Corona

[zimbos_05]

Is it the only professional contact sport to do so in the world ?

Korea has already started their football league. However, if we are talking about the 3 main countries, then yes, it would be. NRL and AFL have always generally been the type to do otherwise.

As for the schooling part, education will not suffer. Online classes are very easy to access and conduct nowadays, but like Kriterion says, it will be the interaction that suffers. That hanging out with friends and being able to play together. For families that have a decent size yard and more than 1 kid, that is not too much of a problem. In Aus now with restrictions easing, you can at least visit friends within the restrictions, so the arguments for keeping schooling open are starting to be very weak (even when they weak to begin with).

Medical services will struggle however, and there is other industries like travel and tourism, hospitality, events, mental health that will also suffer. If doctors and nurses are infected, it creates a problem. It also creates a problem in the sense of other surgeries and medical being put off and delayed, as happened with my surgery. Essentially, this creates a back log in terms of the medical side, and there is obvious risk in rushing through a practicing or trainee doctor/nurse to work on the front line. The. other services will suffer from the obvious drop in business, and the longer they stay closed, the harder it is to recover. Opening too soon however will cause a second wave and the effects will then be felt far worse than currently projected.

The damage has already been down in the US, and when you have a select dissident people becoming a law un to themselves, it creates a problem for the rest who want to do the right thing.

[ZIMDOGGY]

Soccer isn't really contact in my book. Not like the rugby codes, NFL, AFL and wrestling etc.

[eugene]

Any outdoor sport is far safer to resume. Indoors is where almost all the mass infections have occurred.

[foreignfield]

Cricket seems like an ideal sport in these circumstances; generally gates are not as important as TV money, the atmosphere in the grounds is less a part of the spectacle than in football for example, and there are hundreds of millions eagerly waiting for their next fix.

Here in Germany the Bundesliga kicked off today without spectators, because professional football has the means to do it (pay for close testing etc.) and the incentive (TV money). Fans are largely unenthusiatic, the organised fan scene has been dismissive because football without fans seems pointless to them. It will be interesting to see the TV ratings, though.

Rugby is an amateur sport here and therefore in the same boat as any other team sport at amateur level, i.e. the season is off. My local club has also pointed out recently that you can't restart a contact sport at whim, not if your players haven't trained together for a couple of months or more, not at amateur level. For a pro league of the NRL calibre it's obviously different, much as the Bundesliga I reckon.

Our main professional contact sport if you will (I'm not sure it's brutal enough for some people's definition of a contact sport) is handball and they have called off the season a few weeks ago because it's not viable for them to play without spectators.

...

On a different, but positive note Germany, like some of our neighbours (Denmark, Austria), continues to see falling infection rates despite opening up step by step for a number of weeks now. But then we were, for various reasons (including a good deal of luck) never as hard hit as Italy, France, Spain or the UK in the first place and therefore never had strict curfews and generally a lighter form of lockdown at the worst of times.

[Kriterion_BD]

On a different, but positive note Germany, like some of our neighbours (Denmark, Austria), continues to see falling infection rates despite opening up step by step for a number of weeks now. But then we were, for various reasons (including a good deal of luck) never as hard hit as Italy, France, Spain or the UK in the first place and therefore never had strict curfews and generally a lighter form of lockdown at the worst of times.

I don't think there is much in the way of luck apart from having a small and/or isolated population like NZ. What did Germany do that other countries didn't?

[foreignfield]

On a different, but positive note Germany, like some of our neighbours (Denmark, Austria), continues to see falling infection rates despite opening up step by step for a number of weeks now. But then we were, for various reasons (including a good deal of luck) never as hard hit as Italy, France, Spain or the UK in the first place and therefore never had strict curfews and generally a lighter form of lockdown at the worst of times.

I don't think there is much in the way of luck apart from having a small and/or isolated population like NZ. What did Germany do that other countries didn't?

Germany is not so very special.

