I just hope the poker rooms start nutting up and actually make people that are obviously sick leave. I can think of at least a half dozen times where a person at the table was sick af and casino wouldn't make them leave after it being brought to their attention. And that doesnt include the 100s of times someone had a persistent cough.

There's definitely a lot to wade through in the briefings. But to be honest, press briefings shouldn't be the primary place everyday people get information. The whole reason we have a press is to attend these meetings, wade through the content, and report on what they deem is important. It seems like the press has decided the president's tone or motivations or relationships with various other people is most important. These briefings do have nuggets of useful information. Unfortunately the press doesn't seem to be competent/ethical enough to get this information out in an accurate way.

Again, today's briefing, supposedly, is going to have some actual data and data analysis in it. If the presenters, whether its the president or his staff are unable to provide details during the briefing, I hope someone gets it and makes it available. I am not one of these hysterical apocalyptic people we see posting from time to time. And I am not a "nothing to see here" person either. But it makes it hard to know how to feel about anything, be it the virus, its health effects, the mitigation efforts, public reaction, etc when you don't know what the underlying "reality" is in the data. Early on there wasn't enough data. I don't think that's true any more. Hopefully we get to see that.

What's interesting, is if there is even the slightest sight of blood at a table, most reputable venues will go to great lengths to address it. I'm guessing they will pay more attention to illness going forward... at least for the next year or two when COVID-19 is a health concern.

The decision to close was based on science and evidence, as it should have been.

#RebootVegas will occur when 1) the authorities are convinced it's 100% safe; and also 2) when consumers' personal risk assessments tell them that it's 100% safe. In other words when your wife thinks it's safe.

Maybe (2) will require a PR campaign. In the 1970s, McDonnell Douglas, the aircraft maker, had two of its DC-10 jetliners crash within a short time due to defectively designed cargo door latches. Many people refused to fly on them. McD stood up TV ads featuring astronaut Wally Schirra in the left seat: "The DC-10. One of the world's most thoroughly tested jetliners."

I don't think it will be a significant percentage, but some players will be less inclined to play live poker. And in places where live poker was already teetering, this might be the sort of thing which pushes it over the edge. But poker rooms are not an order of magnitude more crowded than most casino environments, never mind other things like concerts, sporting events, nightclubs, bars, restaurants, places of worship, etc. As soon as the government and private concerns decide its safe for people to, I'm sure crowds will return and live poker will be among them.

You should try turning off your computer and actually listen to a briefing so you can inject some reality in your posts.

Agreed. I'll add that asking the President whether the nation's hospitals will have enough ventilators to handle the peak of the pandemic is pertinent. It would have been nice had the President answered, of course.

Why shouldn't they be? In the midst of a situation like this, why wouldn't you want a briefing to be a place where medical experts simply give you the facts? I'd rather that than have to rely on media, who of course are not experts on the field, to try to determine what is and isn't important.

I do agree that when it comes to a news broadcast showing short clips of a briefing, they can pick and choose what they show, and as long as the important information was given at some point, I suppose that's good enough. But when you're in a time like this, and know the entire briefing is going to be aired live and viewed by many that way, I think that changes things.

I'm not sure what gives you the idea I haven't, but thanks for the shot. I listen to our own briefings here almost every day - they're simple, to the point, and very transparent. Admittedly I've only seen a couple of US briefings in their entirety, or at least as much of them as I could manage, and found it quite the opposite. My sample size is small, so perhaps you can let me know what reality I'm missing from the briefings I've not seen.

To be clear, I'm not saying there is no useful information at the briefings I watched. It just appears that the information is surrounded by amazingly long stretches of political spin, and then this is naturally matched by press questions related to the politicking.

Edit to add: Thinking about this more, maybe I'm getting away from the point, and I don't want to get too political. Every country's going to do things differently, and that's fine. My original point, which perhaps I should have stuck to, was related to akashenk's post about reporters and agenda-driven questions - my point was that when the briefing is political, the questions will lean that way as well.

Caesars properties now taking May 1st also.

The US govt is using the 'optimistic' IHME model I linked to ITT a few days ago, isn't it?

It's updated each day based on recorded statistics, and - if you're looking to plan for re-opening of public places - the projection is that the daily death toll isn't likely to get back down even to today's levels until late May. The healthcare situation is obviously going to get significantly worse before it starts getting better.



Since the general public isn't really interested in models or graphs on university websites, the media (and the President himself) focuses on the headline numbers like "100,000 deaths" and the general idea that you're not over the hump yet. For most people, #MathIsHard.

I think the public is more interested in real data than you give them credit for... at least those who are paying any attention whatsoever.

In any case, the official US model (at least the one that the US is using at this time), is predicting a peak of 2200 deaths on April 15th (death and taxes... if I'm allowed a small bit of humor in this otherwise morbid time). This is definitely higher than I would have thought based on what we say in Italy and Spain, but is still a fair bit lower than the 3000 predicted by some here using whatever model they relied on. I suppose its about half way between what i would have predicted and the 3000. Only time will tell if it turns out to be accurate. Given the significant extension in guidance, I think there' really pushing hard for states to follow the recommendations. Hopefully that push makes it so the model predictions keep coming down over time.

P.S. You can select each state individually for that model. There's less data available for Nevada at present, so the projection for that state is likely to be less accurate, but "re-opening" might not be wise until at least 4 or 5 days after NYC is up and running, as the peak in Nevada isn't expected until April 26th.

I don't understand why the reporters were so shocked by the figures in today's White House briefing.
It's what has been predicted for the past couple of weeks. Have they not been listening?

