Even if pro-sports should open to an empty stadium, some sports are more prone to coronavirus than others. But there are places where payers get in close proximity with other members, such as in rooming (two to a room) and meals. Nearly all pro-sports events have been canceled.
Perhaps the lest safe sport is professional Football. You not only have 22 players on the field, briefly smashing into each other but also a bunch of players and assistants sitting on benches, currently close together. I suppose the benches could be extended but it would be very hard for players even on the bench not to pass close to others. As of this writing, several pro-football players and others are said to have coronavirus.*
Maybe next is professional basketball. Fewer players are involved than in pro-football, but there still are 10 players on the court in close proximity to each other. And then there is the bench problem again though small than for football. Many pro-basketball plays have acquired coronavirus.*
Hockey has seen quite a few cases of coronavirus. One team had as many as 7 players and other members of the 52 member traveling team come down with coronavirus.* Hockey revels in being a contact sport.*
Minor league baseball in the U.S. has seen quite a few players acquire coronavirus (season not canceled), but only one major leaguer (that canceled the preseason). Also, players from the Nippon League (Japan) have gotten coronavirus also. Baseball has 9 players on the field and one or more opponents plus three umpires at a time. There is not a lot of contact between players such as for football and basketball, but both sides use the same ball and, of course, there is the bench problem as well. The main points of contact or proximity are the hitter, catcher, and plate umpire. I don't know how you can cure that though the umpire may be able to move back some. There can also be contract between a runner and the defenseman on the bases. sometimes going after a flyball, players will collide at least get close together.*
Though professional boxing has only two opponents there are also the cut man and the coach plus a referee in the ring at times., there is a lot of contact between them, such as clinching. There is a boxer who acquired coronavirus.*
One of the safest sports should be professional golf what with only four people involved (a golfer and the caddy), but the golfer does get close to the caddy. I suppose the caddy might move away when the golfer comes to select a club. If the clubs have been sanitized, there should be little problem. It should be easy for the golfers to remain six feet apart. Their hands do get into the cup, however, that may be the weak point. One golfer has acquired the coronavirus.*
Another safe professional sport would be tennis single, though both players touch the tennis ball which is the weak spot.*
* https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2020-03-12/coronavirus-athletes-and-sports-figures-who-have-tested-positive
Thursday, April 30, 2020
Monday, April 20, 2020
CONFESSIONS OF A LIFE-LONG PESSIMIST (Biographical)
I have been a pessimist from early life. I recall when I was six year's old in 1937, I worried about the Chinese which I had been told in Sunday school are nice people and hard workers, carrying heavy loads upon their heads.* Gen. Chiang Kai-shek was already a hero. The Japanese were threatening to invade China, there had already been skirmishes, and I didn't want to hear the news. My father in the pre-TV age was going to turn the news on the radio and I got up to leave. He asked me why I was leaving so I told him I was afraid to hear news about China. He assured me there wouldn't be any, but, as it turned out, there was and I ran screaming from the room. I was worried that the Japanese would invade us also and that they might be small in stature but were supermen. This was four years before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Though the Japanese never were able to completely take China, my pessimistic nature was already at hand at the age of six.
I do admit that most of my memories are of a rather pleasant early childhood in the 1930s when gasoline was 25 cents/gallon or five gallons for a dollar, but, more importantly to me, candy bars were a nickel or three for a dime. My mother had an artistic temperament so there were times with a lot of yelling and spanking over some indiscretions that were real or imagined. I had some speaking problems, mainly pronouncing "Rs" as "Ws", for example, I would pronounce "car" as "cow." I had trouble memorizing the multiplication tables, particularly so with the times 7s, a defect that was cured with flashcards and daily exercises with them. I became a sickly child in the later 1930s and ran through all the communicable diseases one after the other, it seemed (mumps, measles, whooping cough, chickenpox). At that time, you were quarantined for four to six weeks each so I missed a lot of school in the early grades. I wasn't held back a year because it was judged that I was working up to my abilities (We didn't have As and Bs, etc).
