Fear The Chorizo

Got Tball rules. No snacks (more than ok with this) no high fives, no sportsmanship lineup, only 3 in dugout, 6 feet at all times, etc etc. Bleachers removed. It's completely unenforceable. At least you have T-ball - ours was cancelled. I'm actually trying to pull together an informal Tball/baseball skills practice that will happen nights we were supposed to have games if parents still want their kids to play. We are going to see a whole bunch of rules for youth activities/school/etc that get hastily thrown together to make parents feel comfortable moreso than doing anything that actually is enforceable and beneficial from a public health standpoint. I guess at least if there's not bleachers the coaches won't be able to hear parents yelling at them as clearly since they'll be parked on the street in their cars trying to scream through a face covering because Timmy got too close to Jimmy or there were 5 kids in an open air "dugout" for 10 seconds. That's a benefit.

Click on 'Lab Testing') A whopping 12!!!!!! tests run yesterday. Pretty sure that 12 is confirmed case totals, not total tests run - I'm sure they haven't tested a ton and really wish they would Oh, guess you deleted that link already in your earlier post

MLB owners will now offer a 50 game season with full prorated salaries across the board. So now instead of a handful of marquee players getting significant pay reductions while most of the regulars get what amounts to a full prorated salary despite no gameday gate/ticket revenues, all MLB players will have the option to make peanuts on their overall contract amounts while playing in far fewer games to maximize "safety". MLB had a perceived advantage in not having its regular season halted by Covid shutting the world down - but they are at a disadvantage in that 75-90% of its regular season revenue wasn't already on their books like the NBA/NHL had. No gameday gate/ticket revenue plus uncertainty of postseason baseball due to inclement weather or the unkown surrounding a second wave of infections that shuts their season down before postseason TV revenue is available makes this alot trickier that just millionaires and billionaires arguing over huge piles of money.

It does...otherwise the asking price would be 2 million

And Boras is pointing out the important fact that the players have ALL of the leverage in these negotiations ALL the leverage would imply the players have another league/option to continue playing and earning their current contracted salaries if this group of billionaire owners doesn't capitulate and there's not a MLB season. If there's no season this year, there will be a lot of current non-marquee MLB players who will never set foot on a major league field again. And for the most part, "billionaire owners" in reality is a whole lot of ownership groups that individually aren't all billionaires - these ownership groups, like it or not, have to manage their franchise as a business. It's not nearly as simple as, "well, we can afford to operate at a 10% loss this year because we'll get 'em next year" with pro sports ownership groups - for many of these investors, their regular businesses/net worth portfolios are taking a hit and I'd imagine there will be turnover in minority owners across the pro sports leagues - including MLB. A handful of MLB organizations with sole ownership families and/or huge market clubs are essentially immune to the problems many small and mid-market MLB ownership groups are facing with essentially no revenue coming in aside from TV/broadcast $$, with the prospect of diminished ticket/merchandise revenues for much longer than 2020 knowing that people are going to have diminished disposable income and overall wariness to congregating in large crowds for awhile. No doubt the MLB owners are just as fractured as the players likely are in terms of 'haves' and 'have nots' when they are facing the prospect of no on-field product - a pro sports league isn't a league if there's not games. I'd argue that nobody has leverage in this situation, because the reason MLB is in this predicament has nothing to do with baseball. If both parties can't understand that then they deserve universal resentment - owners and players. MLB had a golden opportunity to have the sports spotlight this summer, and it sure looks like they've ruined things for themselves even if they wind up reaching an agreement - European soccer leagues are ramping back up, NASCAR and Golf in the US are active, the NFL will have its full season, the NBA and NHL are likely to be running its playoff series during the midst of any MLB regular season later this summer. If MLB can't salvage some form of a season despite it not having to abruptly halt their ongoing regular season games/playoffs like the NBA/NHL needed to this spring, it will be egg on their faces for a loooong time - and as adambr2 posted the primary reason for not having a season wouldn't be player/coach/staff safety - it'd be $$$. That's a terrible look for the league heading into its next round of CBA negotiations. Reality is this is presently unfolding as a CBA negotiation.

