Experts mixed on 60-game season
NEW YORK — Thirty baseball teams from 28 cities, trying to play 60 games each amid a coronavirus pandemic that seemingly hasn’t peaked in the United States.
Plausible? Worthwhile? Unconscionable?
Even among experts, it depends on who’s talking:
“Baseball games can work,” said Dr. David Hamer, professor of global health at the Boston University School of Public Health. “I think it’s feasible.”
“There are certain sports that are higher risk versus lower risk,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “Baseball is sort of an intermediate risk.”
“I’m very nervous about MLB’s plan,” said Dr. Zach Binney, an epidemiologist at Emory University. “It could be a disaster.”
Public health experts have mixed feelings about baseball’s hopes to open its season Thursday. There is optimism because of the nature of the sport itself, which produces less on-field risk than basketball, football or hockey. Then again, players and their families face a daunting task in staying safe away from the ballpark, especially with teams traveling to and from hard-hit regions, including Florida and Texas.
Unlike the NBA and NHL, Major League Baseball teams won’t be sequestered into bubbles — they’ll be traveling all around the country.
MLB has provided teams with a 113-page operations manual detailing protocols for its pandemicshortened 60-game regular season.
Players will be tested every 48 hours. Masks and social distancing are a must at all times, except on the field. Backups can watch games from the stands instead of the dugout. No sunflower seeds. No spitting. No licking fingers. Even the mascots won’t be allowed to get close.
There are protocols for air travel, bus travel, private cars and hotels, along with general guidance to avoid contact with people outside of the baseball world.
According to data released Friday by MLB, just 0.4% of samples from players and coaches tested since June 27 have come back positive. That’s far below the national positive rate of about 9%.
There have been delays in testing, most notably around the July 4 weekend, and all but two of the 30 teams have had at least one person test positive.
Testing is a critical pillar of MLB’s plan, but it’s hardly foolproof. Set aside frustrating delays that forced several teams to cancel practice — even when screenings are handled perfectly, there are flaws.
Players and on-field personnel provide samples every 48 hours, and results are supposed to take one to two days to process. That means players could take a test, participate in one or two games or practices and not find out until after that they have COVID-19.
“There’s so many cases, you may not catch them fast enough,” Binney said.
So transmission risk has to be kept low, even with coronaviruspositive players in uniform.
The nature of the sport should help.
“It’s not fleeting contacts that spread this virus,“said Adalja, who is also on the NCAA’s COVID-19 advisory panel. “It’s close contact for 10 to 15 minutes, so something like people hanging out in the dugout is much more likely, epidemiologically, to lead to the spread of the virus.”
Binney is more concerned. He thinks bubble systems like those used by the NBA and NHL are a worthwhile gamble, but he’s worried that MLB’s protocols will be inadequate in virus-stricken areas like Florida and Texas.
“That can all stop a few cases, and maybe even a moderate number of cases,” he said of MLB’s plans. “But if you’re getting cases from the community left and right, I have some concerns about its ability to withstand that.”