Evidence of spread from sports?

Evidence of spread from sports? - Printable Version

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Evidence of spread from sports? - magnus - 11-27-2020

CNN reports that dozens of infections are tied to a basketball tourney in CA earlier this month.

https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-11-27-20-intl/h_3f48a9348fe71b1d6be9dd6ae374431e

While this seems to imply that spread was caused on the court, I wonder if the spread was on court based or perhaps locker room or between games based.

Anyway, if really from court contact, that sucks.

lex24 - lex24 - 11-27-2020

One tournament. This is one of the things that drives me crazy. There has been an awful lot of sporting events played and safely. But they find one instance and that gets the publicity. I say that while at the same time believing that these tournaments should not be taking place.

RE: Evidence of spread from sports? - magnus - 11-27-2020

Here's another "potential" on field spread, though it sounds just as likely that it could have been locker room based.

[Tweet]https://twitter.com/jamisonhensley/status/1332137023524786182?s=20[/tweet]

You'd think the stalls in the locker room would be more spaced out to minimize spread. Or maybe the players still clustered on their own.

RE: lex24 - Mick - 11-27-2020

(11-27-2020, 11:09 AM)lex24 Wrote: One tournament. This is one of the things that drives me crazy. There has been an awful lot of sporting events played and safely. But they find one instance and that gets the publicity. I say that while at the same time believing that these tournaments should not be taking place.

That's one of the strangest things about working in the legal profession. After 19 years in the accounting profession, and the concomitant reliance on broad data sets, Enron fell, then Andersen fell, then Sarbanes Oxley and all of a sudden my firm was facing a dearth of accountants, so I left for the legal profession. And believe me, i respect precedent as much as anyone, and the single instance to which precedent typically refers. But an odd by-product is that many of the lawyers I run across (certainly not all) consider data to be subordinate to the singular instance, and there is a tendency to rely on an anecdote as determinative. I absolute agree that a story or incident or anecdote can be illustrative, but that's all it is.

RE: lex24 - dabigv13 - 11-27-2020

(11-27-2020, 11:09 AM)lex24 Wrote: One tournament. This is one of the things that drives me crazy. There has been an awful lot of sporting events played and safely. But they find one instance and that gets the publicity. I say that while at the same time believing that these tournaments should not be taking place.

I guess the point of your post is that the media should report some sort of pure scientific analysis of the risk of every single sports event? This is obviously not completely knowable. It's also not at all how the media works or even could work.

The scientists are doing incredible work during the pandemic as are the media. Some people seem to have expectations of these institutions that are not realistic or proper.

lex24 - lex24 - 11-27-2020

(11-27-2020, 01:49 PM)dabigv13 Wrote:
(11-27-2020, 11:09 AM)lex24 Wrote: One tournament. This is one of the things that drives me crazy. There has been an awful lot of sporting events played and safely. But they find one instance and that gets the publicity. I say that while at the same time believing that these tournaments should not be taking place.

I guess the point of your point is that the media should report some sort of pure scientific analysis of the risk of every single sports event? This is obviously not completely knowable. It's also not at all how the media works or even could work.

The scientists are doing incredible work during the pandemic as are the media. Some people seem to have expectations of these institutions that are not realistic or proper.

No, not at all. My point is one instance is indicative of nothing. I agree with you on the scientists. Not on the media.

RE: lex24 - teejers1 - 11-27-2020

(11-27-2020, 01:49 PM)dabigv13 Wrote:
(11-27-2020, 11:09 AM)lex24 Wrote: One tournament. This is one of the things that drives me crazy. There has been an awful lot of sporting events played and safely. But they find one instance and that gets the publicity. I say that while at the same time believing that these tournaments should not be taking place.

I guess the point of your post is that the media should report some sort of pure scientific analysis of the risk of every single sports event? This is obviously not completely knowable. It's also not at all how the media works or even could work.

The scientists are doing incredible work during the pandemic as are the media. Some people seem to have expectations of these institutions that are not realistic or proper.

Is it unrealistic to expect the media to determine (i) how many other tournaments have been played?, (ii) if there were outbreaks there or not. Heck, even if it were something along lines of "There have been __ tournaments reportedly played in the last 2 months, and this is the __ one where there has been an alleged tie to the event."

