No there wasn’t. They were following up on Don G’s interview with Taylor Twellman, linked below, and sharing what they had been hearing around the league as far potential locations at which to hold a tournament-like schedule of games.
Dutch Health Minister, Hugo de Jonge, says that fans will not be allowed to attend football matches in the Netherlands until a vaccine for the Coronavirus is found. Due to the ‘large scale and huge technical effort’ required, it is unlikely to happen this year according to WHO.— Ben Dinnery (@BenDinnery) May 7, 2020
Not soccer, but maybe relevant nonetheless: Sources: Commissioner Adam Silver told NBA players on call Friday:- If season resumes, no fans expected- 40% of league revenue comes from fans- Season decision can go into June- Until coronavirus vaccine, there is risk; will be living with the virus for foreseeable future— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) May 8, 2020
Below is a Twitter interview that I copied and pasted. It is somewhat related to the debate of when and how to open up sports. The location is in Ontario, Canada. So, not all of the considerations might be transferable to the USA. Part of it is in regards to the dilemma the medical community will face if frequent testing of sports teams becomes a reality. For instance, how do you justify taking insufficient testing resources away from nursing homes and other high risk populations so that sports can be played? I realize that our COVID Response Czar, Darth Jared, will make sure that testing resources get re-routed to sports and other segments that if started up will give the impression that things are just dandy. Rick Westhead @rwesthead · 3h Replying to @rwesthead Dr. Silverman: “Everyone's supposed to increase surgery b/c we know people are waiting, like women with breast tumors that could be curable at one point, but once they metastasize it's not curable anymore, & people who need a bypass. Some will have heart attacks while they wait.” Rick Westhead @rwesthead · 3h "You can start doing some of these surgeries as long as you have 30 days worth of PPE for everybody. Well, nobody in the province can do that, nobody's got 30 days worth of stock." Rick Westhead @rwesthead · 3h "This thing is clearly more infectious than we thought. 44% of transmissions are from people who are asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic. They think they're fine. This is like chicken pox, most infectious a day before symptoms. People spreading Covid don’t know they’re spreading it." Rick Westhead @rwesthead · 3h “The wait time for results on the test to detect Covid is around 24 hours. It got better and then worse b/c labs had to quadruple volume b/c they're testing all the nursing homes. The longer the test takes, the less useful it is.” Rick Westhead @rwesthead · 3h On MLSE’s promise to buy own Covid tests: “It's not the money. It's the re-agents, They say ‘we’ll they'll buy it separately.’ OK, from where? we're all buying from the same source. So if we're using it for you that means somebody else doesn't get it." Rick Westhead @rwesthead · 3h “It also taxes further taxes the labs and increases the amount of time it's gonna take for the results to come back. The limitation is not money. The government is pouring a ton of money into thing. the limitation is that there's no product to buy.” Rick Westhead @rwesthead · 3h “Nursing homes are lining up for tests and they have to take turns. As it is, we can't test people before operations b/c we don't have enough volume. Now we're throwing in something [pro athlete testing] that's completely elective." Rick Westhead @rwesthead · 3h “With more volume, I'd rather test 500 women with breast tumours so they could get their surgery. If we tested and they were negative, possibly surgeons wouldn't have to get dressed up in PPE. But we don’t have enough PPE so we tell the women we can’t do their surgery." Rick Westhead @rwesthead · 3h On challenges of testing: “We see lots of false negatives. When you're testing the nose, this virus is often down deeper in the lungs. About 15% of the time when people are admitted to hospital the test is negative. Then we test them again a few days later and becomes positive." Rick Westhead @rwesthead · 3h If you get virus today, when will you spread & when will you get sick? "Right now, symptoms are appearing around 4 to 5 days after someone get the virus, but they start being infectious around 2 days after getting the virus. And they're very infectious. And they don't know it."
