Professional sporting events increase seasonal influenza mortality in US cities
privpapers.ssrn.com
privpapers.ssrn.com
* Which are found based from observation and statistics mind you. In this case the mechanics of disease spread in public transportation are very obvious.
Before the impact of their health services kicked in, cities around the world did have different covid transmission patterns.
This study ballparks it around 10-20 deaths per year per 100k residents.
Except it is hard to quantify the downside of that bears on quality of life and take that into account. My 70+ year old parents are homebound for last 5+ months, and their overall physical and mental health from lack of physical and social activities have significantly gone down, to the point I expect if this goes on another 6 months or more I might lose at least one of my parents.
Similarly, there ought to be discussions on increases in mortality for any other causes under current contexts, including deaths by suicide — there's certainly been a lot of resistance to discussing the impacts of lockdown on public health.
no, it's 1-4 per million[0], so basically inconsequential relative to the (low) ~hundreds per million who typically die each year.
dying from sporting event-acquired flu is really, really low on the list of dangers to worry about. worry about the trip getting there instead, if you must worry.
[0] based on seizethecheese's quote, as i couldn't read the paper directly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24180543
these kind of statistics are not for personal caution, they're for risk assessment and public policy.
141 total infant botulism cases were reported in 2017 -- it still warranted a report and investigation work in order to assess the possibility of future problems that stem from the case, spread characteristics, etc.[0]
My point being : the rarity and generalized 'total danger' of an event should not determine whether or not it is investigated by public-policy makers and groups like the CDC/WHO.
Another facet never mentioned : sporting event-acquired flu is really low on the list of dangers to prioritize, you probably won't be bothered by it -- but the existence of yet another now-quantified danger does nudge your average 'danger score' higher. It always did, of course, but now people have actionable data about it.
So, sure, event acquired flu is really rare -- but I bet more people than before will now consider this when planning the trip with or around people with compromised immune systems.
even for that, it's inconsequential. there are many greater and more relevant risks to worry about at a policy level.
food-borne botulism has a different risk profile in that the ever-increasing centralization of food distribution can potentially unbound those risks.
> "...another now-quantified danger does nudge your average 'danger score' higher. ...more people than before will now consider this when..."
that's just fear-mongering. the risks of incidental/accidental deaths are the lowest in history. there's no reason to worry about this particular issue outside of research.
you shouldn't try to time the shot to right before going to games, because that's irrational. get it before the flu season, and then this tiny added risk matters even less.
Yes, except that once the COVID situation is under control (assuming it can be controlled; some might say that's a big assumption), lots of people will be monumentally pissed off if this kind of study is used to justify ongoing restrictions on attending sporting events, concerts, etc.
Everything in life is a risk. What I am painfully aware of at the moment is that whilst everyone I know is willing to follow government guidance related to COVID and to continue doing so for as long as is necessary, we are all craving a return to normality, and are unlikely to be tolerant of tenuous justifications for continuing restrictions after the crisis has passed.
Not all. I'm not. I'm missing a couple of things, but I'm not looking forward to "normality". Not wasting my life on commuting has made a huge difference in my life. I tend to get several colds per year, even in the summer, which has added up to a moderate benefit. I hope that our increased awareness of disease prevention will be enduring.
Look at the rest of my comment. When I said "all" I was clearly talking about people I know, not everbody everywhere. Specifically people that I know.
> Not wasting my life on commuting has made a huge difference in my life.
That's fair but it's also again quite clearly not what I was talking about. Read what I've actually said: I'm talking about leisure and social activities.
Seriously: stop picking random out of context fragments out of peoples' comments and building strawmen out of them just for the sake of being disagreeable.
My life is already normal with respect to social and leisure activities. We only keep a lil more distance and do more outside, the former being fine, the latter being an improvement.
Sometimes people are replying for the sake of everyone else reading, rather than just the specific comment to which their words are anchored. This is how conversations work in person, too, where a small fragment of one point can lead to a tangent just based on that fragment.
Then you can start a new thread, or reply to a more directly related comment.
> This is how conversations work in person, too, where a small fragment of one point can lead to a tangent just based on that fragment.
I know, and in the wrong context that can be pretty annoying as well.
That wasn’t clear to me at all. This is an important distinction because tastes of people we socialize with tend to be more similar to ours than not, and our tastes are rarely representative of the general public. Especially when public health decisions are concerned, some tastes happen to be more impactful, so it is inevitable that some section of the population will be disproportionately pissed when their favorite activities are restricted.
Gun or motor vehicle related hobbies, even having a pet have always been subject to restrictions when it comes to ensuring public safety. Turns out having a pandemic now renders new activities with a higher risk profile, well tough luck, we have to put up with it.
"When someone misunderstands what you said or wrote, who is responsible for the miscommunication? You are. They didn't misinterpret you, your communication was unclear."
I (mis)read your "all" in the same way as the other commenter, as a reference to "all people" (including, but not limited to your group of friends).
There have been many times when I've said something that others "misunderstood". It was a hard lesson to learn, but it has served me well to take responsibility myself for the miscommunication, apologize for being unclear, and try to state things in a less ambiguous way.
(For instance, in a post-COVID world, NFL teams could issue a non-mandated team-branded cloth mask on every seat in the winter months.)
The question that is most interesting to me is how much will people agree to give up civil liberties in response to these discoveries? Another interesting question is will we equally study the benefits associated with the thing that also has a harmful result?