Strikes me as basic and not at all unrealistic. It's only unrealistic if you want to message as opposed to report on facts in objective manner. Just one reader's take. Same thing with hospital capacity. In SCC, we see reports that hospitalized Covid patients have doubled in last 3 weeks and capacity is at X%. That's all well and good, but do you not think it important to provide (i) total number of Covid patients (i.e., what that doubling means), (ii) total number of non-Covid patients (to get a sense of how Covid is impacting on capacity)?

To me that seems basic. But if you want to message people into thinking that Covid is causing all the capacity constraints, then you don't report on the fact that non-Covid patients increased by 200 - from 1600 to 1800 patients - i.e., the total number of Covid patients.

It doesn't change the fact that Covid cases and hospitalizations are on the rise and that's it's a potentially critical matter on capacity front, but it does present a better picture of exactly what is going on.

RE: lex24 - M T - 11-27-2020

(11-27-2020, 03:09 PM)teejers1 Wrote:
Same thing with hospital capacity. In SCC, we see reports that hospitalized Covid patients have doubled in last 3 weeks and capacity is at X%. That's all well and good, but do you not think it important to provide (i) total number of Covid patients (i.e., what that doubling means), (ii) total number of non-Covid patients (to get a sense of how Covid is impacting on capacity)?

I am quite sure that you know where those numbers are. Probably most news reports indicate where they got the numbers ("SCC's COVID-19 dashboard reports.."). If someone wants to know the exact numbers, it is easy to find them. So I'm not sure what the point is, if you intended a point.

Speaking of the numbers in SCC, the 7-day case rate is still growing as fast as it has been. From the peak in mid July, the daily new cases fell at a somewhat stable (but somewhat wavy) rate (net, -6% a week), then beginning Sep 30, the cases rose at a pretty stable rate (about 10% a week). But then on October 30, the curve steepened to something like 50% a week increase. I had hoped that we would have seen a drop the rate of new cases but I don't see that yet. R is still estimated at 1.4 (doubling cases every 13 days).

Indeed, SCC's ICU beds appear to be a concern. The available beds has fallen from 48% (240 of 533) to 30% in a week, not because of a net increase of 12 COVID patients, but because of a decrease in the total number of ICU beds from 523 to 337. I hope this is a short term increase due to Thanksgiving week vacations (a big drop on Saturday, another drop on Monday) of ICU staff. It may be a strategic move to give breaks to staff now, before things fill up.

The two stepwise increases in growth rate of new cases seems too sharp to be coincidental or from a gradual change in behavior. The slope in the 7-day new case rate at the SCC site doesn't seem to easily correspond to the history of R for the county., which I think it should. The history of R has a steady slope (NOT a steady value as I expect) from late September to mid November.

RE: Evidence of spread from sports? - BostonCard - 11-27-2020

There are about 4000 licensed hospital beds in Santa Clara county

https://www.hospitalcouncil.org/santa-clara

You can do the math

BC

RE: lex24 - teejers1 - 11-27-2020

(11-27-2020, 05:57 PM)M T Wrote:
(11-27-2020, 03:09 PM)teejers1 Wrote:
Same thing with hospital capacity. In SCC, we see reports that hospitalized Covid patients have doubled in last 3 weeks and capacity is at X%. That's all well and good, but do you not think it important to provide (i) total number of Covid patients (i.e., what that doubling means), (ii) total number of non-Covid patients (to get a sense of how Covid is impacting on capacity)?

I am quite sure that you know where those numbers are. Probably most news reports indicate where they got the numbers ("SCC's COVID-19 dashboard reports.."). If someone wants to know the exact numbers, it is easy to find them. So I'm not sure what the point is, if you intended a point.

So present a "story" but for other basic, important information - well, no need to report it, the readers can go find it somewhere else.
C'mon now . . .

And BC, if you say "people can do the math," then you need to provide the numbers in the story. All the relevant numbers.

I'd much prefer you all come correct and just say "I think it's okay not to provide a complete story because this is serious and we don't want people to have information that might detract from the gravity of the situation." At least that's honest. Saying "people reading the story can get other information from other sources" is pretty disingenuous.

RE: Evidence of spread from sports? - BostonCard - 11-27-2020

OK, I'll do the math then.

Per the COVID-19 dashboard (11.27), there 222 currently hospitalized COVID-19 patients, who make up 8.5% of all staffable hospital beds (which would mean that 2612 beds are considered staffable, which is substantially fewer than the 4000 estimated in the link). On Thursday November 12th, there were 110 COVID-19 patients, so that makes a doubling from 4.2% to 8.5% (unless the number of staffable beds changed).