Frankly this happens at the end of every minor league spring training - coupling the pandemic with MLB's desire to try and trim 25% of the overall minor league system AND this year's curtailed draft (only 5 rounds), plus there will likely be no minor league season, this was inevitable across MLB. I feel for a bunch of these guys, some of whom essentially have their dream ended by something completely unrelated to baseball, and a good number of veteran minor leaguers/AAAA-type players who have made a decent living just shy of the Show only to see their career end not on their terms, either. The fact they are being released at a time when coaching/instructional opportunities to stay in the game and make a career out of baseball are nil really sucks, too.

Specific to MN, their policy of discharging recovering (not recovered) Covid-19 patients to nursing home facilities not capable of isolating them is a travesty - compared to the rest of the country, their results to date are horrific: https://twitter.com/Avik/status/1265244659439329281/photo/1 Across most of the country, the death rate at nursing home facilities is in the 40-55% range, which is probably to be expected given the fact almost all fatal Covid-related victims are in the age group and/or comorbidity group that these type of facilities are intended to serve. If my current home state of MN had a fatality percentage similar to my homeland (WI) in nursing homes, there would only be 310-325 total deaths in MN related to Covid-19 instead of the nearly 900 as of yesterday. MN has developed a terrible reputation regarding quality of nursing home care in recent years for those who don't have significant financial resources (see the prior admin's scandal related to elderly abuse that led to it state health commissioner resigning in late 2017) - their biggest problem related to Covid has to do with their old facilities that still are cramming multiple residents in the same bedrooms, many also having bathroom facilities similar to those of 1970's college dormitories. These nursing home facilities that are seeing Covid-19 spread like wildfire in MN aren't the places charging $10-20K/month that have sprawling wings and individual bathrooms/living spaces for residents that may actually be able to isolate infected people. The back and forth I've had with other posters about repurposing currently empty hotels or other buildings to temporarily house recovering Covid patients is specific to preventing them from being sent to the type of nursing home buildings detailed in the article below while they are still contagious. It may sound ridiculous to some who haven't seen these type of facilities, but a random La Quinta floor haphazardly refurbished to serve as a makeshift living space for recovering Covid patients who need round the clock care would be a significant upgrade compared to the conditions some of these facilities have. https://www.startribune.com/despite-deadly-toll-minnesota-nursing-home-residents-with-covid-19-still-sharing-rooms/570738212/ This policy isn't just causing MN's death toll among the most vulnerable populations to climb, it's leading to a persistant risk of infection that is resulting in a steady increase in ICU and hospital beds used by patients from these type of dilapidated nursing homes. The state has roughly 2,500 confirmed Covid-19 cases from residents at nursing home care facilities out of nearly 23,000 total confirmed cases. It's difficult to find data that provides what percentage of MN's hospitalizations and ICU bed use are from nursing home patients, but my friends and family working in the local health and assisted living care industry indicate it's a vast majority that is similar or even larger than the state's 81% Covid fatality rate. If that's the case, then just ~10% of the confirmed Covid-19 cases are responsible for 80% of its deaths and 80% of the hospital health care demand in the state. Other states have done a much, much better job at protecting the elderly in these community living spaces, and in doing so they are in a much better place to deal with localized increases in community Covid cases requiring hospitalizations than a state whose foundation is built on healthcare...it's just sad.

Roughly 45 percent of wi covid deaths stem from nursing homes, while 82 percent of mn deaths are from there. Otherwise mn would be performing equally or better than wi in terms of general population case results. Probably not so much chance as it is understanding the differences in how nursing homes are managed and any specific differences in how nursing home admissions from hospitals or medical staff testing are being handled. Looking across the country, stay at home order differences between states across the general population don't appear to have any significant impact to hospitalization or death trends. Hospitals arent over capacity - medical workers are undoubtedly strained and stressed, but there are just as many nurses being laid off as there are treating covid patients, likely more. CDC has IFR down to 0.4%, with it trending closer to 0.2% after factoring in 35 percent asymptomatic cases never detected. The other aspect is understanding what percentage of "covid deaths" are tied not only to comorbidities, but to end of life situations that would have resulted in death within months had covid never existed. After reviewing some publicly available coroner reports (cook county,il in particular), I'm guessing at least 50% of covid deaths are people who had less than a year to live under the most optimistic scenarios due to their terminal maladies or extremely advanced age. The average covid death age staying several years above the country's average life expectancy reinforces that. The fact covid is a novel virus with no vaccine and its infectiousness make it worse than the seasonal flu (mainly because the flu does have various vaccines), but not by much compared to early IFR predictions that led to the lockdowns. Lockdowns have proven to be little more beneficial than a fart in the wind compared to practicing social distancing measures in a mostly open society outside of nursing homes, and never would have happened nationwide had the true risk of the virus been better understood in march. That's not even factoring in the longterm economic and social devastation the last 3 months have created to the generations of people who will be around 10, 20, 30, 40, 50+ years from now. We are now seeing a spike in deaths related to anything other than covid. This "cure" has been much, much worse than the disease.

