New Scaratings

Nationwide, Showdown players had hoped to launch a tournament this spring. There were setbacks. First their primary quiz writer, Tom Dietz, got the pink slip; then, the coronavirus outbreak. That tournament is still on hold.

The general consensus among Showdown players - a perspective which is no doubt broadly shared throughout the Buzztime community - is to take a wait-and-see approach. The tournament is still postponed, and the hope of rescheduling it is rapidly receding. Buzztime itself might succumb to the pandemic.

I haven't been active on New Scaratings since mid-March, when I was sidelined from gameplay by a state-wide shutdown, which then seemed, and still seems, a responsible initiative. I had hoped that Minnesota would take a more granular approach to openings and closings than we have. Whether Minnesota has been well-served by executive action remains a bone of contention, but I'm generally supportive of the initiatives taken by our Governor. (Like the US Congress, but unlike any other bicameral state legislature, the MN Senate is currently Republican, the House DFL - Democrat-Farmer-Labor - and there is little concord between the two houses.)

What surprises me, in re-engaging with this bulletin board, is that there is no established thread dedicated to parsing the path SARSCoV2 is taking through our communities. Do correspondents fear to introduce politics to New Scaratings by commenting on a disease which is itself apolitical?

There are larger issues at work here. Can we safely send our kids back to grade school this September without killing Grandma? That looks like a joke, but it isn't.

MERKIN sent up a prayer that we would all remain healthy, and by way of assurance, offered an actuarial perspective that yes, we would. But that doesn't speak to a Showdown tournament, nor to when we as a society project a level of confidence such that our unemployment statistics shall fade into short-term debt.

I'm inviting anyone on New Scaratings who wants to share a statistical, or personal perspective, to do so. You might wish to report whether your state or home town has seen a second spike. Or you might wish to report, as I can, that my 93 year old mother tested positive in late April, and celebrated her 94th birthday by being removed from quarantine.

Have played a couple of Tuesday nights at Time-Out West. Sitting outside.
Also some Saturday afternoons in the parking lot at Chicago Loop.
Going to try sitting inside at Chicago Loop today. Kinda curious how that will go.
Husker Du!!!

RAY J

Dave,So glad to hear your mother is doing well.Yes,I agree Walz handled the pandemic well.Myself,I am using alot of soap,getting my rest,exercising,wearing a mask when appropriate.I think the feeling of our leaders has changed from having a society socially isolated to learning how to have a more active life by learning to live with it.A country like New Zealand has very few cases now.Other countries are doing much better than the US.So there is hope if nation responds.I am optimistic a vaccine with emerge sooner than later.

Here in Maryland, everyone is still playing Buzztime from home on the app with the 20 mile radius still in effect. It's working out Okay so far for Playback and a few other games. Been playing more Lunchtime than ever before. I've been trying Topix, sometimes it's new and other times it's a repeat from a year ago. Thur SIX seems like new games though Wed SIX has had repeats. Playback has been repeats for the headliner round yet the previous rounds new or mostly new? Is that what others think??

An American Legion up in far NE MD had 2 players play from the location but other than that Maryland Buzztimers are staying home to play on the app. Stained Glass Pub Silver Spring is very small, even limited to 50% capacity people would be close. It's a 1/2 hour drive for most of us and in the 2nd worst virus zip code in MD, so no hurry to get back over there.

The Virus itself has been a nuisance but so far everyone I know is safe and wearing masks and 98% of people out in public are as well.
We are learning to deal with the distancing and masks when out of the house.

Our Republican Governor Hogan has been doing very good in keeping the opening schedule slower than other most other states.
So far we are in decent shape.

_________________
BUD - Stained Glass Pub Silver Spring MD
OC BUD - Grotto Pizza DE near Ocean City MD

LET'S GO ....Caps and Os!!!!

Danny K's is open again with restrictions, but seems to be getting ignored by many. The site also qualifies as a restaurant, otherwise they would still be closed. One of the players reported that changes had been made to qualify for reopening, but most customers didn't bother to follow the rules. With that being said, I and others will wait until better times. My big fear is that the state will come in for a check and close the doors again.

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Middle age is when a broad mind and a slim waist exchange places.

Of course right after I say Playback has been repeats they bring out what looked to be a new game to us. The headliner was Married Couple Duets or something like that. Capt & Tennile, Sonny & Cher, Jay Z & Beyonce etc.

Stained Glass Pub cruised to the win when we finally got a new material game.
Playing at home on the app. Not going in the bar yet.