BC

RE: Evidence of spread from sports? - chrisk - 11-27-2020

ICU availability in SCC has dropped to 18% (54 beds) from 30% in 3 weeks. Even at a linear growth rate, very few beds would be left in 4 weeks.

RE: lex24 - Goose - 11-27-2020

(11-27-2020, 03:09 PM)teejers1 Wrote:
(11-27-2020, 01:49 PM)dabigv13 Wrote:
(11-27-2020, 11:09 AM)lex24 Wrote: One tournament. This is one of the things that drives me crazy. There has been an awful lot of sporting events played and safely. But they find one instance and that gets the publicity. I say that while at the same time believing that these tournaments should not be taking place.

I guess the point of your post is that the media should report some sort of pure scientific analysis of the risk of every single sports event? This is obviously not completely knowable. It's also not at all how the media works or even could work.

The scientists are doing incredible work during the pandemic as are the media. Some people seem to have expectations of these institutions that are not realistic or proper.

Is it unrealistic to expect the media to determine (i) how many other tournaments have been played?, (ii) if there were outbreaks there or not. Heck, even if it were something along lines of "There have been __ tournaments reportedly played in the last 2 months, and this is the __ one where there has been an alleged tie to the event."

Strikes me as basic and not at all unrealistic. It's only unrealistic if you want to message as opposed to report on facts in objective manner. Just one reader's take. Same thing with hospital capacity. In SCC, we see reports that hospitalized Covid patients have doubled in last 3 weeks and capacity is at X%. That's all well and good, but do you not think it important to provide (i) total number of Covid patients (i.e., what that doubling means), (ii) total number of non-Covid patients (to get a sense of how Covid is impacting on capacity)?

To me that seems basic. But if you want to message people into thinking that Covid is causing all the capacity constraints, then you don't report on the fact that non-Covid patients increased by 200 - from 1600 to 1800 patients - i.e., the total number of Covid patients.

It doesn't change the fact that Covid cases and hospitalizations are on the rise and that's it's a potentially critical matter on capacity front, but it does present a better picture of exactly what is going on.

Got to be some kind of record. I am agreeing with Teejers1 twice in the same month. Yes, if one is really interested, one can dig deeper into the data, but IMHO if the media is going to report a story with a particular "take away", they need to connect the dots. If they don't, we have an ill informed public with definite ideas taken from the story. That is a bad combination. They think they know things that may not be exactly correct. If the "take away" is valid, connecting the dots shouldn't make it less so. If it does, maybe that shouldn't be the "take away"?

RE: Evidence of spread from sports? - M T - 11-27-2020

(11-27-2020, 09:06 PM)chrisk Wrote: ICU availability in SCC has dropped to 18% (54 beds) from 30% in 3 weeks. Even at a linear growth rate, very few beds would be left in 4 weeks.

I guess you didn't read my post above.

The big factor is that 37% of the total ICU beds went missing since Friday.
On Friday, Nov 20, there were 534 ICU beds total. On Saturday, there were just 398 ICU beds total. On Monday, just 336 ICU beds total.

The COVID patients are about 21% of the ICU beds in use.

RE: Evidence of spread from sports? - M T - 11-27-2020

(11-27-2020, 08:35 PM)BostonCard Wrote: Per the COVID-19 dashboard (11.27), there 222 currently hospitalized COVID-19 patients, who make up 8.5% of all staffable hospital beds (which would mean that 2612 beds are considered staffable, which is substantially fewer than the 4000 estimated in the link). On Thursday November 12th, there were 110 COVID-19 patients, so that makes a doubling from 4.2% to 8.5% (unless the number of staffable beds changed).

There must be definitional differences. Back in April, I wrote this about data in the SCC dashboard:
"On Apr 17, there were 1686 acute beds + 513 ICU beds + 1555 surge beds. 740 ventilators
On Apr 24, there were 1988 acute beds + 813 ICU beds + 1310 surge beds. 995 ventilators
SCC's medical facilities have been beefed up. I think SCC was about 3400 acute care facility beds when this started; now we're at 4111."

