Concerns over the coronavirus could impact the NBA’s pre-draft combines, on-site workouts and international scouting events, Adrian Wojnarowski and Zach Lowe of ESPN report.
League officials and team executives are monitoring the situations and those events could become more limited in scope, or even cancelled, depending upon the spread of the virus. The global Hoop Summit is scheduled to be held in Portland in April, and the draft combine is, as usual, scheduled to be held in Chicago in May.
The league has already outlined short-term recommendations to its teams. Players are being asked to fist-bump instead of high-fiving fans and avoid handling items from fans such as pens, balls and jerseys to autograph, according to a league memo.
Blazers guard CJ McCollum has already stated in a Twitter post he won’t sign autographs until further notice and many other players are likely to take the same stance.
According to the ESPN report, the NBA and the Players Association have been consulting with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and infectious-disease experts.
To date, there have been no reports of anyone associated with the league contracting the disease. A player who contracted the coronavirus would likely miss two weeks, the ESPN report adds.
Sound like it’s not a big deal to me.
It’s not as big a deal as the media is making it out to be.
The death of humanity has been greatly exaggerated
Who cares? We are all going to be dead by then anyway.
This is a strain of flu right? Certain amount of people die every year from the flu. Just like dangerous cases in years past, the bird flu, the swine flu, the chicken flu, and all that. We just have to be very careful. I hope this passes quickly.
Similar, but a little different. COVID 19 has a mortality rate of around 2%, although this may wind up being lower. Seasonal flu has a mortality rate around 0.1%. COVID 19 is also more transmissible.
On the whole, Corona virus appears to be closer to the Spanish Flu of 1918, which killed approximately 1-2% of the world’s population; however, a few differences mean the impact will be lesser for Coronavirus.
First medical technology has come a long way in the past hundred years. Second, the mortality rate is most likely slightly lower. Third, the Spanish Flu had an abnormally high mortality rate in young people. Coronavirus appears to follow a more typical flu pattern of killing the sick and elderly. This means CJ McCollum is not likely to die from this disease.
In my opinion, fears of a worldwide extinction are severely overblown. However, I do have some concerns about the economic effect due to slowdowns in production and the impacts of a sick workforce.
I was concerned for the economy as well, but as it happens, following the worst single day drop in the Dow’s history there was an even bigger single day raise. There seems to be no sign of an impending supply line disruption, which was the only real short term problem.
The problem is only for hospitals.
That’s it, it’s a flu that in young people has not symptoms and in some old people cause necessity of healt care
Hospitals? What, beds?