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England,Spain, Italy, Germany, France. The total number of deaths from Covid are about 149,000. Together, their population is about equal to US.  US deaths are about 150,000.  

Tell me again how much better they have done in Europe?  Germany is the outlier. 9,000 deaths with 84 Million people.  Take them out and the death rate for the rest of Western Europe is higher than the US.

Their coach, who famously coached Phelps, announced that the entire ASU swim team will redshirt the 2020-2021 season. Wow. Surprised I haven't seen a comment about it here. . . .

https://www.si.com/college/2020/07/26/ar...oronavirus

I thought this was a good figure.  All the countries, including Sweden, which famously did not shut down, had a dramatic reduction in activity with the initial shutdown, though Sweden had the smallest decline.  Italy, Spain, and France, which were hit hardest in March/April not surprisingly had the most significant decline in activity.  Because the countries also had the strictest shutdowns, it is hard to disentangle cause and effect here.

But if you look at what has happened in July, Italy, Spain, France, and Germany, all countries whose COVID-19 activity has been most suppressed (though it is coming back in parts of Spain), have the highest economic recovery.  Sweden, which again, never shut down, has continued to languish as the outbreak has not been suppressed as well as in the other European countries.  It is joined by the UK and US, which have had a rough go of the pandemic, have had a lackluster economic recovery, despite aggressive reopening in the US.

BC

Florida Marlins home opener is cancelled because of a growing Coronavirus outbreak on the Marlins team.
12 players and staff have tested positive and the team will be unable to play their opening home game.

For those unfamiliar with the situation MLB has travel to venues with players living at home when in their home cities.

Of all the current pro sports the MLB experience is most similar to the NCAA model. 

MLB has a few dozen teams and already has a team cancelling (forfeiting??) games. 
Can anyone imagine the NCAA, with thousands of teams flying all over the USA, would navigate a full fall term without several major outbreaks?

Moderna starts phase 3.

Quote:Moderna, Inc., (Nasdaq: MRNA) a clinical stage biotechnology company pioneering messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics and vaccines to create a new generation of transformative medicines for patients, today announced that the Phase 3 study of its mRNA vaccine candidate (mRNA-1273) against COVID-19 has begun dosing participants.

I've now read three stories this morning about spread from "getting back to normal" activities.  Wedding in S.F. that ignored safety protocols and led to multiple Covid infections. The Miami Marlins team outbreak after traveling through Atlanta. And this below.

Just more ammo for public health experts calling for another round of shutdowns.

So, Vitamin D doesn't work to prevent tuberculosis infection.  Still a question as to whether it will be helpful to COVID-19, but probably not going to be a silver bullet.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NE...?query=TOC

BC

I was thinking about winning Super Bowl quarterbacks and how they played during the regular season of their Super Bowl winning years.  Jimmy Garoppolo played and lost last season, and was rated 8th in the NFL with a 102.0 QB rating (as the NFL calculates it, not the ESPN QBR which is admittedly probably more accurate).  

It's easy to come up with the list of best and worst NFL quarterbacks who have won Super Bowls by, say, career rating.  Top three career rating QBs are Aaron Rodgers (102.4), Russell Wilson (101.2) and Drew Brees (98.4), all of whom have won Super Bowls.  Worst by far was Namath with a career rating of (65.5), then Plunkett (67.5), then Doug Williams (69.4).

But what about their Super Bowl year?  How did Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks compare to other quarterbacks that season?  I'd always thought, for example, Terry Bradshaw was an average QB with a great team -- particularly a great defense -- around him.  And he was 25th among NFL quarterbacks in his first Super Bowl season.  But he was 5th, 2nd and 8th in passer rating his other Super Bowl seasons.

Based upon regular season NFL QB ratings (not the ESPN version), eight Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks were also the best quarterbacks during the regular season in their Super Bowl winning year by rating, including:

1966, Bart Starr (105)
1971, Roger Staubach (104.8)
1976, Ken Stabler (103.4)
1989, Joe Montana (112.4)
1994, Steve Young (112.8, highest regular season rating of any Super-Bowl-winning QB)
1999, Kurt Warner (109.2)
2006, Peyton Manning (101.0)
2009, Drew Brees (109.6)

And a fair number finished 2nd in the NFL in QB Rating during the regular season, including Staubach ('77), Bradshaw ('78), Montana ('84), Rypien ('91), Aikman ('93), Favre ('96), and Brady ('16).

And which Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks fared the worst compared with their peers?  Which had an NFL passer rating that placed them 20th or worse in the NFL?  The list includes:

1974 Bradshaw (55.2, 25th)
2000 Dilfer (76.6, 20th)
2008 Eli Manning (73.9, 25th)
2009 Ben Roethlisberger (80.1, 24th)
2015 Peyton Manning (67.9, 34th, by far the worst regular season showing of a Super Bowl winning quarterback)

I didn't include three Super Bowl-winning QBs who were part-timers during the regular season, but were forced to start during the Super Bowl:

1987 Doug Williams (94.0, 21st)
1990 Jeff Hostetler (89.0, 26th)
2017 Nick Foles (76.7, 26th)

Stanford quarterback stats of interest:

1970 Unitas (65.1, 17th) didn't have a great season.  Brodie finished with a 93.8 rating, best in the NFL.
1980 Plunkett (72.9, 17th)
1983 Plunkett (82.7, 11th)
1997 Elway (87.5, 7th)
1998 Elway (93.0, 5th)

Statistics are attached.

Until reading this, I had no idea the CDC didn't report actual flu deaths, and only used algorithms to project the numbers. The theory is they did this to drive the death number up to encourage as many people getting flu shots as possible. And pneumonia deaths were apparently even tossed in with flu deaths to drive the numbers higher.

The Covid-19 pandemic has now blown up in the CDC's face, as "fake flu data" has led people to not take Covid-19 as seriously as they might have otherwise. Some of the numbers in the linked blog post are shocking.