But, when I look at the data for those dates in their current databases on hospitalization, the data indicates:
Apr 17: 2122 non-ICU beds + 474 ICU beds (summing across COVID beds + COVID PUI beds + Other beds + Available "staffable beds")
Apr 24: 1905 non-ICU beds + 416 ICU beds
Thu Nov 12: 2230 non-ICU beds + 526 ICU beds (so, 110 patients were 4.0% of 2756 beds; DB indicates 105 COVID patients + 15 COVID PUI on 11/12; probably the referenced "11/12" is the report date for data of 11/11, when there were 108 total COVID + COVID PUI)
Friday Nov 20: 2268 non-ICU beds + 534 ICU beds
Wed Nov 25: 2016 non-ICU beds + 337 ICU beds

It seems the variability of the current data suggests that this is in indirect indication of the number of staff at the hospital on any particular day. I suspect that it doesn't reflect the number of staff that can be called upon if needed (nor the number of actual beds available).

RE: lex24 - oregontim - 11-28-2020

(11-27-2020, 11:09 AM)lex24 Wrote: One tournament. This is one of the things that drives me crazy. There has been an awful lot of sporting events played and safely. But they find one instance and that gets the publicity. I say that while at the same time believing that these tournaments should not be taking place.

That’s a textbook definition of news. A tournament linked to multiple Covid cases is news. All those other tournaments not linked to Covid cases are not news. Complaining about that is like complaining about media covering the hurricane instead of all those places that had nice weather; or the earthquake instead of all those places that didn’t have a quake.

You are objecting here to the essence of news.

RE: lex24 - teejers1 - 11-28-2020

(11-28-2020, 02:29 AM)oregontim Wrote:
(11-27-2020, 11:09 AM)lex24 Wrote: One tournament. This is one of the things that drives me crazy. There has been an awful lot of sporting events played and safely. But they find one instance and that gets the publicity. I say that while at the same time believing that these tournaments should not be taking place.

That’s a textbook definition of news. A tournament linked to multiple Covid cases is news. All those other tournaments not linked to Covid cases are not news. Complaining about that is like complaining about media covering the hurricane instead of all those places that had nice weather; or the earthquake instead of all those places that didn’t have a quake.

You are objecting here to the essence of news.

Isn't it still news to say "this tournament linked to multiple Covid cases; 250 other tournaments have not been?"

Ask yourself: what do you find objectionable about reporting on those "bigger picture" facts?
Context matters - and not just in Covid reporting, but in all kinds of reporting. Take a hot-button issue like abortion. What if a media outlet said "Facility X performed 5 abortions today, and it receives federal funding." And then just ran a similar story day after day (with different numbers of abortions/day). [The pretty obvious agenda of such reporting would be to halt federal funding for the facility]. I think it would be fair to say that such "reporting" would be factually accurate; however, it doesn't include a lot of context (as in, what other services are provided for by the facility - procedure-wise, counseling-wise, whatever).

When you don't provide context is where you open yourselves up to agenda-reporting. At least that's my take.

RE: lex24 - Farm93 - 11-28-2020

(11-28-2020, 02:29 AM)oregontim Wrote:
(11-27-2020, 11:09 AM)lex24 Wrote: One tournament. This is one of the things that drives me crazy. There has been an awful lot of sporting events played and safely. But they find one instance and that gets the publicity. I say that while at the same time believing that these tournaments should not be taking place.

That’s a textbook definition of news. A tournament linked to multiple Covid cases is news. All those other tournaments not linked to Covid cases are not news. Complaining about that is like complaining about media covering the hurricane instead of all those places that had nice weather; or the earthquake instead of all those places that didn’t have a quake.

You are objecting here to the essence of news.

Drove my car to the store today and I didn't crash, the airbags didn't explode. Why didn't the news cover it. :(
Why are they always covering car crashes and talking about exploding airbags. Geez.

FWIW - I don't really think the sports are the problem. It is everything that goes with playing sports.
Look at club sports going out of state.
Those California club teams playing sports in AZ, for example.
The games are probably fine. However those clubs need families to drive or fly there, then stay in hotels, eat in restaurants and sit on the touchline together for hours with other families from other teams. That's might be good for local businesses beyond the host club, but each of those activities has a risk of COVID spread. Then all of those folks head back home and spread whatever was happening in those AZ communities or the different families of the various club teams back to the nice CA families that didn't put their kids in out-of-state club sports.

The shorthand then would become that the club teams are bringing COVID back to CA. That doesn't necessarily mean it was the games that were the problem.

