Professional sporting events increase seasonal influenza mortality in US cities • Hacker News Board

Re: Professional sporting events increase seasonal influenza mortality in US cities

#31

Post by throwaway894345 » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 8:08 PM UTC

thex10 wrote: post #22

throwaway894345 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public transit being another example of close-quarters contact in typically unsanitary conditions. And for those puritans who will inevitably attempt to reduce everything to a moral binary, I am not arguing against public transit. It’s a very good thing in many locations and I have no problem believing it is more ecologically friendly than many other modes of transit.

My impression was this common idea has not yet been found in research though -- do you have any studies to back this up?

No, this is speculative. To be clear, the absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence at least in the very short term. Research and analysis take time.

Re: Professional sporting events increase seasonal influenza mortality in US cities

#32

Post by threatofrain » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 8:11 PM UTC

RspecMAuthortah wrote: post #21

threatofrain wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good to quantify and ballpark that damage instead of leaving it as an intuitive guess. If public policy demands the trading of lives, at least it shouldn't be done by way of blind poker. This study ballparks it around 10-20 deaths per year per 100k residents.

> It's good to quantify and ballpark that damage instead of leaving it as an intuitive guess. Except it is hard to quantify the downside of that bears on quality of life and take that into account. My 70+ year old parents are homebound for last 5+ months, and their overall physical and mental health from lack of physical and social activities have significantly gone down, to the point I expect if this goes on another…

This is a study which looks at the relative impact of pro sports on influenza deaths in cities, not a study on COVID-19. But if a pandemic did hit, and we didn't have any data on the relative impact of different events on death, then you're more blind than ever in making judgments like whether churches should be restricted to 50 (why not 25 or 100?).

Similarly, there ought to be discussions on increases in mortality for any other causes under current contexts, including deaths by suicide — there's certainly been a lot of resistance to discussing the impacts of lockdown on public health.

Re: Professional sporting events increase seasonal influenza mortality in US cities

#33

Post by every » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 8:15 PM UTC

My wife and I both qualify as being in the high-risk, elderly population. Once we had some grasp of the situation, we were both in immediate agreement that our lives would have to be very different until there was an efficacious remedy. We even postponed our 40th anniversary celebration indefinitely, ala Ringo Starr. In the temporal realm everything can be replaced or done without except for life itself. It makes no difference to us what others say or do in this regard. We have cast our lot with science and best practices...

Re: Professional sporting events increase seasonal influenza mortality in US cities

#34

Post by pochamago » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 8:19 PM UTC

serf wrote: post #30

clairity wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "This study ballparks it around 10-20 deaths per year per 100k residents." no, it's 1-4 per million [0], so basically inconsequential relative to the (low) ~hundreds per million who typically die each year. dying from sporting event-acquired flu is really, really low on the list of dangers to worry about. worry about the trip getting there instead, if you must worry. [0] based on seizethecheese's quote, as i couldn…

>dying from sporting event-acquired flu is really, really low on the list of dangers to worry about. worry about the trip getting there instead, if you must worry. these kind of statistics are not for personal caution, they're for risk assessment and public policy. 141 total infant botulism cases were reported in 2017 -- it still warranted a report and investigation work in order to assess the possibility of future p…

"but the existence of yet another now-quantified danger does nudge your average 'danger score' higher" Or lower. I would say that these numbers are actually smaller than my intuition suggested.

Re: Professional sporting events increase seasonal influenza mortality in US cities

#35

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 8:21 PM UTC

macintux wrote: post #24

TheGrim-888 wrote: post #2

As an analogy, opening my window increases my chance of getting skin cancer by letting more light in. Should I therefore always keep my window closed? Is the increased risk of cancer worth the benefit of having my window open? Should we all be forced to live underground, because that would definitely save a multitude of lives from skin cancer. Sports events will always increase deaths, even in non-covid times. More p…

Studying and being aware of the net impact isn’t the same as saying we need to eliminate sports.

