Forums >Racing>2020 Boston Marathon Thread
No major marathon is happening this fall unless a treatment is found (vaccine was always going to be later). I'm not so sure about even medium sized marathons: every locality is going to be too worried about both the medical and legal risk of people pouring into their areas because all the majors are cancelled. There may be more marathons where you can only sign up if you're local, similar to what many beaches are doing where only local residents can go. I would venture to say even next spring may be challenged, but of course, that is so far away it's too hard to speculate. DW - I think the reason for cancelling is moreso for local officials, not for the runners. The BAA is going to face tremendous pressures from all of those officials to cancel ASAP so they don't need to expend resources on this, or perhaps more importantly for elected officials, have to listen to their constituents on a weekly basis about how they don't want this in their town. If you look at most of the Northeast, at best we will be in a phase where things will look close to normal, but the big events will not exist, e.g. sporting events, concerts, major conferences, etc. Those types of things, unfortunately, are not coming back anytime soon.
No major marathon is happening this fall unless a treatment is found (vaccine was always going to be later). I'm not so sure about even medium sized marathons: every locality is going to be too worried about both the medical and legal risk of people pouring into their areas because all the majors are cancelled.
There may be more marathons where you can only sign up if you're local, similar to what many beaches are doing where only local residents can go.
I would venture to say even next spring may be challenged, but of course, that is so far away it's too hard to speculate.
DW - I think the reason for cancelling is moreso for local officials, not for the runners. The BAA is going to face tremendous pressures from all of those officials to cancel ASAP so they don't need to expend resources on this, or perhaps more importantly for elected officials, have to listen to their constituents on a weekly basis about how they don't want this in their town. If you look at most of the Northeast, at best we will be in a phase where things will look close to normal, but the big events will not exist, e.g. sporting events, concerts, major conferences, etc. Those types of things, unfortunately, are not coming back anytime soon.
I think it’s going to vary a lot regionally. I don’t think you’ll see major marathons but I could see mid size suburban marathons maybe. A lot easier to spread people out in the suburbs or a rural area than NYC or Boston.
Good Bad & The Monkey
Start & finish lines, not so much
A lot easier to spread people out in the suburbs or a rural area than NYC or Boston.
I'm running somewhere tomorrow. It's going to be beautiful. I can't wait.
Poor baby
Well thought out and educated response.
In that it's what most of us are thinking, I thought his response was not only remarkably well thought out but also delightfully succinct.
This is what I was trying to get at when I asked how locals feel about this. I'm recalling the late cancellation of the 2012 New York City Marathon and how those who didn't want the race to go on threatened to throw eggs at runners leaving their hotel room, take the generators and post-race food supplies from Central Park, etc. Whether the race could be run or not, it just didn't look right to many - particularly since the race started in hard-hit Staten Island. The situations aren't really the same because that cancellation wasn't about public health... In any event, I don't envy them having to make a decision now on how things might look in September.
My blog is JT Running DC. It's awesome. Guide to Washington DC Area Running Routes. Guide to the New York City Marathon. Guide to the Boston Marathon. Guide to Running Gear. Guide to Running Clothes.
Prince of Fatness
Yes. I am.
You are quite the humanitarian.
Not at it at all.
we have 1.5 million cases of COVID 19 and somehow almost 300,000 people have recovered.
As an epidemiology expert, you know we need to censor the cases for which we don't yet have an outcome, so the denominator is not yet 1.5 million but rather the 390,000 for whom we have outcomes. That includes 300,000 who have recovered and 90,000 who have died.
Let me do some quick math here to see how this looks. Let's see: (90,000/390,000)*100 = 23.07%. Damn, that's a high death rate. That cannot possibly be right.
Let's try this, the most conservative case and forget about censoring: (90,000/1,500,000)*100 = 6%. Fuck. That is still a whopper death rate. I wonder what 6% of 330,000,000 Americans is. Hmmmm. Math tells me it is 19,800,000 dead Americans. Just so you can get your latte.