It doesn't have to make any sense for it to be a factor. No one wants to walk into that first without knowing the result. If you are a large corp sending 50 reps at a time to a hotel, and Holiday Inn hosted COVID patients 2 weeks ago you will just call Hyatt instead. Give me one example in this environment where any business is sending 50 people to stay anywhere right now...that's a pretty large strawman. And way more than 2 weeks time would elapse in this sort of hypothetical scenario before a hotel, conference center, anywhere would be allowed to resume operations - and they would rightfully be compensated for that delay. I just think that perception, real as it likely is, shouldn't be a factor when weighing the best option for how to protect the most vulnerable group of people from getting this virus - it's not like everything else done to society hasn't drastically inconvenienced everyone or led to all sorts of other stigmas out there, too.

So is this to comply with hotel regulations that make them officially "handicap accessible"? There's no way on earth for nursing staff that would be brought into these facilities to make due with what's available in a pinch - particularly with recovering patients who don't normally require all the handicap accessibility nursing homes have to provide?? If some of these recovering patients in a hospital are handicapped and require 100% of what a nursing home can provide in terms of care and facilities under normal circumstances, why not keep them in the hospital until they are fully recovered? I saw the edit to your post related to this being driven by reimbursement rates to the provider...IMO that is 100% correct, unfortunately

How hard would it be to make a majority of these rooms handicap accessible - particularly 1st floor rooms? IMO that's an less risky set of obstacles to get beyond compared to sending infected people into nursing homes - call me crazy I guess. The whole stigma of "this is where covid patients stayed"...really? So the Javits Center is just going to have to get bulldozed after this now, too? To me that would be a badge of honor after this passes, knowing full well when things would revert back to normal operation that hotel/conference center/whatever would be sanitized and cleaner than anything else around it.

What hotel is going to sign up for being the COVID19 infirmary? One that has been essentially empty - take your pick of about 95% of them since mid March. Obviously they wouldn't do it for free, but neither do nursing homes. Frankly I don't care if it's a hotel or a Chili's - ANYTHING but a nursing home. Why not an empty hospital that wasn't taking in elective procedures this whole time, either? People wonder why Florida wasn't hammered nearly as bad as New York was given the similar populations and proportion of those populations being elderly. The policy difference between those states on how they managed Covid infections and Covid hospital discharges to/from nursing homes is a huge reason, IMO.

I live in MN, and had no idea this was still going on - I believe MN has the worst rate of Covid-related deaths in the country among long term care facility residents compared to its total number of deaths (608 of its 748 deaths are from LTCF residents - over 80%). https://www.startribune.com/minn-nursing-homes-already-site-of-81-of-covid-19-deaths-still-taking-in-infected-patients/570601282/ Given all we know about Covid-19 and who the most vulnerable are to dying from it, why is this not the absolute last option on the table for sending recovering covid patients that were hospitalized by now? Especially since the perceived hospital bed shortage concern that initiated the urgency to discharge manageable recovering cases from hospitals as quickly as possible hasn't come close to materializing anywhere outside of NY/NJ? Stay at home, bend the curve, slow the spread, protect the elderly and immuno-compromised at all costs, but if you unfortunately get Covid-19 bad enough to go to a hospital but wind up not needing to be intubated, we'll ship you over to a nursing home to negate all the other protective measures society has taken to keep infected people from those facilities. Kids can't go to school or play baseball, families can't go out to dinner, couples can't go watch a movie...many working aged people can't earn income at their business/job all in effort to protect the elderly - but this insane policy still is being followed. Unbelieveable. Seriously, during these stay at home orders, why weren't countless other places that sat idle engaged about modifying their use to take in recovering patients instead of this policy? I would think hotels situated near hospitals would be ideal locations for temporary use.

