As I write this, it’s a hot, sticky, slow, Sunday afternoon across most of the U.S., and I have the local baseball game—New York Yankees vs. Washington Nationals—on in the background. In most years, this is about as typical as you get for an activity on a hot, sticky, slow Sunday afternoon. For the last 100-plus years, this would be the doldrums of the Major League Baseball season; a time when the specific game itself could matter less, just one small drop in the ocean that is the 162-game season.
This year, however, the game means so much more. The coronavirus pandemic has forced nearly all professional sports leagues across the world to postpone or cancel play. Baseball is the first of the U.S. majors to return—and this has been the first weekend back. Sports might seem especially frivolous in the current moment. Men playing a children’s game for obscene amounts of money, after all, has little importance when a virus that as devastated public health and national economies continues to rampage through the U.S. and many other parts of the world.
Even in the best of times, professional sports are little more than entertainment. Yes, support for a local team can bring communities together in some contexts, and yes, especially in the highest levels of play, these are industries that can create and support the livelihoods of thousands of people. But ultimately, sports are a nice-to-have, and that reality has made the MLB’s return bittersweet. Among many new things this year: the daily report on who has tested positive for COVID-19 and where certain players are in the return-from-coronavirus protocol process; the constant discussion of how TV broadcasts are successfully (or not) recreating crowd noise for games played in empty stadiums; and the many articles analyzing whether this whole thing is actually a terrible idea.
There is clearly a hunger. The season opener on Thursday night, between the Nationals and the Yankees drew the largest opening night TV audience ever, and the largest regular season game audience since 2011, according to ESPN. And the return of the National Basketball Association, this coming Thursday, might be even more highly anticipated; expect TV records to fall by the end of Day One. I get why. My colleagues and friends are probably tired of my saying this, but for me, every day is a Wednesday these days. I’ve completely lost my sense of temporality. There are many reasons, but I believe one is the disappearance of sports. Usually, the NBA playoffs would have begun and finished by now—nearly a month ago already. The MLB season would be in its fourth month. The Summer Olympics were supposed to start three days ago, on July 23.
It’s not only sports. The annual pace of film and television releases have been similarly thrown off kilter, and the usual summer concert and visual art events have been essentially nullified. It’s no surprise that Taylor Swift’s surprise album, Folklore—which I think is great—feels so autumnal, despite its release on July 23. Without the cultural tick points by which we’ve long marked months and years, time feels elastic—it’s been the longest and shortest few months of many of our lives.
I’m not sure I feel that great about pro sports returning. I worry about the health of the players, and worry even more about the health of the many less-wealthy people who must work to support the games happening, and I have grave concerns about the potential of re-opened sports leagues generating new regional outbreaks. But, if there is a positive, I think it will be this: the return of sports can return to us all a more clarified sense of time, scale, and scope, as we enter into the next essential phase of managing life in this pandemic.
OVER THE WEEKEND
The U.S. Didn’t Get Any Better
It’s starting to feel repetitive, but states across the U.S. continue to break records they don’t want to be breaking. Over the weekend, seven states established new single-day highs for confirmed cases: Hawaii, Montana, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina, and Oklahoma.
Florida, meanwhile, yesterday passed New York in overall cases, putting it in second position after only California. But Florida may keep climbing: in the past 14 days, Florida has accounted for 17.3% of all new cases in the U.S., compared to 13.8% for California. (New York has largely flattened the curve for now, with only 1.1% of new cases in the past two weeks.)
Though the federal government remains relatively quiet on the issue, more and more local government officials are recognizing the trend and instituting orders requiring people to wear face masks in public. On Friday, Vermont governor Phil Scott issued such an order, making his state the 32nd with a face-covering mandate in place. Among other states with recently implemented mask rules are Ohio and Indiana. Florida, however, does not have such a rule in place—nor do Georgia, Arizona Tennessee, or South Carolina, four other states in the top-10 of most reported new cases in the past two weeks.
There’s a lot of financial uncertainty right now in the U.S., especially after Republican infighting appears to have torpedoed the GOP’s plans to introduce a $1 trillion COVID-19 aid package last Thursday. Meanwhile, many of the initial federal efforts to ease the economic hurt Americans are feeling as a result of the pandemic have recently expired, or are set to do so soon.
For example, the federal moratorium on evictions expired today. Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, White House chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow said earlier today that the moratorium would be lengthened, but would not give any details about when and for how long. The moratorium, which has been in place for four months, covers tenants living in buildings that have mortgages guaranteed by the U.S. government—about 25% of rental units in the country. Some states have their own moratoriums still in place, but in those that don’t, many renters face an uncertain next few weeks.
Another key program, which has been adding an extra $600 weekly in benefits to Americans who are on unemployment, is set to expire this coming Friday. On Saturday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters that the $600 benefit was “ridiculous,” but said that Republicans would be rolling out a new version of their aid package on Monday, and it would include some sort of extended unemployment benefit—though substantially reduced.
A Scare Arose in Western Europe
A month ago, Spain was averaging around 350 new cases a day, and seemed to be on track to a national recovery after a rough spring that saw for a time become one of the worst-hit countries in the world. Now, however, daily new cases are averaging around 2,000.
So, what went wrong? Experts say the rush to reopen the country to tourism may be to blame. On June 21, the country lifted its state of emergency, opening the borders to visitors from some countries. A month later, daily new cases started to rise again. Further, a lack of an effective contact-tracing system may have contributed to a handful of local outbreaks that could have otherwise been prevented, reports Mélissa Godin for TIME.
Spain isn’t the only Western European country with cause for concern. France, Germany and the U.K. have all seen small upticks in new infections over the past week or two, though none to the extent of Spain.
North Korea has throughout the pandemic claimed that the country has not had a single case of COVID-19 within its borders. Experts have long disputed this claim. On the one hand, entry to and exit from North Korea are controlled tighter than perhaps any other country on Earth. On the other hand, the virus has reached every corner of the planet, including far-flung islands in the Pacific and Caribbean—and the pandemic began in North Korea’s neighbor and by-far largest trading partner, China.
Earlier today, however, North Korea state media reported that country leader Kim Jong Un had placed Kaesong—a city near the border with South Korea—under total lockdown after a person was found there with suspected COVID-19 symptoms. Outside experts say that an outbreak in North Korea would be particularly devastating, given its weak public health infrastructure, and lack of medical supplies.
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