Originally Posted by
johnb
I'd be overjoyed if Duke played fall and winter sports.
That would mean that in the space of 2 months, some combination of 4 things happened:
covid disappeared;
covid morphed (worldwide) into a benign virus;
covid significantly responded to a safe and definitive treatment;
covid spurred the world's humans to the holy triad: washing, masks, distance.
I guess anything is possible, but none strikes me as remotely likely. The seasonal hope is there, though I'd be more reassured if Brazil didn't have 80 degree weather and 23,000+ known deaths.
I don't count vaccines as possible. There's no way for a vaccine to be shown to be safe and effective, distributed worldwide, taken by 75% of Americans, and then shown to be working across the population by January, in time to allow a basketball schedule. Each of those steps just takes too long, and science rarely goes so smoothly. But who knows?
I guess we could get some combo of the above leading to a prolonged low rate of infections and persistent following of the behavioral triad, so that very frequent testing of a subgroup would mean a reasonable level of safety for college students in contact sports (though college in general is a contact sport as I recall).
I'd say, however, that the most likely scenario for August/September is more of the same, with increasingly dangerous behavior and overall cases/deaths that oscillate but remain dangerously too high.
At the risk of being called a wanker, it strikes me as "interesting" that a third of the country seems to believe that covid is a hoax. I can nourish conspiracy as much as the next guy, and I fully believe that many people enjoy the failures of their opponents (schadenfreude is juicy). I do believe the stats that indicate that wealth has become increasingly concentrated, and that many people with wealth and power wish to retain and use their wealth and power. I am confident that many people would trade some nationwide failures if they're reversible and lead to a new presidential administration. I also understand that most people don't understand statistics and that many people are not living in covid hotspots.
.
A thoughtful post, as I have come to expect. Perhaps an explanation for your boldfaced sentence might begin with the following quote:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair
Or, as might be recast:
"It is difficult to get people to understand something when their continued social life depends upon their not understanding it."
Ergo, the party-goers tout the false belief that the novel coronavirus is no worse than the flu, and the flu requires no extraordinary actions. Except, of course, the flu has a vaccine that is partially effective and the death rate from the flu, according to my guru, RSVMan, is one-tenth that of COVID-19.
Sage Grouse
---------------------------------------
'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013