What the NBA Bubble Can Teach Us
Prognosis: Misconception
Bloomberg
4.1 • 838 Ratings
🗓️ 16 October 2020
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Los Angeles Lakers took home the NBA championship this week. But the close of the season also marked a big victory for the league itself. The NBA played its finals in a unique environment that came to be known as the bubble. Players were frequently tested and social distancing was heavily enforced. And, the experiment worked. The NBA did not report a single positive coronavirus case from players or staff. Reporters Emma Court and Brandon Kochkodin describe how the league did it, and whether other organizations can replicate its success.
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| 0:00.0 | What could you do if your data was working for you and not against you? With Bloomberg delivering |
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| 0:30.5 | Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day 219 since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today's main story, |
| 0:42.7 | the NBA championships this week were cause for celebration for Lakers fans. But they also |
| 0:49.4 | marked a victory over the virus. The league's bubble strategy resulted in not a single COVID infection |
| 0:56.6 | among players or staff. So how well do bubbles work? And what can we learn from them? But first, |
| 1:05.5 | here's what happened in virus news today. |
| 1:19.6 | Pfizer said it could seek emergency use authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S. |
| 1:21.6 | as soon as late November. |
| 1:26.9 | That's if the shot is shown to be effective in a large late-stage trial. That timing squelches any notion that a vaccine |
| 1:31.2 | could be cleared in the U.S. before election day. The timeline will be dictated by safety reviews, |
| 1:38.0 | with the Food and Drug Administration requiring that at least half the study participants be watched |
| 1:43.9 | for side effects for two months. |
| 1:47.3 | That milestone should be achieved in the third week of November, according to an open letter |
| 1:52.9 | published on the company's website today from Pfizer chief executive officer Albert Burla. |
| 1:59.2 | Residents in London and Paris are bracing for tighter curbs on social |
| 2:03.8 | activity, starting tomorrow. Governments across Europe are attempting to get a new wave of coronavirus |
| 2:10.4 | infections in check without crippling their economies. Cases are hitting daily records around the region, and Britain and France |
| 2:20.3 | are two of the worst affected nations. Londoners will be banned for mixing with other households |
| 2:27.0 | indoors, while the residents of Paris and eight other major cities in France will be confined to |
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