Finally, however, in the 4th grade, I missed only 4 half days of school in the entire school year. I wasn't held back a grade so I could start playing catch up. I was a terrible daydreamer and would dream full stories with a beginning a middle and an end. This tendency would result in my missing instructions in school so that I would turn up at school without some piece of homework that every other student turned in. It was humiliating, but daydream I continued to do.
On December 7th, 1941, I had just come in from playing "kick the can" when my brother told me that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. More terror and my belief that the "Supermen" were going to invade us. I was sure they would win. Late that Sunday afternoon the family was playing the card game "Hearts" when over the radio came news flashes of the damage done to Hawaii. These did nothing to soothe me.
The supermen never did invade us, but there was a costly war with Japan and Germany that finally ended in 1945. I was in camp when I heard that the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima. I don't recall being scared of the Germans maybe because my mother's side of the family was all German, though I didn't know this until I was maybe 15.
Then came the Berlin Blockade** when the Russians cut off all ground transport (highways, rail, and barge) to Berlin in June of 2008. As a result, President Truman decided on airlifts (not only food but coal as well and other essential items) to Berlin to sustain the people. By the end of the Blockade, 2.3 million pounds were flown into Berlin. The Blockade ended in May of 1949, but the airlift continued until September. I was sure this period of about a year with the airlift would lead to nuclear war (either by design or accident) and that I had maybe five years to live. So the 1950s were ushered in as a time of terror for me.
Things became rather quiet until 1958 with the Hungarian Uprising that we had encouraged. The Soviet response was brutal,. Again I felt it would have to end in a nuclear war. As I have said elsewhere, I never would have thought that Eisenhower would just say something like, "Too bad boys, You are on your own."** But he did and a nuclear war was avoided.
The 1960s were ushered in with Jack Kennedy as the president who started off his tenure with an abortive battle in Cuba called the Bay of Pigs. The Cubans did not join the insurgency and the invasion was aborted. Next, the Soviets tried to ship missiles to Cuba that created another incident threatening nuclear war. Curiously, I felt that it would not come because Cuba was in our sphere of influence just as Hungary was in the Soviet sphere of influence; however, we came closer than I thought. Just in case, however, I went out and bought the best bottle of cognac I could find and drank some. I thought that if I was wrong and I was going to suffer the rest of my life, at least I could look back and say that at one time I had the best of something. Secretly, we made a deal with the Soviets that if they withdrew from Cuba we would remove some threatening missiles of our own aimed at them though we weren't told that at the time.
To lift our spirits, President Kennedy committed us to send men to the Moon and bring them back safely to Earth before the decade was out. This seemed impossible to me because our rockets were still blowing up on the launching pad, yet it happened. I had been against space research because it was so expensive. A single disposable rocket mission cost about what my branch in my organization spent in a year, including salaries.
In 1965, President Kennedy and the prime minister of Japan, Ikeda, had a meeting in which the premier said that many Japanese scientists came to America but few American scientists went to Japan so they ginned up a program we called the U.S.-Japan Scientific Cooperation Program. It was meant for academic scientists but few were volunteering to go. One day in 1965 my boss called me in and said, "Think of something to do in Japan." OK, I was to go, but I was not in great health (In fact when I was 22, I was told that if I lived to 35 I would be immobilized in a wheelchair.) and was sure I would die there. Though the trip was exhausting, I did survive it and had many great memories.
In October of 1968, I was sent to Switzerland for a year and I was there during the Christmas message of our astronauts*** who circled behind the moon. I had an epiphany and became a booster of the space program. Apparently, I sent ESP signals to my organization and they lent me out to NASA to help set up the lunar sample program for 15 mo. This was an exhausting job and I was glad to get out of it at the time, but great memories remain. NASA members had great depression after the failed Apollo 13 mission that, however, brought the astronauts safely back to Earth. Everyone thought that the upcoming Apollo 14 mission would be the last. It would end if it was successful so President Nixon could go out of the program successfully, or it wouldn't be successful so the program would end because it was too costly in equipment and lives. Astronauts had already died during an accidental practice session fire in the lunar module. Each mission was said to cost $300,000,000.