And of course, as darkwave pointed out, COVID is not just about the deaths.
I would just gently suggest that death is not the only significant risk from COVID 19, and so looking at death rates alone is not a good way to assess individual risk. Other possible consequences from contracting it include long term damage to one's lungs, or financial ruin from the costs of being hospitalized. And even if you don't get hospitalized and get a "mild case" many of those mild cases are still sick for weeks. A friend's husband, in his 30s and very healthy and fit, got it and was wiped out for several weeks. Re: cancelling the race. I think it's best if they wait as long as possible, just in case things change. To me, the argument of "they should let everyone know early so people don't get disappointed" would be much more compelling if the cancellation would come as a surprise. At this point, anybody training for Boston knows that it's a question mark - everything's a question mark. If you're not willing to train for the race, knowing that it very well may not happen, then take your refund.
I would just gently suggest that death is not the only significant risk from COVID 19, and so looking at death rates alone is not a good way to assess individual risk. Other possible consequences from contracting it include long term damage to one's lungs, or financial ruin from the costs of being hospitalized.
And even if you don't get hospitalized and get a "mild case" many of those mild cases are still sick for weeks. A friend's husband, in his 30s and very healthy and fit, got it and was wiped out for several weeks.
Re: cancelling the race. I think it's best if they wait as long as possible, just in case things change. To me, the argument of "they should let everyone know early so people don't get disappointed" would be much more compelling if the cancellation would come as a surprise. At this point, anybody training for Boston knows that it's a question mark - everything's a question mark. If you're not willing to train for the race, knowing that it very well may not happen, then take your refund.
All of this.
But also, framing it in terms of individual risk misses the point. If it was just about my own personal risk I might be ok with running it. But it's not.
The Commonwealth, the eight cities and towns, and the BAA have to consider public health, the capacity of our healthcare system, and the economy. And in terms of all three of those priorities, it seems crazy to have the Boston Marathon in September. We can't risk another massive surge in cases in October that's worse than what we had in April, that kills thousands more people and shuts the whole region down again into 2021.
In a way we were fortunate things weren't much worse--we never did reach the point where our hospitals couldn't absorb all the Covid cases. But it was pretty dicey there for a week or two in late April and it required converting basically every ICU (and some regular floors) into COVID ICUs and shutting down all non-emergency services. And for a while it wasn't at all clear that it would be enough. If we had waited another week in March to implement all the stay home orders, we could have been in a much, much worse situation. Nearly 6,000 Massachusetts residents have died from Covid so far but if we had waited another week that could easily already be 2x or more that number.
We're about a month past what we all hope is the only peak here. The number of Covid hospitalizations is down by about 1500 since April 22, the number of hospitals using surge capacity is at 13 (down from 23 on May 1st) and the number of new cases and deaths per day have been trending down. We'd all like to see those trends continue and not go the other way.
Runners run
As an epidemiology expert, you know we need to censor the cases for which we don't yet have an outcome, so the denominator is not yet 1.5 million but rather the 390,000 for whom we have outcomes. That includes 300,000 who have recovered and 90,000 who have died. Let me do some quick math here to see how this looks. Let's see: (90,000/390,000)*100 = 23.07%. Damn, that's a high death rate. That cannot possibly be right. Let's try this, the most conservative case and forget about censoring: (90,000/1,500,000)*100 = 6%. Fuck. That is still a whopper death rate. I wonder what 6% of 330,000,000 Americans is. Hmmmm. Math tells me it is 19,800,000 dead Americans. Just so you can get your latte. And of course, as darkwave pointed out, COVID is not just about the deaths.
Why is 6% the most conservative death rate? There’s plenty of people who have had super mild cases who never got tested. Testing isn’t available everywhere and I know people who had super mild cases and had to beg to get tested. More people have had it than the numbers are showing.