The daily death figure in the UK today was double yesterday's.

That is sort of an unanswerable question because there is no way for him to know. If he answers a definitive "yes" and ends up being wrong, he will be slaughtered. If he answers "no", he will both be criticized and the situation will become worse through panic... and if he ends up being wrong about it, people will blame him for giving an answer too soon and causing distress in the public. So, politicians dodge this sort of question because the answer is almost always "i don't know". Of course, if he said that, he would be criticized as well. Not really much of a win in trying to answer that kind of question. Honestly, its why its more of a "gotcha" kind of question than anything else, looking to trap the politician into saying something which will make them look bad.

Reasonable questions would be like... "what is the federal government doing to procure more ventilators?" and "what is the time frame"? I think he answers those sorts of questions (or just puts out info himself) all the time. Whether the actions being taken along these lines will end up being good enough will be determined in hindsight, at which point it would be fair for people to either criticize or praise the actions taken. Lord knows our leaders are constantly second-guessed by those who say they would have done a better job.

I’ll bet $100 there will be no full WSOP in 2021.

There might be the Finals but limited events and attendance.

This isn’t magically going away by then.

Unless we want to wait for a vaccine that will work, we are going to have to just toughen ourselves up and deal with a lot of people getting it and older people dying. There’s is no way around it.

Let’s hope when/if we get it that we build up an immunity and you can’t get it around again. If it is like the flu each year that morphs that will suck. We will have to develop some treatment.

These dates of going ‘back’ are silly. There is no going back to the way it was.

The alternative is we isolate for months and months and months to protect a minority of people from dying. That isn’t living. We need kids in school. We need live poker.

We need to accept that this is a new way people will die, like car crashes. We don’t all stop driving to save lives. It is a risk we’re willing to take.

I do think big events will be cancelled for years. Too risky to have it spread quickly. We can handle it if it is spread out...with the caveat we also accept a large increase in deaths.

Oh well. None of us get out alive anyway.

After reading the virus stays floating in air for a significant amount of time WSOP would be last place I'd want to go. Maybe in 2021 I'd go but not this year. People not washing hands, smelly people coughing Covid19 into air. People from all over the world. They should do online only this year.

This year? 100% done. The government said that is going to be the peak of deaths, and that is assuming we all are in lockdown mode until then.

We need a vaccine and a treatment protocol. Probably two years away. We either accept 200k deaths on lockdown or 2 million sort of going about our business.

A lot has been made of this - especially by Trump, who has mentioned it countless times. But it's come up a lot here in Canada as well, as we took a much different path, and our government has been taking a kicking for it by some. But is it important?

The US currently has over 188,000 Covid cases. Canada, at ~1/9 the population, has ~8,600. On a per capita basis, US has about 2.5x the cases that Canada has. New cases today running at almost the same ratio. Fatalities, about 4x.

The US closed their borders to China on Feb. 2nd. Canada? Mar. 16th. Italy? Jan. 31.

Vancouver has "more direct mainland Chinese flights than any other airport in North America or Europe" as of 2017.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/v...hub/index.html

Vancouver is the biggest city in the province of British Columbia, and BC's cases per capita are lower than Canada overall.

So, what does this tell us? Right now, nothing conclusive. Although we're entering the thick of it over the next few weeks, it's still early. Numbers could shift dramatically. But right now, we have some pretty strong trends, and if they continue, it appears there will be a significant difference between our countries' results. If that happens, it would lead me to conclude one of two things. Either:

1) Closing borders makes little to no difference, or
2) Closing borders is a small factor relative to others

A lot of experts in the field contend closing borders doesn't help. Maybe they're right?

Yup. We've been living that here for a few weeks. I'm hoping Trump might have finally got there.

Thanks for sharing your priorities. Old people are going to die but we need live poker ?

Where are the showers, I'll march right over there, so that you can have "live poker" again.

Play online you moron, so that Grandma can live, maybe ?

From 914 yesterday to "only" 2200 peak in 15 days is pretty optimistic to say the least.

It's hard to stay optimistic when you see thing like this - https://nypost.com/2020/03/30/crowds...-usns-comfort/

Democracy is not for **** sapiens

That’s a fair criticism to some degree. But a one month delay in “taking it seriously” is pretty much what we have seen in a lot of places. Just look at the individual timelines. Even places like South Korea which has more pandemic experience, is right next to China, and whom everyone holds up as a model of appropriate response did not “take it seriously” for one month after their first reported case. So one can deduce from this that all these leaders and governments around the world are some combination of incompetent and/or malevolent. Or maybe this situation (in no small part due to China’s apparent malfeasance) has largely caught everybody unprepared. People are free to believe whatever they like.

One only hopes that other countries who have not been largely affected yet have seen what is going on and will be more proactive.

Well there is a place for it. Because he’s in the Oval Office. And if you don’t like his news conferences so much then, like forums, you can choose to not participate. I’m certain there are a variety of news outlets you can turn to which will tell you what you want to hear. And there’s no reason for his style (or apparent mental illnesses according to your diagnoses) to stress you out too much. Presidents have term limits in this country.

My participation or stress level is irrelevant.

You believe the behavior as normal or acceptable. I dont.

Nuff said.

Well, that raises that very valid question as to whether or not this whole drastic shutdown of the economy really helps. My guess is, like the stimulus package, the solution will have had far graver long-term consequences than the problem itself. We'll see. In any case, shutting the border, as controversial as it was with the "orange man bad" crowd, was unquestionably the right thing to do as a precautionary measure.