Somebody help me understand the reasoning/justification for the following scenario, because I've seen it frequently over the past few weeks and it boggles my mind how it could be viewed as being "safer"... There are many public spaces (forest preserves, parks, playgrounds, trails, etc) people have been flocking to in order to maintain sanity and get some fresh air from a safe social distance, which normally have restrooms opened for public use. These restrooms have been shuddered over the past couple months and even continue to remain closed following MN's stay at home order formally ended earlier this week. In some cases, if you gotta go you just need to find a restroom somewhere else, but in many cases there are now porta-potties staged right next to deadbolted restroom buildings. WTH?? Why not open these facilities, which have running water and more sanitary options for cleaning hands? I'm pretty sure the answer has more to do with various park services workers/contractors no longer being employed by whomever is operating the public space to keep those restrooms maintained, and it's cheaper just slapping a porta-potty in its place that can fester in the summer sun for a whole 1-2 weeks between cleanouts. It's disgusting!

That's being incredibly short sighted on their end - because there will be other people that take those jobs who currently arent getting that extra (or any) unemployment - and then once the extra $500 weekly runs out for these other folks there wont be the same job for them to return to and jobs at different places wont be easy to find. I thought there was something in the legislation that businesses had to report whether people were offered their jobs back and refused, which may cancel that extra unemployment for those individuals? Not sure about that, though.

If you want reliable data, apparently the Georgia Dept of Health may not be the place to go: https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/just-cuckoo-state-latest-data-mishap-causes-critics-cry-foul/182PpUvUX9XEF8vO11NVGO/ "Where does Sunday take place twice a week? And May 2 come before April 26? The state of Georgia, as it provides up-to-date data on the COVID-19 pandemic." I'm not sure if it's worse to be incompetent, or intentionally misleading...New York has been fudging nursing home death totals ever since May 3rd and since their initial policy of sending Covid-19 patients to nursing homes started getting alot of deserved scrutiny. Basically a death stemming from a nursing home patient only counted as a nursing home death if they died there for the past two weeks. Since NY's hospital system has had plenty of capacity since mid april, many critical nursing home covid patients were moved to hospitals before they passed away, so they were grouped in with general population deaths.

That would be 11 deaths in a day in WI...the fact that's the highest daily death total in a state with 30Million plus people and four metro areas much larger than Greater Milwaukee living in it is pretty remarkable at this point. Why single out TX, too? CA saw its daily death total go from 25 four days ago to 98 yesterday, for example...Looking at snapshot death totals this low isn't a great way to try and predict anything because it's tough tracking the demographic breakdown of current Covid-19 patients and what stages they are in recovering or tragically succumbing to the virus.

How does this work exactly? Business says they are opening back up...are you allowed to say, nah and just keep collecting? Do you stop getting government assistance since it's open now? I really have no idea how any of the unemployment stuff works. This was part of the back and forth a couple months ago when the legislation was working it's way through congress...was poo-pooed at the time for being a non-issue compared to having to get something passed ASAP. As far as I can tell, businesses can't force former employees collecting unemployment to come back to work - and for some of these lower income/tip-reliant positions it probably makes more sense for the individual to keep collecting more lucrative unemployment for awhile longer until bars/restaurants resume operations with more patrons. Those service industry jobs are going to be slow to fully return, so initially it's not going to be a huge issue for people to lean on unemployment because the jobs aren't all instantly available...it would have been a better idea to phase out the extra $600 weekly unemployment payments pledged by the CARES act over time starting in June and having them back to normal unemployment payments by August, IMO. The current 'Phase 5', or whatever the heck bill they are calling it sort of working its way through the House is asking for those extra unemployment benefits to carry well into next year - which is nuts. I doubt that really gets sustained traction, because it really is a disincentive to get back to work over the long term. Edit: If what Mr. TPlush indicated above is accurate, that makes sense, too if it would trigger the individual losing that extra $600 weekly amount should they opt to decline going back to work. However, as OldSchoolSnapper mentioned, those jobs that do come open will still get filled - there are alot of people who don't have a job and who aren't currently receiving these unemployment benefits that will gobble those positions up. Young adults just out of college (either via graduation or needing to pause their schooling due to financial complications back home) will be looking for income anywhere they can get it in the short term. So the people who willingly collect the extended unemployment benefits might have alot more trouble finding similar work if they are slow to want to rejoin the work force - which means increased welfare unfortunately. This will be a long recovery...

