Friday, July 3, 2020

For Those Of You.....



....who remain optimistic about a 60 game season and playoffs....leading to a 2020 Covid World Championship ....I shall say only this:

Mexico has cancelled baseball for this season. Kaput.  Gone.  Adios.  Nada. 

I coached/played/managed/scouted in the South Mexican Dirt Field League for years, and we never didn't play.  Even when high on Mesclin and Tequila.  

We played when we couldn't stand up, or see straight. 

In Mexico, baseball is taken seriously.  And it has vanished for 2020.  

By fiat. Due to the threat and spread of Covid-19.

Today in Mexico:  You play...they shoot you.  It saves on hospital bills. 

So, I wish MLB in America nothing but the best. 

 Judging by how the good ole USA has handled the virus...and are still handling it this fine July 4th weekend...it ain't never going to happen.  Setting records for hospitalizations, new cases, and ICU occupancy is not a positive indicator ( unless, of course, the increased patient load, use of ventilators, and rising death numbers are solely due to more testing.. in which case, if we stop testing , everyone can leave the hospital.  I am going to ask the White House Press Secretary for confirmation on this ). 

The best idea I have heard , so far, to "encourage" national compliance with masking ( our only valid method of curtailing viral spread ) ....are school teachers saying;  " if you want school to open in this town, we won't be there to teach unless the community has gone two weeks without a new case of Covid." 

Maybe the baseball union should say the same thing.  

17 comments:

Platoni said...

Gerrit Cole: “Aaron Hicks will be like, the first player ever to have Tommy John surgery and not miss a regular season game."

Gerrit Cole has a lot to learn about Yankees outfielders in general and Aaron Hicks in particular.

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Publius said...

Cases are rising, deaths are falling. Precipitously. Everything else is noise and panic mongering. Play ball.

Austria's Only Baseball Fan said...

I hate to be a Gloomy Gus, but America seems to be treating this whole pandemic thing on an hour-by-hour basis. We’ve had a lot of relaxation of rules here – masks are only mandatory on public transportation and taxis, doctors’ offices, hospitals and apothecaries, and places where a distance of at least one meter is not possible (but we still wear them a lot in places where they are no longer required, like supermarkets). After weeks of daily new infections remaining in low double-digits (as low as two new cases) and several days passing by with no deaths, we are suddenly starting to see a rise, and twice in the last week have had just over 100 new cases.

I was at the apothecary last week and when the woman handed me my medications, she also gave me a thick, sealed plastic bag and said “Wir haben ein Geschenk für Sie, für die zweite Welle” – “We have a gift for you, for the Second Wave.” The package contains several clinical white masks. I also received one in today’s post with animal paw prints on it, from one of the animal rescue organisations I support.

We are already preparing for what seems to be the inevitable future, but when I look at the New York Times or watch a bit of MSNBC, the news I get seems to indicate that America is just not ready to resume baseball beyond, perhaps, a “subway series” with the Yankees and Mets. Compared to other states New York seems to have dealt with the worst, but there is still that “zweite Welle” which could start up anytime soon.

Please stay safe and don’t take anything for granted.

TheWinWarblist said...

Publius, I'm gonna continue in the Gloomy Gus mode. One of my colleagues caught COVID in Westchester in the beginning of the pandemic. He only died last month. He was sick for 3 months, the last 8 weeks in an ICU on a ventilator. The rise in deaths lags 2 to 3 months behind the rise in case numbers. The case fatality rate is running around 5% in the best of circumstances. 50,000 new cases today means at least 2,500 deaths in three months. That's just the natural history of this disease. We have only minimally effective therapy. And it'll be a year before a vaccine.

DO NOT LET YOUR GUARD DOWN.

Stay safe. Stay distant. Wear a mask. Was your hands. Fuck you Hal.

Publius said...

Case fatality rate at 5%? Can that possibly be true? Seems high. Seems astronomically high. But nevermind. This Airborne Toxic Event has taken the measure of the USA in its 244th year, and found it wanting.

