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Comment by xzel | Hacker News Reader

How are sports teams a ghost of what they were? NHL playoffs are incredible right now. European soccer is wrapping up and play is great. NBA is just getting started. Most of them just canceled games or took a break, which, for example, the NHL used to do every 4 years for the Olympics. The only sport that seems to be having real trouble is the MLB, who just had a terrible plan. I admit, I have no belief the NFL has any chance due to team and personal size but that is just life. Not to mention esports which has barely slowed down after the first few months where they had to cancel in person events.

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"NHL playoffs are incredible right now"

No fans. Playing in two bubble cities in Canada.

"NBA is just getting started"

No fans. Playing in one bubble city.

And I was talking about NYC. Zero NBA or NHL games are taking place in NYC.

In an average month in NYC, pre-COVID, there are dozens of enormous sports events. Hundreds of concerts. Tens of thousands of significant parties. If social interaction were on a scale from 0 to 100, and 100 was the before, right now NYC is at a less than 1. So when someone looks at NYCs current infection rate and presumes that means there is some herd immunity or the like, I don't think they're fully taking into account the reality on the ground.

I'm not sure how playing in a bubble without fans means they are a ghost. Honestly I wish fans didn't come back to live sports. Hearing the game and player noise makes everything much more enjoyable. I think most pro-sports are currently doing great besides missing ticket revenue, especially compared to a few months ago when they weren't going at all.

Anyways, I don't think measuring recovery in the number of events and parties is a very good metric. Though I agree without that there probably isn't going to be true herd immunity for this and I wish people would stop throwing around the term.

a) The context is specifically in relation to communicability

b) Further, it was about New York City!

Extremely few sports are taking place in NYC, and even if we discount that, from the overarching context those sports having a tiny, tiny fraction of the communicability potential.

Here’s a graph which speaks to exactly this topic - the R value charted versus two axis; social connectivity, and herd immunity.

Both are equally important pieces of the puzzle. They work together to get R below 1.

https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1291860668342079490?s=21

Looks useless to me; dropping R to below (but not much below l) 1 means a super-slow decline; you might need years with such a regime to eliminate the virus. And it doesn’t actually provide herd immunity, just a slow die-off.

Which leaves most of the population vulnerable, and re-introduction a possibility.

You have to get R significantly below 1 and the whole ecosystem (for the US: the whole world) to do it.

Or, you need herd immunity compatible with the R that you can maintain indefinitely - which la likely >2 so immunity needs to be >60%.

Any other way leaves you with the possibility of reintroduction as far as I understand.

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