FanPost

Coronavirus and Unintended Consequences

People are stupid and panicky when fear is involved and almost always make the wrong decisions. They really need to not start cancelling sporting events. I know the NBA is in a bind because they are in the middle of their season and a player is infected, but they should get a handle on their games immediately, and MLB really needs to not cancel games. Of course they probably will, and it won't help anything.

Basic Assumptions

Up front, let me say that I will be assuming that all games during the season are played without any fans in attendance, and that everyone who watches does it on TV. I'm going to assume that about 25% of people who continue to lead their lives as best they are able will eventually get the coronavirus as a result of infection at work, in the broader community, or whatever. Most people simply aren't able to stay in isolation until this all blows over.

Let's assume everyone who knows they have coronavirus stays isolated. They won't, but I'll assume they do.

An average MLB team has about a 3.5 share in local ratings; altogether, assuming 15 games played per day, there are over a million people per day who watch baseball on TV. Let's say 1.5 million. Over the course of the season, and excluding playoffs, Americans collectively spend, roughly, about one billion hours per year watching baseball.

I'm also assuming the virus itself continues to work the same way, and doesn't evolve dramatically, say in the form of a much more contagious strain. I'm only looking at cases here, not deaths, so the virus getting substantially more or less deadly isn't a factor - only how easy it is to transmit.

How many people can you protect by cancelling the games?

You can cut back on labor. You don't need ushers, concessions, security, many of the maintenance people, and other park-management staff, obviously. You still obviously need the players and umpires, but also the grounds crew, TV production team, some maintenance people, and the team operations staff (equipment managers, cooks, and the like). And I guess we have to keep the broadcasters, although I could do without most of ours.

How many people does this add up to? Well, an average team employs about 1,100 off-field staff. Unfortunately this article is basically a fluff piece and doesn't give any detail at all about what most of them do. But the real question isn't how many people work for teams, it's how many people are at increased likelihood to be exposed to the virus as a result.

If an employee is a long-time employee with enough goodwill, like our own team manager that PR wrote a piece about a month or two ago but whose name I forgot, or freaking Drew Goodman, the team will probably be willing to pay them to sit home, rather than lose them. But if an employee is just a bag porter or a cameraman, they're going to go get some other job. Other off-field staff, such as the front office, will experience the same workload, or even increased workload. Their lives won't change either way. Altogether, I would estimate that there are probably about 30 players and probably fewer than 50 additional employees who can afford to just stay home and effectively take themselves out of the risk pool; and few if any of these people would be at high risk of death or serious illness. Let's round the number of people totally protected from coronavirus this way up to 100. But they wouldn't all get it, right? I'm assuming 25%. So we're only actually saving about 25 cases.

Of the other 1,000 people, they will all either be unemployed, continue to work for the team normally, or go get some other job. I'll estimate 1/3 in each category, and also assume that the people who find other work don't have an overall change in their likelihood of getting coronavirus. Some of them, like the ushers, will be unemployed anyway, assuming there are no fans admitted. But others, like the grounds crew, don't necessarily have to be.

1,000 people per team, times 30 teams, times 1/3 per team, means putting about 10,000 people out of work, and also, coincidentally, protecting them from coronavirus. Let's say instead of 25% of them getting it, only about 10% do, a savings of 15%. So nationwide, we're saving about 1500 community cases plus about 25 players and "tenured staff." To reiterate, 25 players and 1500 community members is not the number I expect to become infected under any particular scenario; it's the number of players and community members who would have gotten infected but didn't because they cancelled the games.

Unemployment sucks, and it translates into deaths. The 2008 recession caused about 5,000 additional suicides, and unemployment is strongly correlated with depression, trouble with the law, family troubles, etc. While it's outside the scope of this article to estimate the human cost of putting about ten thousand people out of work, this is likely to cause a handful of people to get into trouble and possibly one or two deaths - even if you completely ignore the economic cost.

How many people will get sick by cancelling the games?

Assume 10% of those 1.5 million viewers get the coronavirus at some point during what would otherwise be the baseball season (more will get it, but not necessarily during the season). Almost everyone will have the virus for a week or so before they even suspect it. Let's say 10% go out into public at some point during that week when they would have otherwise stayed home to watch baseball. And of those, let's say 10% manage to spread the virus to someone else during one of those trips. I think the first number is low, frankly, and the second and third ones could easily be low. Cancelling the baseball season would therefore cause roughly 1500 additional cases, just because people didn't have baseball to watch. It'll be worse if, by May or so, people are tired of staying home and start ignoring self-quarantine recommendations.

However, the cases are transferred from MLB workers (mostly either athletes or blue collar workers, who can be assumed to be relatively young and in excellent or at least reasonable health) to baseball fans, who are somewhat older than the average population and therefore slightly more at risk. And you will hurt some people with unemployment.

The 25 cases you might cause by proceeding with the games are a rounding error in an estimation like this. Overall, I think it's best to assume that nothing changes. The overall reduction in total deaths is probably less significant than the people who die in a typical season by getting drunk and falling off the upper deck, and fewer than die in car crashes on the way to the games. It might even make things worse.

What about the fans who would have gone to the game?

Well, there aren't that many of them compared to TV fans. An average game has about 30,000 fans, but of course, only for the home team. But, if you've ever been to a Cubs game at Coors... well, let's say only in the home stadium. Assume that about half of these are serious fans who would be watching the game at home, and the other half are casual fans there to watch the sunset or schmooze the boss. Casual fans won't watch if the games are played without fans, and they (obviously) won't watch if the games are cancelled. So they don't factor in at all. Counting only the serious fans, 15,000 fans per game times 15 games per day - about 225,000 people or about 1/6 of the total viewership. If you add this number to those who might get sick by doing something other than watching baseball, you increase those cases by about 250. This would mean cancelling the games has a signficant negative impact - if you keep the same assumptions otherwise.

Of course, you could also reasonably guess that fans who attend games are more likely to be active, healthy, out and about and therefore more likely to catch the disease. But also, less likely to die from it. Overall, I assume all fans are equal.

What if you just hold the games as normal, fans and all?

A bunch of people get sick. It's a bad plan.

Conclusion

It might seem at this point that I rigged the numbers to make them line up like this, but I didn't. If you disagree with any of my assumptions, you can change the numbers and see what it does to the estimate. No matter what, it seems like cancelling the baseball season will probably have little or no impact on total coronavirus cases, could easily make things worse, and will cause significant economic and other hardship to everyone else.

DON'T CANCEL BASEBALL.

Eat. Drink. Be Merry. But the above FanPost does not necessarily reflect the attitudes, opinions, or views of Purple Row's staff (unless, of course, it's written by the staff [and even then, it still might not]).