[deleted]

Re: Professional sporting events increase seasonal influenza mortality in US cities

#36

Post by clairity » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 8:27 PM UTC

serf wrote: post #30

clairity wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "This study ballparks it around 10-20 deaths per year per 100k residents." no, it's 1-4 per million [0], so basically inconsequential relative to the (low) ~hundreds per million who typically die each year. dying from sporting event-acquired flu is really, really low on the list of dangers to worry about. worry about the trip getting there instead, if you must worry. [0] based on seizethecheese's quote, as i couldn…

>dying from sporting event-acquired flu is really, really low on the list of dangers to worry about. worry about the trip getting there instead, if you must worry. these kind of statistics are not for personal caution, they're for risk assessment and public policy. 141 total infant botulism cases were reported in 2017 -- it still warranted a report and investigation work in order to assess the possibility of future p…

> "...they're for risk assessment and public policy."

even for that, it's inconsequential. there are many greater and more relevant risks to worry about at a policy level.

food-borne botulism has a different risk profile in that the ever-increasing centralization of food distribution can potentially unbound those risks.

> "...another now-quantified danger does nudge your average 'danger score' higher. ...more people than before will now consider this when..."

that's just fear-mongering. the risks of incidental/accidental deaths are the lowest in history. there's no reason to worry about this particular issue outside of research.

Re: Professional sporting events increase seasonal influenza mortality in US cities

#37

Post by vmception » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 8:32 PM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #3

Couldn't we go further, and just say "cities increase seasonal influenza mortality"? I mean, anything that is social, is almost certain to involve increased transmission of human-to-human infectious diseases. Live theater, classrooms, church services, drag shows, you name it, if it involves bringing a lot of people together, it's probably going to increase the spread of infectious diseases that spread by human-to-hum…

Couldnt we go further and just say “wow I dont find anything wrong with this study how refreshing”

Re: Professional sporting events increase seasonal influenza mortality in US cities

#38

Post by sdenton4 » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 8:40 PM UTC

seizethecheese wrote: post #29

thex10 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression was this common idea has not yet been found in research though -- do you have any studies to back this up?

It’s harder to isolate than a sports team, but that there is an effect is just common sense.

It doesn't seem hard to isolate; some people drive every day, and others ride transit. Common sense is often wrong, so it's good to interrogate it. (E.g., maybe constant low level exposures lead to stronger immune systems and less loss of life? Common sense tells me it's an effect!)

Re: Professional sporting events increase seasonal influenza mortality in US cities

#39

Post by daenz » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 8:41 PM UTC

Everything is connected. Everything we do has some impact that causes benefits and harms, and if we dig deep enough, we can certainly go down the rabbit hole of attempting to show that we're hurting the entire world by merely existing and going about our daily lives.

The question that is most interesting to me is how much will people agree to give up civil liberties in response to these discoveries? Another interesting question is will we equally study the benefits associated with the thing that also has a harmful result?

Re: Professional sporting events increase seasonal influenza mortality in US cities

#40

Post by bartread » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 8:43 PM UTC

threatofrain wrote: post #16

rossdavidh wrote: post #3

Couldn't we go further, and just say "cities increase seasonal influenza mortality"? I mean, anything that is social, is almost certain to involve increased transmission of human-to-human infectious diseases. Live theater, classrooms, church services, drag shows, you name it, if it involves bringing a lot of people together, it's probably going to increase the spread of infectious diseases that spread by human-to-hum…

It's good to quantify and ballpark that damage instead of leaving it as an intuitive guess. If public policy demands the trading of lives, at least it shouldn't be done by way of blind poker. This study ballparks it around 10-20 deaths per year per 100k residents.

> It's good to quantify and ballpark that damage instead of leaving it as an intuitive guess. If public policy demands the trading of lives, at least it shouldn't be done by way of blind poker.

Yes, except that once the COVID situation is under control (assuming it can be controlled; some might say that's a big assumption), lots of people will be monumentally pissed off if this kind of study is used to justify ongoing restrictions on attending sporting events, concerts, etc.

Everything in life is a risk. What I am painfully aware of at the moment is that whilst everyone I know is willing to follow government guidance related to COVID and to continue doing so for as long as is necessary, we are all craving a return to normality, and are unlikely to be tolerant of tenuous justifications for continuing restrictions after the crisis has passed.