How to Play Softball During a Pandemic

[sluggers]

If you are coaching, make sure your insurance will cover Covid19 claims.

The underlying assumption in these discussion about "getting softball back to the way it was" is that no one on the team will be infected by covid19....which is a fantasy. Covid19 thrives when people start congregating. So, if you put 20 teams at a tournament, some people are going to get covid19 at the tournaments.

So, when a kid/daddy/mommy/sibling gets seriously ill, the relatives will be looking for someone to blame. I'm not arguing right or wrong--it is "just the way people are".

Everyone has a duty to take reasonable steps to not harm other people. The more "in control" you are, the greater duty that you have.

If a park district, tournament or coaches fails to take reasonable steps to protect the players, umpires and spectators from harm, they will be liable for the injury.

If only one person gets sick, it will be difficult to prove liability.

But, suppose 25% of people get sick at a tournament. Or, suppose 50% of your team ended up with covid19.

In that situation, proving liability is easy. As soon as liability is established, then a coach/tournament director/park district could be liable for everyone affected by Covid19...players, parents, acquaintances.

This is going to get real nasty, real fast.

 

[BlaineAB]

Why would it matter to self assess if a person could have it with no symptoms?
Obviously weed out those with symptoms.....
but asymptomatic can attend.

Be clean, stay overthere.

But a person being asymptomatic doesn't necessarily mean that person isn't carrying covid-19.

 

[_MIA_]

But a person being asymptomatic doesn't necessarily mean that person isn't carrying covid-19.

I think that was the point she was trying to make..self-assessing only eliminates a fraction of those infected.

 

[radness]

Also isnt it so that people can be contagious themselves for multiple days befor having symptoms?!
Can actively have virus no symptoms.
And contagious befor symptoms.

 

[BlaineAB]

Umpire (me) feels fine on Saturday, calls a few games, wakes up on Sunday with symptoms.
How many game balls did I touch? Was I 100% on top of using my PPE on Saturday?

 

[BlaineAB]

Teams, tourney personnel disinfecting things properly 100% of the time? Batter's box isn't lined properly 100% of the time.

 

[sluggers]

Teams, tourney personnel disinfecting things properly 100% of the time? Batter's box isn't lined properly 100% of the time.

Lined? You get your batter's boxes LINED?

 

[FP26]

Lined? You get your batter's boxes LINED?

Lol!! We often played 8am games. Batter's box always looked great then...

NOTE: I have also helped some friends run a few tournaments. There is a lot more work involved than many people realize.

 

[clemenslee1]

Tournaments are set to start in almost 2 weeks here in OK and I have yet to see what various parks/alphabets plan on doing with regards to this..some social media conjecturing from parents and others but nothing set yet...Not sure how much of a difference it would make but one would think they need to have a plan (if they are going to) soon..

Seen that Tulsa parks are not open until June 1.

 

[_MIA_]

Just for fun, let us do some back of the envelope math here to quantify the probability that at least one person will be infected with COVID at a softball tournament. Let us just pick my state, OK to do the calculations e.g. we are just assuming everyone at the tournament is from Oklahoma and differences between different counties within the state are ignored.

As of today there are 3618 reported cases in OK and the population of the state is 3.957 million. So the ratio of infected is 3618/3957000=0.000914 hence the ratio of uninfected is 1.0-0.000914=0.9991. To determine the probability that at least one person in a tournament with 500 people attending is infected you raise 0.9991 to the power 500 which gives 0.6329. Subtracting this number from 1 gives 0.3671 e.g there is a 36.71 % chance that a person attending the tournament is infected. If instead that tournament has 250 attendees that number goes to 20.44 % while if that number is 1000 that number goes up to 60%.

Now if you attend 3 such tournaments with 500 people the expected likelihood that at least 1 infected person will attend one of those tournaments is then (1.0-0.6329^3)=0.7465, e.g. about 75%.

Not making any conclusions here, just putting out some actual numbers for people to chew on.


Note:
a) These calculations assume that there is equal likelihood that infected and uninfected people will attend. In reality it is likely that symptomatic infected people will stay home which would mean the probabilities are overestimated. For example, at the moment in OK, especially in my county, a large percent of the cases are in nursing homes. However

b) on the otherhand, the calculations are done based upon the number of confirmed cases which is likely much lower than the actual number of infections.

c) The calculations don't actually give a likelihood of being exposed and infected at a tournament.