The virus was initially underestimated here just as much as anywhere else in the West, the only countries that were really prepared and ready to take decisive actions right from the go were Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore. We were just as slow to close the borders as anyone else.

It seems we had better testing capabilities at the start which helped a lot and we went into lockdown early enough to keep things from spiralling out of control--but nothing out of the ordinary there; we were actually a bit slower to react than Denmark or Austria. Overall the approach of the authorities has been calm, measured and -- apart from some bitching between state leaders jogging for position in Angela Merkel's shadow -- free from political dogfights. But that's what I see across the board in Europe's north-west, even in Sweden with their different strategy, but also in a number of other European countries like Portugal or Greece.

As for luck: the virus didn't spread widely before being detected (in contrast to Lombardy); the carnival season just about ended before infections took hold (there was, luckily, only one case where one couple spread the virus during carnival to hundreds of people); we don't have a metropolis the size of Paris, London or New York; somehow the virus has as yet not spread to any of our immigrant communities (in contrast to Sweden and some other places); Germans don't go around hugging and kissing each other as much as Italians, Spaniards or the French do; we have a level-headed physicist without ego and without any further personal political ambitions at the helm.

Still, we have 7,500 deaths and counting, and everyone who's got a modicum of common sense knows it ain't over yet.

[eugene]

I was reading how Vietnam has been a success story. They shut down in January while the Chinese were still claiming it was the flu. I guess the Asian world has seen these viruses much more and know what's at stake. For the west this is a once-in-a-century event.

[Kriterion_BD]

I was reading how Vietnam has been a success story. They shut down in January while the Chinese were still claiming it was the flu. I guess the Asian world has seen these viruses much more and know what's at stake. For the west this is a once-in-a-century event.

East Asians in general are far more disciplined and better equipped to handle such things due to their authoritarian systems of governance for so long. That would be my best guess. In America, and I'm sure in the UK and other parts of Europe to a lesser extent you have plenty of people who balk authority believe they have some sociopathic right to infect others because wearing a mask is giving the government too much control.

[zimbos_05]

Soccer isn't really contact in my book. Not like the rugby codes, NFL, AFL and wrestling etc.

As someone who has played football for pretty much 2 decades, it definitely has a lot more contact than people want to portray, particularly in certain positions. Not to say it has more than rugby, but it would be foolish to be quickly dismissive of the risk.

I think Cricket is easily the sport of the big sports that could come back. The problem becomes the risk to those who have to get involved, and obviously if it is International cricket, it would make sense to have an India or Pakistan involved to ensure TV money. So, I don't think we will see Zim playing for some time, even if cricket did resume.

I was reading how Vietnam has been a success story. They shut down in January while the Chinese were still claiming it was the flu. I guess the Asian world has seen these viruses much more and know what's at stake. For the west this is a once-in-a-century event.

I think it also has a lot to do with how invested in China the west are. Trump and the US have their deals with many Chinese organisations, and there are a lot of US corporations with Chinese bases. Australia too is so heavily invested in China to the point that the Chinese infiltrate the ruling party. Australia has pretty much invested everything in China, particularly the Liberal party. I think the Asian countries have had experience with China before and deal with them on a more personal level, so they know when China is up to no good and really don't want to deal with their bullshit.

The biggest thing we are seeing from this is the amount of hate towards China from the every day person. Anti-Chinese sentiment has always been prevalent in Asia due to the history, but in the west, it has never really seeped to any major level. Now that China is essentially at fault for this virus, the rest of the world wants some sort of pay back, and unfortunately the western governments are too far in bed with China to do anything.

I know for example Morrison in Aus is pushing China and wants an inquiry, but I doubt it would uncover anything worthwhile and would probably serve just as face value. There are also those within his own party and those who contribute to the party, who are Chinese sympathisers and continue to deal with them that would want nothing to be done to China.

[Jemisi]

Particularly the liberals? Keating is on the Chinese payroll