_________________
BUD - Stained Glass Pub Silver Spring MD
OC BUD - Grotto Pizza DE near Ocean City MD

LET'S GO ....Caps and Os!!!!

here in the best location in the nation on the northcoast of ohio we have played buzztime almost exclusively on the app using discord to share answers and play together as a team. in fact we play more trivia that we have in the past. on tuesdays we play a game on zoom written by a local person who writes an excellent trivia game. on wednesdays we play six from one location. on thursdays we plays six from another location. on saturdays we play playback from a third location. for several weeks in a row the six games were all repeats of recent games. just at the point in time when we were ready to quit playing six the games stopped being those repeats and now we continue to play on wednesday and thursday.

bars and restaurants are allowed to be open now in ohio and west park station has opened for in person dining. there are two patios at west park station in the front and in the back, but no tvs outside to allow for playing the game. the past two weeks we have had three people play inside. i played he most recent thursday using two playmakers that i cleaned using wipes that i brought. i do not see us having more that 3 or 4 people at west park station at any time in the foreseeable future.

as for saturdays we have several music fans on the team, but we never really played on saturday except for a very rare occurrence. now we play every saturday which makes the music fans very happy. this makes me happy because i knew that some of my teammates really wanted to play this game. we could never have played at west park station on a saturday night and for me i was not all that interested. playing online remotely has been great and i assured my teammates that as long as buzztime keeps the 20 mile radius we will continue to play playback.

our usual schedule of where to play in the year of covid-19 was interrupted by one location that has had the game for years dropping the system due to lack of support from ntn. that location had lots of the blue playmakers, 30 of them i think. many would lose power or had other issues and the bar wanted to get them fixed or replaced around the time they were able to reopen. for whatever reason ntn failed and couldn't provide the service that was needed. so the game was dropped. there were a lot of regulars that played the game there and it was a bad thing for everyone. two of the regulars were at west park station on thursday although they left before i arrived so i didn't get a chance to talk to them.

as a team we still want to play buzztime games. we are not ready to return en masse to west park station. we wish this had never happened, but it did and we are trying to make the best of it and continue to be the team of wonderful people (team captain excluded) that we are.

While IDJIT and his team were kind enough to let me and other Fellowshippers play on their Discord server early in Ohio's lockdown, we were just far enough apart that not all of us (from both teams) could access the same NE Ohio location.

Because the team really wanted to still all be able to play together, GUNDAM set up a Fellowship Discord server for our usual Tuesday night outings, and for several weeks we played from 7:00-9:30 when Showdown was replaced by Countdown games. Once Showdown came back, though (and the apps stopped working after Brainbuster), I took a survey of the team as to what they wanted to do going forward. Restaurants were beginning to open up again, and there was thus a possibility of returning to Red Fox to play on Tuesdays; but a whopping 90% of the team indicated that they were not ready to gather yet--even on the patio with masks on--and that they were going to take a wait-and-see approach for the near future depending on COVID levels. A disproportionate number of us are either living/working with people in high-risk groups or are high-risk themselves. (Ohio seems to be spiking again, so perhaps their wisdom in this matter has been affirmed).

So to try to give us other opportunities to play beyond just Brainbuster on Tuesdays, we started playing Wednesday SIX a few weeks ago. For the last couple of weeks, a token group has played on the patio at Red Fox with everyone else connected to them on Discord. I do mean token: we had four on the patio the first week, and only one last week. I suspect that this will continue to be our M.O. for the rest of the summer at least, or until BT goes belly-up; whichever comes first.

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Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

When my home bar shut down on March 16, I had plenty of time to consider the probable course of the pandemic, and believed then it would probably peak around Independence Day, and then fade rapidly. Optimistically I hoped to be back at B-52 Burgers and Brew in early August. My fond expectations are still on track, but are derided by epidemiologists.

While following the trajectory of SARSCoV2 through Minnesota, I've been watching Youyang Gu's self-correcting AI model, as well as the IMHE model generated at the University of Washington. Following an early hicccup at IMHE, which failed miserably in April, the two models have fallen into uneasy accord. One current distinction: Youyang Gu (whose model is likely his PhD thesis) predicts that Minnesota shall have twice as many current infections in mid-August than at present; IMHE predicts a spike once schools reopen, in September.

In Minnesota, hospitalizations, ICU hospitalizations, and deaths are down, the mortality rolls only 30% of what they were a month ago. The Minnesota Department of Health reports spiking cases in ages 0-39, but to date, only 12 deaths in 20,000 confirmed cases within that demographic. The other 1,500 deaths are among those who, for the time being, might be content to Skype or Zoom their grandchildren. Statewide, JAN M's demographic enjoys a 35% mortality rate. But that's only among confirmed cases, which might under-represent the spread of the infection by a factor of 10.

The sweet spot, for the potential victim, is to take on low doses beneath the level of positive infection, but high enough to acquaint one's immune system to the threat.

My apartment house is next door to a long-term care facility which has accounted for a minimum of 120 infections, 40 of them among employees, and 38 deaths. (Those numbers are 3 weeks old.) Every now and again I wander around the grounds, picking up trash. Among the beer cans, water bottles, fast food or cigar wrappers, there's the occasional discarded face mask, and the hospital gloves. I treat all trash equally, without PPE.

Across the street is a convenience store where no more than 10% of the clientele wear face masks. The principal owner/manager recently took a two week vacation.

Life is a gamble. As I've advised my friends, they're all barred from my casino.

It's vitally important that public confidence be restored, but impossible to predict how that shall happen. A teaching moment, perhaps? Schools reopening in September, with everyone wearing face masks? If within that circuit there might be contact tracing?

There seems to be a consensus that the rate of transmission of SARSCoV2 is on the upswing. Whoever has been purchasing NTN Buzztime stock is playing the long game.