The first section here is not designed to be overly political, so I would caution you not to read it with that tone. I’m sincerely just trying to suss out the state of things in the COVID-19 recovery so that we can then unpack what it means for sports.
The President this week laid out guidelines for phases in reopening the economy in the states, though in under 24 hours he was endorsing protests against states that were following those very guidelines, so it’s hard to know exactly what the idea is unless you’re cynical. In that case, you would have to presume the intention is not for the federal government to actually help states open up safely, and is instead to pressure states to open, with them absorbing all the blame if things go awry. Even if you are purely thinking about all of this as a sports fan, it very much sucks that the federal government’s interests do not seem to be aligned with those of the states, nor do they seem to actually help effectuate a safe and timely reopening of the kinds of economic activities that would allow some sports leagues to operate in some way.
Anyway, the guidelines – to the extent the federal government ACTUALLY stands by them – basically look like this: a state can’t start the process until that state has seen cases trending down for two weeks, its medical system is in a good place to care for all patients, and a robust testing program is in place for all healthcare workers. From there, the state enters Phase One, and some businesses can open under strict social distancing guidelines (and you could personally be around groups of 10 or fewer). If the state have no rebound in cases, it can proceed to Phase Two, which is when schools can reopen. No rebound after that, it can proceed to Phase Three, which is something closer to “normal,” but at-risk individuals still have separate guidelines, and large venues still have to observe some social distancing mechanisms.
The timelines after a state gets into the phasing process, like much of the rest of the guidelines, are unclear. I presume the state has to be in each phase for a while, though, to determine whether it is having a rebound in cases (hence the need for massively-available testing). All of this is predicated on states actually deciding these phased gates are good enough, mind you, and they may have different thoughts.
With respect to sports, the President seems to want them back ASAP (there’s an election in November, you realize), but again, if the entirety of the burden of testing and tracing is placed on 50 individual governments, it’s hard to argue the federal government is actually helping the return of sports as opposed to just angrily shouting about it. The subject came up as a key part of opening the economy:
As one participant on the call tells me, these White House recommendations are “all guidelines no directives, what states are already doing and focused on. Trump is very much focused on the role of sports coming back as a means to show we are getting back to life.”
— Ed O'Keefe (@edokeefe) April 16, 2020
Lets assume something like The Arizona Plan would fit into Phase Two, yes, it’s possible you could have fan-free baseball played in Arizona sometime this summer. The state appears to be on the downslope of new cases now, so it’s conceivable that they could enter Phase One at some point in early May (as is the case with many other states – it seems like early May is going to be targeted by many states for the first steps in opening things back up).
Then, if there’s no rebound in new cases, at some point thereafter (a few weeks? a month? beats me), they’d enter Phase Two. It seems like that’s when no-fan baseball could be played (you’re allowed to have groups up to 50 at that point even without social distancing).
Of course, circling back to something that’s been obvious for a month now: you can’t *actually* follow this process without massive, rapid testing. Like, this phasing stuff presumes you have an ability to really effectively, quickly, and accurately test and track people who have been exposed, or may have been exposed, to the virus. That’s what will prevent those rebounds once people start getting back out into the world.
Where are we on testing? Still not enough. As this article lays out, there are still supply availability issues (specifically with some of the underlying chemicals needed for the tests). What’s killing me about that is, even in New York, where the pandemic hit us the worst, they’ve gotten their transmission rate under 1.0 (i.e., on average, one infected person transmits the disease to less than one other person – i.e., the outbreak is theoretically contained). That means *IF THERE WERE* enough testing and tracking capabilities available, New York would be in a position to open more things up right now. Don’t get me wrong, that’s very good news about the spread of the virus, but it’s really discouraging news when you know how beset our country was by testing problems for the first month of the pandemic. That’s why we’re so far behind right now, and why we’re still waiting on testing capabilities to expand, even as the outbreak is on its downslope.
So, in conclusion: testing, testing, testing, still testing, testing testing. That’s the story on sports and COVID-19 for today. More. Testing.