“The arrival of a new professional sports team in a city, and the commencement of play by that team, increases flu mortality in the city. The largest effect comes from a new NHL team. A new NHL team moving into a city and starting play causes an increase in weekly influenza mortality of 0.382 per 100,000 residents per flu season compared to cities with no professional sports teams. Based on the sample means on Table 1, this result represents a 24.6% increase in weekly flu mortality per 100,000 residents or a total increase of about 20 flu deaths over a year in each treated city. A new NFL team moving into a city causes an increase in annual influenza mortality rates of 0.249 per flu season, a 17% increase, equivalent to about 13 additional flu deaths over 52 weeks. A city that becomes home to a new NBA team experiences an increase in flu mortality rates of 0.066 which is a 4.7% increase. The effect of a new team on flu mortality is smallest in MLB where the entry of a new team results in an increase in flu mortality rates of 0.059 or 5.3% increase.”
The cat’s free to go outside at any time, but nowadays prefers the comforts of being indoors.
The only solid argument against my strategy is nosocomial infections from the vet themselves.
> A cat that no longer goes outside and occupants that don’t interact with other cats basically means the cat is under total isolation.
Which is not entirely true. Even indoor cats can get worms, and periodic deworming is part of preventative care as vaccinations. The fact that deworming vs vaccinations interact with the cat’s immune system differently is an implementation detail that is inconsequential to this discussion.
> so I think it's safe to say he's not avoiding the vet in general.
That’s not how I understand it.
And I “can get” yellow fever if someone with it comes back to my neighbourhood, a mosquito bites them and then bites me. But it’s largely a waste of money for me to get vaccinated anyway.
Considering risk vs. cost of prevention seems to be lost when dealing with vets (whom also often lack strong evidence for their interventions).
If anything, it’s the humans in the household that could benefit from preventative de-worming, not the cat exclusively eating canned cat food.
If you have a habit of nibbling on the bugs and the flies that wander into your house like cats do, I think indeed you could benefit from deworming.
Besides, if yellow fever is carried as frequently as worms in your neighborhood, you should definitely get vaccinated.
Finally, your cost-benefit analysis is a strawman argument. OP thinks their cat is completely isolated, I posited that it is not. I am not saying they have to get treatment nor I am moralizing them not doing it. It is perfectly fine to take an educated risk, but that hinges on the education of what vectors are still available to your indoor cat.
I’ll consider anecdotes and case reports on a new unknown disease, but not for one that’s been around since antiquity. Or there was research indicating that the risk is low in these circumstances, but it’s suppressed because it’s not the narrative that the study sponsors want anyone to hear.
It happens in human research, I wouldn’t put it past vet research.
I consider the move from "my cat is completely isolated indoors" to "there are still vectors of transmission" an improvement of that model. Demanding that we need the exact likelihoods or otherwise completely reject the possibility is fallacious.
> Or there was research indicating that the risk is low in these circumstances, but it’s suppressed because it’s not the narrative that the study sponsors want anyone to hear.
It is interesting that your standard of evidence is much lower for this hypothesis of conspiracy and you use it to negate your cat's threat model.
I agree the risk is low, but your initial responses "what virus would live in cats and bugs" "the cat is under total isolation" "cat is too slow to catch a mouse" etc show that you were not informed on this topic. To give an anecdote, an odd fly, spider, mosquito etc walks in to my friend's house all the time, despite all windows being screened, and their fully indoor cat would go after them with joy every time he finds them (he would try to eat them). They don't do periodic deworming either, but they still accept that there is a risk albeit small, and don't externalize their discomfort to conspiratorial veterinarians.
Hopefully we can agree that years where we lose 100,000 people from influenza are tragic, even if we've become accustomed to it. The optimistic possible outcome from this pandemic is maybe that rapid, inexpensive in-home testing for common virus infections becomes widespread. That'd allow a responsible person to test themselves before they went to a sporting event.
It'd also be wonderful if we invested more in a universal influenza vaccination. That's been right around the corner for decades now.
It turns out to be very hard to handle health risks politically rather than medically. Most early deaths are caused by cancer and heart disease, and both are preventable. Covid is terrible, but in terms of death toll it's not in the same league as the regular killers.
When it comes to avoidable death, this supposedly enlightened and scientifically educated culture actually operates at Victorian levels of public health. Obesity and poor nutrition are at epidemic levels and there's barely any formal cultural awareness of the political and social problems caused by emotional stressors, personality disorders, and other forms of psychological illness promoted by toxic workplace conditions and both social and mainstream media.
Others are (and should be!) free to live in fear and isolation.
Let’s see how it works out in a few generations.
I think it's quite unlikely that it leads to a permanent taboo on large gatherings. They're too much fun.
I expect there to be a huge, sustained upsurge in travel and socializing after Covid disappears.
The predictions that - for example - air travel will never recover, are just bizarre. If anything, there will be waiting lists to get a plane ticket.
We should get a study on how much cramped seating contributes to blood clots. This is definitely an issue on long flights. But probably in some stadiums too.
I went to an NHL arena for a concert. Seats were so cramped, my feet were hurting halfway through. It was torture.
Why do people go out then?
Sports events will always increase deaths, even in non-covid times. More people will die from the regular flu and other non-covid disases. More people will die from the increased travelling and accidents from that. More people will die from the extra pollution associated with the extra amount of traveling. More people will die when stressing themselves physically to perform at a high level at the sport event. The same arguments can be made about anything humans do.