Cancelled: FanGraphs Phoenix Meetup: March 13
In light of the continued spread of the coronavirus (and out of an abundance of caution), we’ve decided to cancel our March 13 Phoenix meetup. We’re sorry to miss everyone, and the number of confirmed cases in the greater Phoenix area is still quite small, but we’d hate to get our readers together and then have any of them, our staff, or the folks at Angel’s Trumpet get sick.
We hope to see you at other FanGraphs events later in the year!
Meg is the editor-in-chief of FanGraphs and the co-host of Effectively Wild. Prior to joining FanGraphs, her work appeared at Baseball Prospectus, Lookout Landing, and Just A Bit Outside. You can follow her on Bluesky @megrowler.fangraphs.com.
Time for a conference call with a live chat to substitute! Just as good as the real thing but with several fewer viral infections.
lol seriously??
Unfortunately, people, whether it is cancelling events, changing outlooks on productivity and markets, or hoarding food and consumables get caught up (and sometimes revel) in the hysteria. Overcompensating in the name of fear and safety preparedness.
I am not dismissing the seriousness of the illness and those that become infected. It is a terrible outcome and life-threatening fate. However, in the grand scheme of things, that population is incredibly small.
Even if we only look at China, we are talking about 100,000 people infected (it is less, but was rounded up to make the numbers easier to work with) out of a population of approximately 1.5 billion. That is only 1 out of every 150,000. Furthermore, only 3% of those infected are dying (with the probability of death increasing with age).
This is not some airborne pandemic that is the real life version of what was seen in The Happening, Birdbox, Contagion, or World War Z. It is transmitted through touch and fluid exchange (i.e. sneezing / coughing).
Basically, feel bad for those that are unfortunate enough to become infected and even more so for the very few that die, but do not overreact, fearmonger, and generally make things worse. Humanity is quite resilient and this will be no exception.
lol
The issue is not the virus itself. Professional, respected epidemiologists (who are not normally ones to raise alarm bells without reason) are projecting that 40-70% of the population will contract this illness.
With 10-20% hospitalization rate that is anywhere from ~1.5mil – 5mil people needing access to care within a short span. Most of those people needing intensive care/respirators. We DO NOT have the capacity for that. Period.
All of this is not to mention that the mutations just announced already appear to be about twice as deadly.
You don’t need to panic & yes unless you’re in a small segment of the population, you will likely be fine, but this is likely so much more than just some old people dying.
“we’d hate to get our readers together and then have any of them, our staff, or the folks at Angel’s Trumpet get sick” in a high risk time strikes me as ethical and moral, especially since the negative outcome here is “baseball fans don’t get to meet in person this one time.”
If people were this considerate full time, it wouldn’t require extraordinary efforts to do so at other times. Maybe there will be a makeup meetup down the line should the opportunity present itself?
That being he case the smart thing is to get started March 13 and beat the crush.
People need to get wise to the obvious conclusion that this virus is already basically everywhere, and that we are only detecting it in places where someone happens to get tested, or enough people get critically sick to attract attention. What does that say about the denominator on the fatality rate? What does 100 million plus people in quarantine in China with only 80000 confirmed cases say about the denominator? What does it say that the virus was reportedly circulating for months in Seattle before we got wise? It says the denominator is Huge, and a lot of people are going to look damn silly when this goes down in history as a bad case of the flu. There will be some tragedies like in Washington where it gets into a vulnerable population. Everyone else, just do your best to not spread it around and try not to have a panic attack.
That 40-70% number is also poorly understood, because it is not to suggest that they are all happening instantaneously or concurrently, we are probably talking spread out over years since the virus is likely here to stay. Context is important.
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I’m all for taking illness outbreaks seriously, but, dude, 1.5 to 5 MILLION people projected to need coronavirus specific healthcare, many of which requiring ICU stays or respirators, all in a short period of time?
Citation, please.
I can’t believe you didn’t mention “The Stand.”
We’re being abundantly cautious as noted, but we’d hate for anyone to get sick, which seems possible (if unlikely) given that folks will be flying in from all over the country, from cities with unknown rates of community transmission. Also, might invite you to reconsider how compelling an argument “only 3%” is when the thing that comes later in that sentence is “dying.” We don’t need to panic, but we don’t need to be careless goofs either, especially when the payoff is just a couple of beers and some baseball talk.
The cancellation is totally understandable, especially as there are doofuses out there who can’t be trusted to stay home if they’re sick.
But I will continue my table pounding, not directed at anyone here personally, about how silly overstating the problem here is, and our public discourse on the issue has been really bad at finding the correct medium between over and understating the problem. The public health concern is that the virus hits all at once somewhere and overwhelms capacity. That’s why everyone just needs to practice some common sense hygiene, and stay home if you’re sick. Things we all should have been doing anyway, really. The public health concern is NOT that each of us as individuals should feel under imminent threat of a particularly deadly virus, any more than you have been/would be during flu season, or that we should take actions as if society were under threat of collapse. The panic sell off on wall street is silly, the hoarding is silly, etc. I expect that history will look back at this much as it does the 2009 Swine Flu (which I got incidentally – not a high point!)
I realize that this has become a dogmatic issue because some people feel the virus is being downplayed/exaggerated by various groups for political reasons, so everyone’s taken their sides and is determined not to listen. I honestly don’t have a dog in that fight, I couldn’t care less. What I do care about is what the numbers tell me, and of all places Fangraphs readership should be all over the obvious sampling biases baked into the more extravagant numbers that are circulating.
Come to Chicago 🙂
It seems to me the danger is even greater in a ball park, with the seats so close together and about 75% of the size of most modern Americans.
The continued over reactions of stuff like a canceled meetup like this and the constant fear the msm keeps shoving down all of our throats on every station 24/7 will end up causing more harm then this harmless strain of the flu, further contributing to lower attendances at all types of sporting and entertainment events, restaurants and so many other businesses where people go.
We should cancel the entire mlb season and rest of nba season if we’re canceling small meetups over 150 Americans contracting this and 10 people that have died over a 2 month period.
Every flu season the regular flu virus wipes out 10000-60000 Americans every year, how many more world wide? ALOT!! We should be on world wide lockdown 6 months of the year if we’re gonna act like this.
Please, unless your really old or have a compromised respiratory system, continue living your lives as normal. Fear is the most powerful tool on the planet. This is a prime example of this.
I can’t wait to go watch a Brewers game sitting in a stadium packed full of Brewers fans!!
Maybe educate yourself before yelling about things you don’t understand.
The contraction for “you are” is spelled like this: “you’re”. Here’s an example in a sentence: *You’re* extremely confident in *your* opinions for someone so poorly informed.
The constant reaction of something like a cancellation, like the constant fear, MSM continuing to lower all our Grits into each region 24/7 will cause more harm than the virus. harmless flu, still contributes to low-level participants
We should cancel the entire MLB season and the rest of the NBA season if we cancel it out a little, more than 150 Americans have fixed it, and 10 have died in a two-month period.
Every flu season, the virus is routinely wiped out by 10,000-60000 Americans a year, how much more than the world? There! This year we should be around the world for 6 months if we act the same way.
Please, unless you are really old or have a compromised respiratory system, continue to live your life as usual. Fear is the most powerful tool on the planet. This is an important example of this.
I can’t wait to see a match in a stadium full of Beer fans!
🤔 I don’t get it