HoraceClarke66 said...

That's very scary, Warbler.

Austria, you just don't get it, do you?

We don't give things away over here. You must pay and pay, unless of course you are one of the richest people in the country, in which case you are showered with free things, like "gift bags" that include cars. It's an incentive, sort of like how the minor leagues used to work, before we pulverized them.

We also hate planning and thinking ahead. It's anti-American. Oh, some of us used to do that, but they were considered to be Puritan buzzkills.

We like to pretend to be Puritans, but in fact we have become a nation of grifters. Grifters posing as Puritans—that's what makes us so dangerous.

TheWinWarblist said...

Publius, yes, the case fatality rate is between 5-8%. That is horrifically high, yes. (Ebola is only like 40+%.) Now, there may be as many as 10 asymptomatic infections for every symptomatic, so the INFECTION fatality rate might be only 0.5-0.8%. Compare that to the regular flu? That's IFR is 0.01%. So 50 times worse than influenza for which we have effective treatment and vaccines. And influenza still kills 30,000-70,000 Americans every year. The CFR and IFR are horrific.

DO NOT LET YOUR GUARD DOWN.

Stay safe. Stay distant. Wear a mask. Was your hands. Fuck you Hal.

TheWinWarblist said...

And thank the heavens Cheap Flights chimed in! Where would we be without him and Dr Hula Hoop?

DO NOT LET YOUR GUARD DOWN.

Stay safe. Stay distant. Wear a mask. Wash your hands. Fuck you Hal.

TheWinWarblist said...


DO NOT LET YOUR GUARD DOWN!!

Stay safe!! Stay distant!! Wear a mask!! Wash your hands!! FUCK YOU HAL!!!!!!!

TheWinWarblist said...

Hoss?

FUCK YES IT'S SCARY!!!

FFFUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKKK YYEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!

DO NOT LET YOUR GUARD DOWN!!

Stay safe!! Stay distant!! Wear a mask!! Wash your hands!! FUCK YOU HAL!!!!!!!

HoraceClarke66 said...

So Warbler, what we hear you saying is, it's perfectly okay to do whatever we used to do, go without a mask or gloves, do whatever we feel like, right?

—America

Publius said...

Warbler...thanks for explaining the difference between CFR and IFR. The CFR seems scary, the IFR much less so (CDC put it at an even lower .26 a month ago). The comparison to the common flu gives some context, but the absolute IFR number is still, well not quite statistically insignificant since we're dealing with human lives here, but a rate that a civilized society ought to be able to manage without the confusion and hysteria currently abroad in our blessed land. A wild eyed conspiracist might wonder about the choice to privilege CFR over IFR in public comment, but wild eyed conspiracist's aren't allowed at IIHIIFIIc.

Anonymous said...

DON'T FORGET THE OMNISCIENT DR. ANTHONY FAUCI WHO TOLD EVERYONE WELL INTO THIS VIRUS,
"WEARING FACE MASKS WILL NOT HELP AGAINST THE VIRUS".

JM said...

The expert opinions have swung because even experts don't fully understand this virus. So February's advice was supplanted by March's which was changed in April. Maybe the key thing is that medical specialists have been kind of flummoxed by this pandemic. Or at least, they have been in the USA. One thing we know, Sweden's approach didn't work. Austria's worked pretty well. Ours is a dismal failure. But this is more the result of a decades-long assault on science, fact, and experts in general. The public has been convinced that none of that is to be trusted. Century-old media outlets are not to be trusted, but some douchebag who has a conspiracy site is perfectly believable. Up is down.

The mess we're in isn't because of Covid, it's because we've been conditioned to accept stupid and implausible as smart and plausible.

These are dark times, when the Enlightenment ideas we were founded on have been systematically discredited by people who just want power, even as their positions and goals become less and less popular. Hopefully, we can break this cycle and get things moving back in the direction we tried, not always successfully, to follow before.

Shit, I hate it when I get all serious about stuff. It's not fun at all.

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