This study helps explain why we aren’t going to see fans in stadiums/arenas for a very long time. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6919e6-H.pdf?deliveryName=USCDC_921-DM28169
We’ll see how this works out. I wonder how the leagues are going to deal with groups of players crowding around the center officials to protest calls. It seems like they are going to be at high risk in all of this. The Premier League will tell players to 'turn your face away in a tackle' to minimise the risk of spreading coronavirus, according to The Telegraph 🤨 pic.twitter.com/tA8sgydIld— GOAL (@goal) May 12, 2020
It's absolute nonsense to have soccer coming back this weekend in Germany. I do not get it. And the Premier League pushing forward is just... wow. The test for the US, in regards to sports, will be american football. With states taking different approaches, it begs the question of how to do the entire thing. Closed door games at neutral sites? Ok, but there are like 250 people on the field for American Football games. Each team carries roughly 50 players, a coaching staff of... 20-30? I dunno, that part always is weird to me. Further, from just an athlete perspective, the entire game is based on eliminating social distancing. The lines are inches from each other, huffing away. You've got man marking all over the place. Everyone converges on the ball. Etc. And that's ignoring the entire moral question of having these games and taking testing supplies/personnel away from actual people. And, football's timing is going to coincide with the inevitable second wave in the fall/winter. I have a fear these games will get clearance, as numbers will dip in the summer (hopefully) and the false sense of security will push people to saying "ITS UNAMERICAN TO TAKE AWAY MY FOOTBALLS!". People are struggling with being told "you can do things just not in groups" already, imagine taking away the majority of the countries very favorite thing to watch.
Serie A to resume June 13 pending government approval. Germany has the adequate testing and contact tracing capacity to have a better chance than any other big league in Europe to make it work. It will be interesting.
Baseball seems like a somewhat safer team sport since most players are far apart. Golf and tennis should be somewhat doable with no spectators. I'd prefer if none of it happened at all until next year, but I fear that's not going to happen.
Sure, Germany does have the proper amount of testing... for German. It's a very insular view and isn't going to look all the great when there is an outbreak in South America or Africa where testing isn't as readily available. Sorry, folks, we have soccer to be played up here and need those tests
At the professional level, sure, baseball is fine. At an amateur level, I've driven by baseball diamonds around town and seen some "creative" ways to distance. Hanging bags on the fence is cool, but how do you have kids for the team at bat spread out? All along the fence line? Yeah, that's going to go great for 10 year olds. They'll realize just how boring that sport is and how much of the fun they have is simply being with their buddies in the dugout.
Little League shouldn’t resume yet. I think the professional leagues can make it work; but they will still have problems.
An interesting theory just put forth by the announcers in the Union Berlin/Bayern game: Referees should perform better without the crowd influence & pressure. I had not thought of that aspect.
Watching Bundesliga without fans was certainly a different experience, Maybe it’s just me, but the clearly heard screams of agony (some real, some embellished) from players subjected to harsh fouls was startling.
It was nice to watch soccer again. I was surprised by the level, given the time off, but I can already tell that kind of viewing experience, for me, will wear off in a week or two. There is no atmosphere to these games. They feel like glorified preseason friendlies, though I know they're not. I also still struggle with the concept of just how much testing equipment is used for this when it could be used in less frivolous places.
That last part doesn’t bother me so much because Germany has more than enough testing capacity. There are no sectors of German society that are being inadequately tested. I think Italy will be ok too. England I’m not so sure about. Where it will truly be frivolous is when the USA begins testing for the sports teams.
could Germany not donate these excessive tests to other areas? Is the test in Germany vastly different and insufficient to what is needed elsewhere?
Forget the Bundesliga my friends. Goalie Cat is the soccer star of the pandemic! https://ftw.usatoday.com/2020/05/goalie-cat
I'm gonna pull a Kanye West here to the Taylor Swift Goal Cat... But Jelle's Marble Racing is far and away the star of the pandemic "sports" wise. If you haven't watched any of this during the pandemic I personally feel at fault.
I just want to be *that guy* and say that my kids were watching Jelle's Marble Racing for a full year before the pandemic. And yes, they are actually fantastic.
Throw me in as someone who had been watching this long before the pandemic. It's such an amazingly well put together product.
No surprise here. The more sports are going on and life seemingly normal, the better the chances of re-election. This tweet is specific to the NHL, but I assume the policy crosses over to other sports. The Department of Homeland Security provides an exemption for foreign professional athletes from travel restrictions barring entry into the US pic.twitter.com/caZQ0sGEZ9— Zolan Kanno-Youngs (@KannoYoungs) May 23, 2020
The thought of actually purchasing a subscription to The Athletic is growing on me. Over the last 2 weeks, we’ve published several stories revealing info on MLS’s plan to return.On Friday, MLS commissioner Don Garber sent a memo to all league, club employees threatening disciplinary action for leaking. He singled out The Athletic. https://t.co/lH9RR2aNBQ— Sam Stejskal (@samstejskal) May 25, 2020