What Is the Likelihood of Basketball Returning in the Fall?

@thickhead

There are plenty of reasons to be optimistic as well - keep your heads up.

Before anybody reads further, I want to make clear I'm not an expert. This is purely from summary thoughts of my own research, and am not a medical professional.

Flu vaccines are hit and miss every year - some years they are much better than others. They try to predict what viruses will be prevalent the following season and target those in the vaccine. If a different set of viruses that weren't targeted take off, then it's not very helpful. If they guess right, it can have a pretty good impact ... but it's never 100%, because they can't target every possible flu virus. This is not the case when they are developing for 1 virus in COVID-19.

We certainly could come up with a vaccine for the common cold, but it would not be worth the cost. This is partly because there are lots of different virues that cause cold and partly because they are no big deal, so nobody would bother paying for a vaccine. Coronaviruses have been known about for a long time, they've just been no big deal, so few have studied them. Now there's a Herculean effort to understand this on a scale never been done, and we are figuring a lot out very fast.

Yes, the virus can evolve and make a specific vaccine less effective. Some viruses evolve quickly, others do not. The virus that caused the Spanish flu evolved pretty quickly - initially it was mild, then evolved to become deadly, and then evolved again to become mild again. We don't yet know if COVID-19 will evolve at all, and if it does, how it will evolve. Of course, it could evolve to be worse, but it could evolve to become less problematic as well, if it even evolves quickly at all.

The antibody studies now happening are finding that a lot more people have been exposed than we thought, meaning the mortality rate of COVID-19 is likely to ultimate be much, much lower than the numbers seen based on testing data. Obviously that doesn't matter to the population that ends up being very vulnerable to it, but it does matter in terms of public health action.

There's also increasing evidence that exposure dosage has significant impact on outcomes; this is generally understood with any contagious disease (i.e. there's some minimal population exposure to getting symptoms vs. your body just fighting it off before it takes hold, and if you get a high level of exposure right away, the virus has lots of time to establish itself before the immune response). Since COVID-19 has been proven to be highly contagious, it will still spread at a decent rate even with social distancing. However, that will also mean the exposure's will more often be at lower levels for the newly infected population. This may (should) lead to arriving at herd immunity with a lot lower rate of fatalities; i.e. we may see more and more people develop antibodies to the disease that exhibit few or no symptoms.

While I agree we probably don't get back to what we saw as 'normal' anytime soon (probably never fully back to what we used to see as normal), there's no question that this too shall pass. And while it may drag on, there's also a good chance we stumble onto something that helps us turn a corner quickly. For instance, if we had figured out about using chlorine in pools in the 1920's, Polio would have had a much smaller reach before the vaccine finally was created. With literally billions of people to study, and every government in the world highly motivated to find solutions, I am optimistic that we will figure this out, and sooner than later.

Beaverstever's post above helped me feel better about a brighter future coming sooner than some are suggesting. Thank you for that.

Time is of the essence as the entire world moves scientific discovery further with each passing day in an attempt to eradicate an insidious killer. Every day I see the CNN death counts mount for the US and the world I am reminded of why the social distancing measures are in place.

Good news and bad news.

Good news- Because of the structure of Covid-19 it appears that it will not change like the common cold. So if a vaccine is developed it can be effectively exterminated.

Bad news- Some viruses have a much worse effect on the 2nd go around. So countries like Sweden who are actively working on herd immunity could be in for a really bad time next fall.

I am 100% behind compliance. However, the target or goals just seem to keep moving further away from any resolution point .
The latest, for me, was that the antibody tests are not useful - because 1) the tests themselves have poor reliability and 2) there are no guarantees that a person with antibodies cannot be infected again.
Yet, the best looking path towards a treatment was , at the same time, described as using recovered patients blood ( supposedly with the requisite antibodies) to save a very sick person ( several studies ongoing - at least 3). Top this off with the statements that the immunity, if it can be effective , has no timeline for when the efficacy starts to decline or go away.
I assume that means that 'whatever it is' you will now be getting ( minimum ), annual flu shots and a separate COVID shot . But, if ( and it probably will ) it mutates - you robably now have an additional pandemic ( maybe), to now deal with !
So, it 'appears' , at this point - that we may be battling new viruses for a few seasons, until science can actually come up with a virucide that can mitigate any current and emerging virus. Look at antibiotics , as an example. You isolate the bacteria ( gram negative or gram positive ), and then you select the antibiotic that works best against that class and specific pathogen . Easier because all bacteria are known and can be identified ( that we know ) , and be treated .
Hopefully, we can get there with any future virus! But ? Again, the finish line keeps moving in more directions that seem to defy previous understanding and experience . This would also help us against any future potential pandemic threats ! Wishful thinking, at this point !

The problem is that these projections assume that no states lift their social distancing policies. Red state governors are lifting them. We will know if those efforts are wise in about two weeks.

Additionally, South Korea announced -- a couple of weeks ago -- that they are experiencing re-infections. So we're going to have to know about how long recoverees retain their immunity before -- in my opinion -- we begin lifting those restrictions. It may be that we wait for either a cure or a vaccine before we normalize.

Personally, I continue to believe there are reasons to be optimistic that we will have the pandemic under sufficient control to see a resumption of on-campus operations, including athletic competitions, by Fall. This article describes well what will need to be done in colleges:

www.nytimes.com/2020/04/26/opinion/coronavirus-colleges-universities.html?smid=tw-share

In a nutshell, test, trace, and separate. Once the pandemic is brought under reasonable control, presumably by this summer, we do have the knowledge and the time to prepare to keep re-emergence under control. Leadership is the big question mark.

Also, it seems pretty clear that the case fatality rate for Covid-19 has been over-estimated due to the substantial number of asymptomatic or mild symptom cases that do not get tested. In closed populations like the Princess cruise ship and certain prisons, where testing was thorough, there were high percentages of asymptomatic persons who had the virus. That is not to say I think Covid-19 is not a major concern. It is a very dangerous virus. Just not as dangerous, I believe, as many people originally estimated.

There will be tremendous pressure to take reasonable steps back to toward normality. Hopefully, we do it right. That may require some sacrifice of individual liberties (e.g. mandatory contact tracing, mandatory wearing of masks in public to keep the reproduction number low, etc.). But the economic and societal pressures to re-engage normal operations will be strong and we have the tools and knowledge on how to do so.