Quote from Brian Connelly on December 16, 2020, 12:54 pm

Pro sports but especially Baseball is  part of the fabric of American life Nationally.   On principle in a vacuum I agree with your assessment, but I would argue the MLB & minor league players collectively have an outsized impact on the economies of the cities where their teams play. The total # of people directly involved in ALL pro (& even college, but that can wait till the Summer) sports is relatively low.

Take the NBA.  15 players/team + G league + coaches etc = maybe 2,000 in the country counting?  And they're massively better off than "normal" people, but if they can't play, it affects a major economic enterprise in each city they play and Nationally.  "Jumping" the 2,000 NBA employees &/ or 15,000 MLB employees in line from a practical standpoint only pushes back 17,000 people 1 day or less from receiving their vaccine.

I'm basically saying the MLB/minors players need BOTH: 1) the time to acquire immunity so THEY can intermingle safely, and 2) sufficient time to prepare with a normal length Spring Training.  Last season's short Summer 2nd  pre-season was a disaster from the injury front across baseball.  Exactly what medical & baseball experts said would happen.  We as fans need to get immune too, but don't need a ST to get ready to attend a game in person 🙂

 

Quote from fenn68 on December 16, 2020, 2:37 pm

Going to be an interesting state by state debate on priorities. Think COLO has deemed ski resort workers “essential workers” just for your reason of economics. Arkansas has included poultry workers (makes sense for food supply). I know in CA there is a push for strawberry farmers being classified as “essential”. The “economic” argument covers a lot of people, industries ... all will fight for priority ... along with police, fire, teachers, and almost every high exposure profession. Going to be crowded in the essential worker category.

Added complexity, the allocation / priorities are state decisions ... what happens if CA puts others in higher priority while TX has ball players higher priority? Going to be an inconsistency on getting all players vaccinated which would cause a problem in assembling players from different venues in ST. Actually both states could classify them as essential workers but even they fall into a priority ranking. Not so sure the folks in AZ / FLA will be really excited to “share” their vaccine allocations with out of state people ... even if it only a few.

On the other hand, there seems to be a lot of people who don’t want to get the vaccine in the early releases which could make more available to those who do want it sooner. Not mandatory by states. Can MLB make it mandatory as a condition of employment .. and if so does that apply across all states? In CA employers can but other states?

At worse, we may be just debating a month (or so) one way or the other. Annoying but  something to work around.

Quote from Brian Connelly on December 16, 2020, 3:11 pm

I think both the owners & PA/unions of pro sports are going to lobby at the State & National (Senators, Reps) level that you get a HUGE amount of "bang for the buck" nationwide for a very small # of vaccines in the case of pro sports.

But a LOT of businesses could justifiably fall in those categories.  Movie set just popped into my head.  Have to make the movie way before it gets released.... let them get made so we can actually watch something new in a theater in the Fall!

Can't do much about state by state variation in fan attendance policies.  That wouldn't have anything to do with player vaccines.

I was wondering if an employer or school can mandate it?   Doubt it.

Quote from fenn68 on December 16, 2020, 4:29 pm

Quote from Brian Connelly on December 16, 2020, 3:11 pm

I think both the owners & PA/unions of pro sports are going to lobby at the State & National (Senators, Reps) level that you get a HUGE amount of "bang for the buck" nationwide for a very small # of vaccines in the case of pro sports.

But a LOT of businesses could justifiably fall in those categories.  Movie set just popped into my head.  Have to make the movie way before it gets released.... let them get made so we can actually watch something new in a theater in the Fall!

Can't do much about state by state variation in fan attendance policies.  That wouldn't have anything to do with player vaccines.

I was wondering if an employer or school can mandate it?   Doubt it.

States do have the control on who gets vaccinated in what order ... and that is more the issue if all the states don't align.

Yes, in CA an employer can mandate it as a condition of employment (employee's option is to quit). However, have not heard of any employer going that route ... yet. Actually one of the hospitals is not mandating it for the ICU staff, so that can be some sort of factor in strategy.

Hard to really reach out and assess the economic impact from every industry but the Auto makers are also pushing for "essential worker" status on economic grounds ... their footprint through suppliers on economies is massive (think millions of workers). Have to think every agriculture based business will be "essential" given the combo of production and distribution impacting millions of workers.

As I said, going to be a big crowd in the "essential worker"  category and I don't envy the folks who have to determine who is more essential in that crowd.

MLB may be at a bit of a disadvantage given their economic impact to the community is a bit smaller than the big players plus getting MLB running may be less of a priority than impacting the parts of the economy that actually were out of work / lost income (e.g. hotel workers, airline personnel). Just not an easy decision tree. Might come down to the medical folks and their criteria with input from political leaders protecting their own turf economies ... and who votes for them.

Hopefully the supply is robust and the issue is just a month or two one one way or the other but I can already envision 60 minutes or 20/20 rolling out a story on older people or the higher risk people dying without the vaccine while .... healthy folks got priority.