I had felt that life was closing in ahead of me and that I would never get to Europe or Japan again. In the early 1970s, I was sure I was going to be fired by President Nixon who was out to "get" Civil Servants. To prepare for this, I started to drink Gallo red wine that I could buy by the gallon and that I called Nixon Boudreaux. But I was to visit Japan again in 1975 after the "Americanization of Japan" had set in and there were McDonald's and Mr. Donut stores around, and I was to visit Europe several times, mostly with my second wife who loved travel.
(To Be Continued)
* We attended a Presbyterian church called House Of Hope which had close ties with China through supporting a medical missionary to China, Republican Rep. Dr. Walter H. Judd who served as a U.S. Representative for 20 yrs, a strong anti-communist, and became known as a leader of a group informally called the "China Lobby."
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Blockade
*** A rather glorious title because they were going to the Moon, not the stars..
I do admit that most of my memories are of a rather pleasant early childhood in the 1930s when gasoline was 25 cents/gallon or five gallons for a dollar, but, more importantly to me, candy bars were a nickel or three for a dime. My mother had an artistic temperament so there were times with a lot of yelling and spanking over some indiscretions that were real or imagined. I had some speaking problems, mainly pronouncing "Rs" as "Ws", for example, I would pronounce "car" as "cow." I had trouble memorizing the multiplication tables, particularly so with the times 7s, a defect that was cured with flashcards and daily exercises with them. I became a sickly child in the later 1930s and ran through all the communicable diseases one after the other, it seemed (mumps, measles, whooping cough, chickenpox). At that time, you were quarantined for four to six weeks each so I missed a lot of school in the early grades. I wasn't held back a year because it was judged that I was working up to my abilities (We didn't have As and Bs, etc).
Finally, however, in the 4th grade, I missed only 4 half days of school in the entire school year. I wasn't held back a grade so I could start playing catch up. I was a terrible daydreamer and would dream full stories with a beginning a middle and an end. This tendency would result in my missing instructions in school so that I would turn up at school without some piece of homework that every other student turned in. It was humiliating, but daydream I continued to do.
On December 7th, 1941, I had just come in from playing "kick the can" when my brother told me that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. More terror and my belief that the "Supermen" were going to invade us. I was sure they would win. Late that Sunday afternoon the family was playing the card game "Hearts" when over the radio came news flashes of the damage done to Hawaii. These did nothing to soothe me.
The supermen never did invade us, but there was a costly war with Japan and Germany that finally ended in 1945. I was in camp when I heard that the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima. I don't recall being scared of the Germans maybe because my mother's side of the family was all German, though I didn't know this until I was maybe 15.
Then came the Berlin Blockade** when the Russians cut off all ground transport (highways, rail, and barge) to Berlin in June of 2008. As a result, President Truman decided on airlifts (not only food but coal as well and other essential items) to Berlin to sustain the people. By the end of the Blockade, 2.3 million pounds were flown into Berlin. The Blockade ended in May of 1949, but the airlift continued until September. I was sure this period of about a year with the airlift would lead to nuclear war (either by design or accident) and that I had maybe five years to live. So the 1950s were ushered in as a time of terror for me.
Things became rather quiet until 1958 with the Hungarian Uprising that we had encouraged. The Soviet response was brutal,. Again I felt it would have to end in a nuclear war. As I have said elsewhere, I never would have thought that Eisenhower would just say something like, "Too bad boys, You are on your own."** But he did and a nuclear war was avoided.
The 1960s were ushered in with Jack Kennedy as the president who started off his tenure with an abortive battle in Cuba called the Bay of Pigs. The Cubans did not join the insurgency and the invasion was aborted. Next, the Soviets tried to ship missiles to Cuba that created another incident threatening nuclear war. Curiously, I felt that it would not come because Cuba was in our sphere of influence just as Hungary was in the Soviet sphere of influence; however, we came closer than I thought. Just in case, however, I went out and bought the best bottle of cognac I could find and drank some. I thought that if I was wrong and I was going to suffer the rest of my life, at least I could look back and say that at one time I had the best of something. Secretly, we made a deal with the Soviets that if they withdrew from Cuba we would remove some threatening missiles of our own aimed at them though we weren't told that at the time.
To lift our spirits, President Kennedy committed us to send men to the Moon and bring them back safely to Earth before the decade was out. This seemed impossible to me because our rockets were still blowing up on the launching pad, yet it happened. I had been against space research because it was so expensive. A single disposable rocket mission cost about what my branch in my organization spent in a year, including salaries.
