[Mick]

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.

That’s a textbook definition of news. A tournament linked to multiple Covid cases is news. All those other tournaments not linked to Covid cases are not news. Complaining about that is like complaining about media covering the hurricane instead of all those places that had nice weather; or the earthquake instead of all those places that didn’t have a quake. 

You are objecting here to the essence of news.

Drove my car to the store today and I didn't crash, the airbags didn't explode.   Why didn't the news cover it.   :(
Why are they always covering car crashes and talking about exploding airbags.   Geez.

FWIW - I don't really think the sports are the problem.   It is everything that goes with playing sports.
Look at club sports going out of state.
Those California club teams playing sports in AZ, for example.
The games are probably fine.   However those clubs need families to drive or fly there, then stay in hotels, eat in restaurants and sit on the touchline together for hours with other families from other teams.  That's might be good for local businesses beyond the host club, but each of those activities has a risk of COVID spread.   Then all of those folks head back home and spread whatever was happening in those AZ communities or the different families of the various club teams back to the nice CA families that didn't put their kids in out-of-state club sports.

The shorthand then would become that the club teams are bringing COVID back to CA.   That doesn't necessarily mean it was the games that were the problem.

The child that stayed at home and practiced soccer dribbling by themselves on an empty field, would not be newsworthy.   Though if anyone wants to make the lack of COVID by two or three kids dribbling soccer balls in their neighborhood into a story they certainly can launch their own Youtube page and hope for views.

Sounds about right.  My kids played in Atlanta, Minneapolis, Austin, Salt Lake City, Phoenix...basically anywhere there was a $100 hotel room during the summer.  And the interactions were substantial, generally unsupervised (from an infectious disease point of view) and involved all ages and families.

[Mick]

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.

That’s a textbook definition of news. A tournament linked to multiple Covid cases is news. All those other tournaments not linked to Covid cases are not news. Complaining about that is like complaining about media covering the hurricane instead of all those places that had nice weather; or the earthquake instead of all those places that didn’t have a quake. 

You are objecting here to the essence of news.

Drove my car to the store today and I didn't crash, the airbags didn't explode.   Why didn't the news cover it.   :(
Why are they always covering car crashes and talking about exploding airbags.   Geez.

FWIW - I don't really think the sports are the problem.   It is everything that goes with playing sports.
Look at club sports going out of state.
Those California club teams playing sports in AZ, for example.
The games are probably fine.   However those clubs need families to drive or fly there, then stay in hotels, eat in restaurants and sit on the touchline together for hours with other families from other teams.  That's might be good for local businesses beyond the host club, but each of those activities has a risk of COVID spread.   Then all of those folks head back home and spread whatever was happening in those AZ communities or the different families of the various club teams back to the nice CA families that didn't put their kids in out-of-state club sports.

The shorthand then would become that the club teams are bringing COVID back to CA.   That doesn't necessarily mean it was the games that were the problem.

The child that stayed at home and practiced soccer dribbling by themselves on an empty field, would not be newsworthy.   Though if anyone wants to make the lack of COVID by two or three kids dribbling soccer balls in their neighborhood into a story they certainly can launch their own Youtube page and hope for views.

Sounds about right.  My kids played in Atlanta, Minneapolis, Austin, Salt Lake City, Phoenix...basically anywhere there was a $100 hotel room during the summer.  And the interactions were substantial, generally unsupervised (from an infectious disease point of view) and involved all ages and families.