[teejers1]

One tournament.  This is one of the things that drives me crazy. There has been an awful lot of sporting events played and safely.  But they find one instance and that gets the publicity. I say that while at the same time believing that these tournaments should not be taking place.

I guess the point of your post is that the media should report some sort of pure scientific analysis of the risk of every single sports event? This is obviously not completely knowable. It's also not at all how the media works or even could work.

The scientists are doing incredible work during the pandemic as are the media. Some people seem to have expectations of these institutions that are not realistic or proper.

Is it unrealistic to expect the media to determine (i) how many other tournaments have been played?, (ii) if there were outbreaks there or not.  Heck, even if it were something along lines of "There have been __ tournaments reportedly played in the last 2 months, and this is the __ one where there has been an alleged tie to the event."  

Strikes me as basic and not at all unrealistic. It's only unrealistic if you want to message as opposed to report on facts in objective manner.  Just one reader's take.  Same thing with hospital capacity.  In SCC, we see reports that hospitalized Covid patients have doubled in last 3 weeks and capacity is at X%.  That's all well and good, but do you not think it important to provide (i) total number of Covid patients (i.e., what that doubling means), (ii) total number of non-Covid patients (to get a sense of how Covid is impacting on capacity)?

To me that seems basic.  But if you want to message people into thinking that Covid is causing all the capacity constraints, then you don't report on the fact that non-Covid patients increased by 200 - from 1600 to 1800 patients - i.e., the total number of Covid patients.  

It doesn't change the fact that Covid cases and hospitalizations are on the rise and that's it's a potentially critical matter on capacity front, but it does present a better picture of exactly what is going on.

[teejers1]

One tournament.  This is one of the things that drives me crazy. There has been an awful lot of sporting events played and safely.  But they find one instance and that gets the publicity. I say that while at the same time believing that these tournaments should not be taking place.

I guess the point of your post is that the media should report some sort of pure scientific analysis of the risk of every single sports event? This is obviously not completely knowable. It's also not at all how the media works or even could work.

The scientists are doing incredible work during the pandemic as are the media. Some people seem to have expectations of these institutions that are not realistic or proper.

Is it unrealistic to expect the media to determine (i) how many other tournaments have been played?, (ii) if there were outbreaks there or not.  Heck, even if it were something along lines of "There have been __ tournaments reportedly played in the last 2 months, and this is the __ one where there has been an alleged tie to the event."  

Strikes me as basic and not at all unrealistic. It's only unrealistic if you want to message as opposed to report on facts in objective manner.  Just one reader's take.  Same thing with hospital capacity.  In SCC, we see reports that hospitalized Covid patients have doubled in last 3 weeks and capacity is at X%.  That's all well and good, but do you not think it important to provide (i) total number of Covid patients (i.e., what that doubling means), (ii) total number of non-Covid patients (to get a sense of how Covid is impacting on capacity)?

To me that seems basic.  But if you want to message people into thinking that Covid is causing all the capacity constraints, then you don't report on the fact that non-Covid patients increased by 200 - from 1600 to 1800 patients - i.e., the total number of Covid patients.  

It doesn't change the fact that Covid cases and hospitalizations are on the rise and that's it's a potentially critical matter on capacity front, but it does present a better picture of exactly what is going on.