In 1965, President Kennedy and the prime minister of Japan, Ikeda, had a meeting in which the premier said that many Japanese scientists came to America but few American scientists went to Japan so they ginned up a program we called the U.S.-Japan Scientific Cooperation Program. It was meant for academic scientists but few were volunteering to go. One day in 1965 my boss called me in and said, "Think of something to do in Japan." OK, I was to go, but I was not in great health (In fact when I was 22, I was told that if I lived to 35 I would be immobilized in a wheelchair.) and was sure I would die there. Though the trip was exhausting, I did survive it and had many great memories.
In October of 1968, I was sent to Switzerland for a year and I was there during the Christmas message of our astronauts*** who circled behind the moon. I had an epiphany and became a booster of the space program. Apparently, I sent ESP signals to my organization and they lent me out to NASA to help set up the lunar sample program for 15 mo. This was an exhausting job and I was glad to get out of it at the time, but great memories remain. NASA members had great depression after the failed Apollo 13 mission that, however, brought the astronauts safely back to Earth. Everyone thought that the upcoming Apollo 14 mission would be the last. It would end if it was successful so President Nixon could go out of the program successfully, or it wouldn't be successful so the program would end because it was too costly in equipment and lives. Astronauts had already died during an accidental practice session fire in the lunar module. Each mission was said to cost $300,000,000.
I had felt that life was closing in ahead of me and that I would never get to Europe or Japan again. In the early 1970s, I was sure I was going to be fired by President Nixon who was out to "get" Civil Servants. To prepare for this, I started to drink Gallo red wine that I could buy by the gallon and that I called Nixon Boudreaux. But I was to visit Japan again in 1975 after the "Americanization of Japan" had set in and there were McDonald's and Mr. Donut stores around, and I was to visit Europe several times, mostly with my second wife who loved travel.
(To Be Continued)
* We attended a Presbyterian church called House Of Hope which had close ties with China through supporting a medical missionary to China, Republican Rep. Dr. Walter H. Judd who served as a U.S. Representative for 20 yrs, a strong anti-communist, and became known as a leader of a group informally called the "China Lobby."
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Blockade
*** A rather glorious title because they were going to the Moon, not the stars..
Sunday, April 19, 2020
CORONOVIRUS SUMMER PAUSE?
It appears that new admissions to hospitals for coronavirus are decreasing in New York and maybe Michigan.* If this is the case, we may be going into a summer pause as the flu season is over and in the summer pause already. Deaths will continue to be high for a while yet because of cases already in the system.
I am unable to confirm drops for other centers.
* https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2020/04/13/coronavirus-hospital-admissions-begin-to-drop-in-new-york-city-1275158
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/18/coronvirus-new-yorks-cuomo-briefs-updates-on-covid-19.html
https://www.foxnews.com/us/michigan-field-hospital-scale-back-beds
I am unable to confirm drops for other centers.
* https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2020/04/13/coronavirus-hospital-admissions-begin-to-drop-in-new-york-city-1275158
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/18/coronvirus-new-yorks-cuomo-briefs-updates-on-covid-19.html
https://www.foxnews.com/us/michigan-field-hospital-scale-back-beds
Saturday, April 18, 2020
CAN TRUMP TAKE CREDIT FOR OPENING THE STATES AND BLAME THE CONSEQUENCES ON THE GOVERNORS?
While millions are sick and thousands are dying of coronavirus, Trump is playing serious politics. He recently claimed he had total power over the governors and was thinking about telling them to open up business in spite of coronavirus. As he does not have this power, I wondered how he was going to escape this one. Well, it turned out to be easy. He did it in two steps, First he said that he would delegate the power to open up the states to the governors (pretty clever) and then (2) attack the WHO organization to change the subject.
Though I find what Trump is doing to be sick, his plan is to take credit for opening the states while pinning the blame for coronavirus resurgence on the Governors (probably the Democratic governors). Of courses, governors can see through this, but it makes their job more difficult.
