Thursday 5 Mar 2020

Anyone else getting sick of Becks?

You were famous in the 00s, we get it!

 

Several points that we have kicked around, for some time now, appear to really be on the mind of our Commish.

“I think the off-season is too long, and there’s no doubt about it,” Garber said. “We’ve got to figure out a way to try to manage the fact that we continue to evolve our schedule and have not really been able to – even after all these years – settle on something that’s perfect.”

When the 2020 season kicked off last weekend, teams who did not qualify for the 2019 postseason had gone 146 to 147 days without a competitive match. It’s an issue that, as Garber admitted, the league has wrestled with for 25 years.

 

We need more teams!!!

 

FYP

 

Don't embrace the fear mongering, any given year 12k-20k people die from the regular flu. Those who have passed away in the US had pre-existing health conditions that made them vulnerable to the Coronavirus.

MLS commissioner Don Garber talks plans for potential coronavirus impacts, including possible travel and game changes
https://thecomeback.com/soccer/mls-...-plans-for-potential-coronavirus-impacts.html

 

15 million cases of flu, 140,000 hospitalizations, and 8200 deaths in the US this influenza season as of mid January.

 

If 4% of the US population gets COVID-19 and 1% of those people die, it would be more than double the number of American deaths in the Vietnam War.

 

We also know that (unlike the flu) Coronavirus rarely infects children and infants, and when it does symptoms are actually milder than in adults.

 

Yes, 12k to 61k in the US die from the flu every year. And the estimated number of people that get the flu are 9.3 to 45 million a year. Low end mortality rate is .02% to a high of 0.6%. Worldwide the rate is more in line with the 0.6% rate. Coronavirus currently has accounted for 11 deaths in 118 people, so a mortality rate of 9.3%. That number will obviously fall as more cases are reported so it should be taken with a grain of salt at this early stage. Worldwide, however, you are looking at 3,254 deaths in 92,818 cases. That is a mortality rate of 3.5% so far. Again, it will likely go down as well but in order to get to even a 1.2% mortality rate (so double what the flu is) you'd need 178,349 new cases without a single death. That is almost twice as many new cases as current cases.

Yes, it may end up not being a big deal. Maybe all it does is kill high risk individuals. But to downplay it is really dumb at this point. The swine flu pandemic in 2009 effected somewhere between 11 to 21% of the world population and killed upwards of 575k people (high end mortality rate of .08%). And all of our data relies on China actually giving accurate information or even accounting for all the people that have it. Considering China regularly covers up far less serious things I'm not sure I'd trust that info. But to just suggest it is fear mongering because the raw numbers right now don't match up to regular flu? Silly. Really silly.

 

This is a distraction, but your numbers are wrong, maybe they're just old. As of Feb 22, 2020 in the USA there have been 18,000 deaths attributed to the flu according to the CDC. Hospitalization rate per 100,000, and total number of cases is also readily available and different than your numbers. Source: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm
"CDC estimates that so far this season there have been at least 32 million flu illnesses, 310,000 hospitalizations and 18,000 deaths from flu."

The estimated death rate attributed to the coronavirus is substantially higher than that of the flu.

The coronavirus does infect children and infants. The difference is that they don't tend to show symptoms, however they are still contagious and can spread the disease. Seems like the overall mortality rate will end up being somewhere between 2-4 percent given what I've heard. As for my sources on this, it's a variety of sources, but substantially confirming each other. My most common sources are interviews of epidemiologists and doctors on a couple of radio news programs in Italy (Radio 24 - Effetto notte, 24 Mattino), as well as BBC radio, and a variety of US news sources. All of the foreign sources think that the US really doesn't know the scope of the problem in the US due to the limited testing that has been done here so far.

 

I wish to close the can of worms I opened.

 

We could have an indoor season for MLS clubs, or a Futsal League over the Winter Break.
Then combine this new indoor scene with the Liga MX clubs over their Winter Break.
Perhaps have this in a regional set up to cut down on the travel and use this vehicle for the "divisions" some want to have return to MLS a la the NBA and NHL route.

 

Especially those of us who were already sick of him in the 90's.

 

Me: Ok, that's too much reading about Coronavirus on twitter today, time to distract my mind on BigSoccer see what's new about MLS

BigSoccer:

 

Glad to have Beckham now though, pushing MLS.

 

It would be interesting, in the ugliest way, to see how the world would react to what occurred with the Spanish Flu of 1918. It was an H1N1 strain, and spread to about one third of the earth's population [so roughly 500 million at the time were infected] with a global death rate of at least 50 million. That's 10%, at best. In this country, with a population then of about 105 million, it's estimated that roughly 30 million were infected--of which 675,000 died. So a death rate much lower than the global, but still murderously high. That would be more deaths than we have ever [officially] suffered in a given war. The Coronavirus [so far] seems an order of magnitude harder to transmit and easier to recover from..... may it truly be so.

In any case, as if we needed it, here is yet another reminder of the fragility of life...... and of how humbled we are by the immensity and power of existence itself. Let's never forget to take joy in all that life graces us, as we may.

 

Now, back to what really matters: "Big Soccer Bashes Beckham for Balling Badly at his Beck and Call!"

 

Frozen worms are much fresher.

 

A lot of us have such preexisting conditions, I feel compelled to add!

 

While this is never a popular opinion, and I don't wish death on anyone (and I'm concerned for my own parents and other older relatives), I view this virus as Mother Nature's attempt at culling the human population. Can't blame her.

 

...or work around those who do.

 

Considering I just got back from an emergency trip to the coronavirus capital of the country to visit a parent unexpectedly in ICU who has respiratory issues, anyone who thinks that its no big deal because it just affects "certain types of people" can take a flying leap.

(To be clear, it wasn't a coronavirus-related illness that caused the emergency)

 

Fun story. I'm typing this from Keystone and I went thru DIA on the same day as the Summit County case.