We all know that's not how it would have worked...any legislation they would have worked on over the past 2 months related to a covid reopening plan would have been poo-pooed as being pointless due to the order in place, and the governor would have vetoed anything that didnt exactly match the order he had enacted and extended. It doesnt matter if there's an R or a D after the governor's name, either...that's just how it is if the legislature is controlled by the opposite party. My guess is Gov Walz here in MN got wind of this ruling coming down and adjusted his announcement tonight so he didnt face a rapidly growing list of lawsuits himself...apparently mn's stay at home order is still expiring this weekend but anything that wasn't already partially open won't be allowed to resume for a few more weeks. Other than calling it something different I dont see much change - they even ginned up an updated model earlier today trying to show that stay at home through end of may would produce the lowest death estimate as a way of supporting another 2 week extension they were probably expecting to announce. To get close to that model's death estimate through end of May, the state would need to average 40+ deaths per day starting tomorrow. There hasn't been a day yet where 40+ deaths were reported. MN did just indicate today that they are going to start adding "likely covid deaths" to the daily tally instead of just deaths where there was at least a confirmed case of covid 19 for the person who died (who cares if the person was 98 with cancer, if they had a confirmed covid test they died from covid) - so expect to see the death totals jump a bit to try and fit their curve.

I'm sure I'd have my family, including my kids get the vaccine eventually - however I'd wait until I was certain it was already supplied and distributed widely to the elderly/vulnerable populations that should be prioritized for it. It would probably be like my sense of urgency in getting a flu shot every year - meaning it won't be something I'm waiting in long lines to get. To each their own though...I don't see a publicly available vaccine having adverse health effects/risks - I can however easily see its initial deployment have varying effectiveness, or having an inconsistent effect of how long different people are totally immune after getting vaccinated. When such a large portion of people who first contract a novel virus essentially are asymptomatic and their immune systems deal with it without any medical treatments/help, the initial success rate of a vaccine to provide immunity to the minority of people who are likely to suffer more adverse symptoms if they contract the virus isn't great.

Agreed...although I would have agreed had this started happening a month ago, too. There will no doubt be spikes from time to time, but much better to start going through that in summer when the typical flu season isnt also bearing down on these same vulnerable groups of people.

Since it's likely no revenues come in with ticket sales or game day concessions/gate at ballparks if no fans attend games, revenues are pretty much tv money only and for broadcasting games and merchandising, yes? Plus teams will be paying back alot of ticketholders refunds for money theyve already spent on operating expenses from offseason ticket sales. If that's the case it's no wonder owners want to adjust payment terms to be a revenue share for this season, because tv money alone isnt going to amount to much revenue spread across the whole league. Some markets, sure...but most teams' tv deals only amount to 25-40% of their roster payroll. If owners have to shell out prorated contracts to all players based on how many games the season is, owners probably will just nix the season and players wont get anything more than what their last agreement pays them through May. It would be stupid losing a whole season to this...both the players and owners are going to lose alot of money this year no matter what - but then again so are most Americans. If there is no season because players and owners can't reach an agreement, it will be a disaster for the sport. Large scale cancellations of youth level baseball this summer is already bad enough - this would be a travesty and I hope both parties understand that.

This would also explain the lack of confirmed cases from fast food drive thru lines

His characters will live on forever...loved him on Seinfeld and in Zoolander. Seemed like a great guy off the set/stage, too.

Or the social distancing is working? Not really, also more articles of people prepping for elective medical and dental procedures that will soon be allowed again that were tested only because of the upcoming procedures, they tested positive and had no idea they and their whole family had it. 90 percent plus of positive meat packing plant positive cases are asymptomatic. 95 percent plus of inmate positive tests are asymptomatic cases...