It is clear to me that Trump does not give a hoot about human life (well, maybe his children). After all, look at how he walked away from our Kurdish allies leaving them to be slaughtered by the Turks. It should be clear that all along Trump has viewed the coronavirus as an economic problem and not a human life problem.
In his convoluted way, Trump is encouraging demonstrators to "Liberate" Minnesota, Michigan, and Virginia to open businesses.* He is actually fomenting problems in these states by urging demonstrators on. I wondered if these demonstrators are getting paid?
I can't see how this all ends well. In the end, I presume we are just going to give up controlling the coronavirus and suffer the consequences. Maybe we will end up with 2 million deaths after all.
* https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/tea-party-style-protests-break-out-across-country-against-stay-n1185611
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8230031/Trump-tells-Dem-governors-LIBERATE-Michigan-Virginia-Minnesota.html
Though I find what Trump is doing to be sick, his plan is to take credit for opening the states while pinning the blame for coronavirus resurgence on the Governors (probably the Democratic governors). Of courses, governors can see through this, but it makes their job more difficult.
It is clear to me that Trump does not give a hoot about human life (well, maybe his children). After all, look at how he walked away from our Kurdish allies leaving them to be slaughtered by the Turks. It should be clear that all along Trump has viewed the coronavirus as an economic problem and not a human life problem.
In his convoluted way, Trump is encouraging demonstrators to "Liberate" Minnesota, Michigan, and Virginia to open businesses.* He is actually fomenting problems in these states by urging demonstrators on. I wondered if these demonstrators are getting paid?
I can't see how this all ends well. In the end, I presume we are just going to give up controlling the coronavirus and suffer the consequences. Maybe we will end up with 2 million deaths after all.
* https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/tea-party-style-protests-break-out-across-country-against-stay-n1185611
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8230031/Trump-tells-Dem-governors-LIBERATE-Michigan-Virginia-Minnesota.html
Saturday, April 11, 2020
CORONAVIRUS: INFECTIONS/DEATHS PARADOX
We are told that the death rate from coronavirus is about 1%. In case you wonder what is behind this "guesstimate," there is nothing behind it.
Consider, the official counts as of April 8 were 426,300 cases and 14,622 deaths. Normally I would consider the death rate to be the more accurate figure, but we should remember that the death count is only for those hospitalized and does not include those who die at home. If the death rate is 1%, then the caseload should be 1,462,200 (100 x 14, 622) rather than the published value of 426,300. So 426,300/(1,462,200) = 0.29%. That is to say that the death rate is something more like 0.29% rather than 1%.
Let's do it the other way around. Let's say that the caseload is the better number so if there are 426,300 cases then 1% should be 4,263 deaths (426,300/100), but this calculation is 0.29%, even less (4,263/14,622).
To the best of my knowledge, all death-rate figures come out to be much less than 1%.
As of April 8, there were 1,508,965 cases of coronavirus worldwide and 88,323 deaths. If the death rate is 1%, then there should be 8,832,300 cases which would indicate that the death rate is about 0.17%.
As of 04-10-2020, the caseload has topped 518,892 and the deaths have topped 20,109 for the U.S.* Here the death rate would be about 0.25%
* https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html
Consider, the official counts as of April 8 were 426,300 cases and 14,622 deaths. Normally I would consider the death rate to be the more accurate figure, but we should remember that the death count is only for those hospitalized and does not include those who die at home. If the death rate is 1%, then the caseload should be 1,462,200 (100 x 14, 622) rather than the published value of 426,300. So 426,300/(1,462,200) = 0.29%. That is to say that the death rate is something more like 0.29% rather than 1%.
Let's do it the other way around. Let's say that the caseload is the better number so if there are 426,300 cases then 1% should be 4,263 deaths (426,300/100), but this calculation is 0.29%, even less (4,263/14,622).
To the best of my knowledge, all death-rate figures come out to be much less than 1%.
As of April 8, there were 1,508,965 cases of coronavirus worldwide and 88,323 deaths. If the death rate is 1%, then there should be 8,832,300 cases which would indicate that the death rate is about 0.17%.
As of 04-10-2020, the caseload has topped 518,892 and the deaths have topped 20,109 for the U.S.* Here the death rate would be about 0.25%
* https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html
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