
I was watching the game, and they hadn't canceled it when this was posted, and the article said that it already was. Clearly the article was incorrect which is why I was responding, so people didn't read the misinformation. As soon as it was canceled I updated the comments with the edit.
Except the article was never incorrect. You were. Twice. You didn't just say it was incorrect, you called it garbage; that's reactionary and ultimately makes you look foolish.
You're entirely free to continue behaving however you want, but noise will never be signal, and I'm much more interested in what you could contribute to a signal.
Article was marginally correct, but he leaped upon the slightly-wrong-at-the-time-wording ("all games" when tonight's schedule other than Utah was still intended to be played) with way too aggressive language.
Then fate turned around and made the article somewhat more true, when the last game of the night was cancelled due to refs having worked Utah games. (However, intervening games after the Utah game were played, so, it wasn't "all games" originally).
Still doesn't excuse the commenter being a jerk about it and overreacting.
Given the incredible impact this has had and will continue to have. What will the likely consequences be for China given that it is my understanding that the source of the virus was Wuhan China?
I think China has already been dealing with the consequences of robust lockdowns that, while slowing the spread of coronavirus dramatically and admirably, also place substantial strain on the society and economy.