The child that stayed at home and practiced soccer dribbling by themselves on an empty field, would not be newsworthy. Though if anyone wants to make the lack of COVID by two or three kids dribbling soccer balls in their neighborhood into a story they certainly can launch their own Youtube page and hope for views.

RE: lex24 - oregontim - 11-28-2020

(11-28-2020, 01:22 PM)teejers1 Wrote: Ask yourself: what do you find objectionable about reporting on those "bigger picture" facts
Context matters - and not just in Covid reporting, but in all kinds of reporting. Take a hot-button issue like abortion. What if a media outlet said "Facility X performed 5 abortions today, and it receives federal funding." And then just ran a similar story day after day (with different numbers of abortions/day). [The pretty obvious agenda of such reporting would be to halt federal funding for the facility]. I think it would be fair to say that such "reporting" would be factually accurate; however, it doesn't include a lot of context (as in, what other services are provided for by the facility - procedure-wise, counseling-wise, whatever).
When you don't provide context is where you open yourselves up to agenda-reporting. At least that's my take.

     What you're calling context is what everybody else calls boring. Nobody wants their news stuffed on the inside of a boring retelling of what everybody already knows. Bad weather is news and nobody wants to read about all the normal weather first. Your ideal would kill what's left of the news business.
     Of course context matters is discussions and decisions. And of course, some kind of deeper reporting and investigative journalism absolutely needs context to explain.
     Your abortion example doesn't work because there's no news there anywhere, in any of your permutations. What happens every day at the abortion clinic is not news. And that clinic's funding is not news. Changes are news. The unexpected is news.
     For that matter, if the news is that one tournament spread Covid, to add in that 250 others didn't, that would be agenda driven. And — much worse — boring.

RE: lex24 - BostonCard - 11-28-2020

(11-28-2020, 01:22 PM)teejers1 Wrote:
(11-28-2020, 02:29 AM)oregontim Wrote:
(11-27-2020, 11:09 AM)lex24 Wrote: One tournament. This is one of the things that drives me crazy. There has been an awful lot of sporting events played and safely. But they find one instance and that gets the publicity. I say that while at the same time believing that these tournaments should not be taking place.

That’s a textbook definition of news. A tournament linked to multiple Covid cases is news. All those other tournaments not linked to Covid cases are not news. Complaining about that is like complaining about media covering the hurricane instead of all those places that had nice weather; or the earthquake instead of all those places that didn’t have a quake.

You are objecting here to the essence of news.

Isn't it still news to say "this tournament linked to multiple Covid cases; 250 other tournaments have not been?"

Ask yourself: what do you find objectionable about reporting on those "bigger picture" facts?
Context matters - and not just in Covid reporting, but in all kinds of reporting. Take a hot-button issue like abortion. What if a media outlet said "Facility X performed 5 abortions today, and it receives federal funding." And then just ran a similar story day after day (with different numbers of abortions/day). [The pretty obvious agenda of such reporting would be to halt federal funding for the facility]. I think it would be fair to say that such "reporting" would be factually accurate; however, it doesn't include a lot of context (as in, what other services are provided for by the facility - procedure-wise, counseling-wise, whatever).

When you don't provide context is where you open yourselves up to agenda-reporting. At least that's my take.

LA county is going to a modified shutdown (though sports are apparently still ok). San Mateo county entered into the purple tier, and as a consequence, my kids’ in person schooling, which was due to start Dec. 1 had the county stayed in red, is not happening. In addition, indoor gatherings between more than one household are disallowed, and outdoor gatherings are restricted to three or fewer households and are disallowed between 10 pm and 5 am. Indoor gyms, dining, etc. are all closed.

The next step is basically a lockdown like we had in March/April or capitulation that we don’t have it in us to keep the pandemic under control until a vaccine which should be granted emergency use authorization in a couple weeks and which should be widely available by April.

In that context, what the hell are we doing prioritizing professional and intercollegiate athletics. It seems like an odd hill to die on given the larger things that are going on.

Maybe we will get the pandemic under control without further lockdowns, or maybe we will just give up, but so long as we are trying to limit the spread long enough that we can engage in a large scale vaccination effort, I suggest we prioritize the things that are most important. If you think sports meet that criteria, you are certainly entitled to that opinion, but I suspect a lot of people think it’s misguided.

BC