Shall we start on a new thread for the new year? New Jersey governor Phil Murphy announces stadiums can open up up to 15% capacity. Ohio governor Mike DeWine is allowing stadiums to open up under 30% capacity. Current projections according to the NY Times says by ~July 19th, at least 50% of Americans will at least receive one dose of the vaccine and 70% by ~October to achieve herd immunity (70-80% threshold)
October seems incredibly optimistic considering the hesitancy to take the vaccine and that the trials on vaccines are just now underway. I'd also imagine all the people that are getting the current vaccines will need to get booster shot against the variants that are currently spreading. That being said, attendance is going to be pretty dismal.. I'd also expect the Canadian teams to not even have a half game for most of the season considering how far behind Canada is in getting vaccines and vaccinating people..
New York State is going to allow 10% with a requirement of a negative PCR test result within 72 hours of kickoff. It will be interesting to see if NYCFC plays in NJ or CT if they are more lenient come May or so.
The subject of attendance for 2021 is going to be meaningless. The value of tracking attendance is for the purpose of determining trends or in making comparisons which serve as the basis of analysis. Given highly restrictive rules that result in skewed numbers, there is no basis for analysis or conclusions.
The official estimate here is that everyone who wants a shot will have one by the end of September. (I'm not going to get into the details of estimates, politics, and the like that apply everywhere in the world.) A bigger problem for home games here is likely to be border restrictions that make international play unfeasible for much or all of this season.
I already expected this will be a shorter thread than previous years, but I'll like to update from time to time if there's more news relating to attendances. Anyone's guess what happens in the summer/fall time.
My guess is that FC Broccoli del McKalla will open up full and take the MLS attendance lead for 2021. They (through their bots) will then start bragging on it everywhere they can on social media. Seattle fans will then get VERY pissy about it.
? Atlanta has had the attendance lead every season since they joined the league and the most vocal Sounders fans are opposed to in person attendance. Why would we care about Austin taking the lead due to Texas loosening up their rules and turning sporting events into super spreader events..
Attendance isn't really a relevant statistic this year. Between local and league restrictions on capacity, fears about the virus, the painstakingly slow and uneven roll out of the vaccine, this years' numbers will not really tell us anything of value.
I, for one, am very interested in this thread this year. Who's opening their stadia? Who's going very low-capacity? 50%? Wide open? Especially as the year progresses, the vaccines go out, and politicians are leaned on heavily by big businesses to open things back up. Herd immunity should happen well before 70-80% vaccination just due to the actual infection rate. This thread won't tell us much about the local fan interest in the teams, but it will still be interesting if not terribly meaningful. As an old-timer, a thread worrying about only being allowed to have 50% attendance frankly makes me giddy. Back in my day, it was uphill in the snow both ways, we had 7,000 people for a big game, AND WE LIKED IT! Harrumph.
Assuming herd immunity is possible of course. The California strain doesn't seem to confer any immunity on those that get it...
While you aren't wrong, if the CA variant doesn't result in immunity through infection, it may say something about how effective vaccines will be.
Not much. Vaccines generate so many antibodies that target a large part of the virus, it will take a much larger mutation. Covid isn't HIV, it shall not escape so soon.
Actually herd immunity will probably never be achieved, as we aren't vaccinating kids. However, the high risk people will be protected, and if there are very few deaths we will have to open up, herd immunity or not. Some will scream that we need 0 covid, but its not happening.
Or it may not. Thus far, the vaccines (esp. the mRNA vaccines) have been remarkably effective against variants. The vaccines don't necessarily attack the virus the same way antibodies that result from previous infection do. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different-vaccines/how-they-work.html
There's a big difference between a vaccine not working at all and a vaccine being less effective.. As an example, the AZ vaccine is no longer being used in South Africa because after trials in the country showed it wasn't effective against the variant that is spreading there. That doesn't mean it had zero effectiveness, it just wasn't effective enough to slow the spread of that variant in SA. Pfizer's existing vaccine produces 1/3 the antibodies against the SA variant and Moderna had a sixfold decrease. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/25/health/coronavirus-moderna-vaccine-variant.html It also doesn't mean that tweaks to the existing vaccines can't be done to make them effective against the variants. Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are already testing "boosters" that are supposed to be effective against the SA variant. If that works, I'd imagine future vaccine shots will include both the existing vaccine and the booster. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/25/pfi...ot-of-their-covid-vaccine-in-a-new-trial.html With the CA variant, it's too new to know how effective the vaccines are against it. But even if the current vaccines aren't effective, they'll get tweaked so that they do work. As for your covid isn't HIV... It definitely isn't because HIV mutates pretty much constantly. Covid does mutate slower, but there's so much of it flowing around right now, that even if it is slower, there are variants that are resistant to the vaccines. It just means we need to set-up a regime for identifying new variants, modifying the vaccines, and then giving boosters to the vaccine until it reaches a point where there are less variants spreading around.
Yet. There's some thought that teenagers may start getting vaccines by fall, but younger kids will probably be into 2022 (assuming tests show its safe of course).
I don't mean to derail this thread, but on the 'vaccine news' front, one hope is that this unprecedented, world-wide focus and investment in vaccine development ends up resulting in a remarkable, qualitative jump in the creation of new vaccine platforms that might be highly effective against a wide range of diseases. Until COVID, no one had brought an mRNA vaccine to market despite years of effort; now we have two, their efficacy rates are astonishing, and their plug-and-play adaptability means they can be quickly adjusted, if need be. Which brings me to this: https://academictimes.com/first-vac...t-malaria-builds-on-pandemic-driven-rna-tech/ Similar technology, which the article title implies is being helped along by the investment in COVID vaccines - and it probably is, to an extent - which may offer the first effective vaccine to protect against malaria. As the article notes, in 2019, there were over 200M cases of malaria and over 400,000 deaths caused by the disease. Vaccines of this type could eliminate the threat posed by influenza and other diseases. A silver lining, perhaps, during this shitty period of human history.
In Ohio, the governor is allowing 30% capacity for outdoor events. He plans to raise the % as covid case counts decrease. It will likely be 30% for FCC's home opener at their new stadium. Crew is expecting to play home MLS matches at the old stadium until the new one opens in summer.
My wife is a NICU nurse had both doses of Pfizer/Biontech and I've had my first. I am looking for a trial for J&J for my kids as I missed the teen Pfizer and Moderna ones. Hoping to get them vaccinated prior to school in the fall. Regardless of what the district decides to do for this school year we already opted out. The state did set aside 25000 does for administration starting yesterday to Teachers, Staff, and administration workers in the schools.
Texas just reopened all businesses and other establishments up to 100% capacity today. I think that includes stadiums since there is no exception in the new order. This is miserable for us Houston fans lol
Supposedly all adults in the USA will have access to a shot by end of May. assuming this happens and numbers stay low (they’re still heading down) and hospitalizations and deaths fall really low (both declining steadily) won’t this likely be more an epidemic then a pandemic by the 4th of July? I really think we will see fans again in growing numbers come Summer. Once people have a choice to protect themselves (shots available) and few people are dying (vulnerable vaccinated and spread much reduced) why not? I tend to think all venues should be open at the start of the season at whatever is deemed safe locally (at least 10%). Am I nuts?