That being said, even a 1-2% death is still wayyy higher than the flu and over a million Americans if everyone gets it.
I am just mathing out the numbers brew runner is anchoring on. The 6% is conservative here because it divides the number of recorded deaths by the largest number BR provided. The reality is actually far more complex. Folks seem to think a 1% or even a 0.1% death rate is fine, no big deal. But when you multiply it out to 330 million, it is a whole lot of excess deaths.
Gotcha. Totally agree. 1% doesn’t seem like much til you realize that’s still 10x more than the flu and 3 mil Americans
Problem Child
Oh really?
https://www.bing.com/search?q=united+states+covid+19+cases&cvid=b0d357a57341486bbd9cea244c1d3fba&FORM=ANAB01&PC=HCTS
Confirmed
1,572,252
+21,620
Deaths
93,111
+1,529
Recovered
299,886
+8,650
yeah it's not quite 1.5 million confirmed cases with 90,000 deaths and 300,00 recovered. I'm not sure where those numbers came from.
As a comparison...
https://www.nsc.org/road-safety/safety-topics/fatality-estimates
38,000 people died from car crashes in 2019 and we haven't closed roads or transportation. Funny how this COVID 19 thingy is devistating enough to close down a marathon yet Boston is experiencing DOUBLE the number of fatal car crashes and no one cares. How many people need to die before we stop using cars? Treat them the same right? When can we get some protection from unnecessary deaths in vehicles (ignore those who had mitigating circumstances like they were drunk, or hadn't slept in 30 hours, etc.)
WHAT is Covid 19, and the closing of businesses and disruption of human life, about if not deaths? 94% of the population is fine. I'm glad the 6%. hold 50+% of the wealth justify putting millions of people out of work and canceling any type of social gathering. At least I can watch reruns of golf. I can't imagine how deadly it would be if leisure activity became so popular it was impossible to maintain 6 feet of distance while in public. You know, because self quarantine, wearing masks in public, not touching your face or spitting is about more than just transmission of COVID 19.
Many of us aren't sure what the hell point you are trying to make and no matter how we guess, it always seems to be something else. Which usually means a person is doing it on purpose.
VDOT 53.37
5k18:xx | Marathon 2:55:22
Why is 6% the most conservative death rate? There’s plenty of people who have had super mild cases who never got tested. Testing isn’t available everywhere and I know people who had super mild cases and had to beg to get tested. More people have had it than the numbers are showing. That being said, even a 1-2% death is still wayyy higher than the flu and over a million Americans if everyone gets it.
HAVE had it being the key phrase.
Are you talking about the flu that comes around each year (seasonal) and we have a new vaccine for it each year and we can predict when it's going to happen? oh man, can you imagine if COVID 19 lasts until flu season and how overwhelmed we'll be?
https://www.livescience.com/new-coronavirus-compare-with-flu.html
0.1% death rate from the flu. I guess when you do some MORE math I'm even MORE of a humanatairan.
https://www.census.gov/popclock/
about 330 million people in the US
0.1 percent = 0.001
So it's okay for 330,000 people to die each year. Ever year. For the past ten years. While nothing gets shut down and people don't get sent home and lose their source of income. As a point of reference the population of Amarillo, TX is about 200,000. Just go ahead and erase them from the map because it's only the flu which we have a vaccine, and a season, for. Nothing ever shut down in Texas like the Dallas marathon.
Boston's population is about 700,000 so roughly half the city dies annually due to the flu yet the marathon keeps going on.
yeah, Boston should really reconsider having a marathon due to COVID 19 until we have a cure. Otherwise 1-6% of the country's population will die testing positive for this virus and not a single one of those people would have died of natural causes at that point.
Mmmm Bop
Who exactly is most of us?
mikeymike has given up on competitive running at the age of 50....bless him.👍
5k - 17:53 (4/19) 10k - 37:53 (11/18) Half - 1:23:18 (4/19) Full - 2:50:43 (4/19)
How cute!