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If things are back close to normal, I'd expect at least one more non-conference series.
What follows are two articles that address the comparison of deaths from influenza vs deaths from Covid since February. 
Bill, first, I've always felt your posts that are hockey specific have always been very insightful and, I can tell you have very good knowledge of the game and LSSU hockey. Let me also say that I rarely post in team specific threads. However, I've kind of made it might quest to push back on inaccurate info as it relates to Covid 19. So, when you posted what you did above regarding the flu and Covid, I felt compelled to reply.
The link to the first from the "Scientific American" is here:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...u-deaths-is-like-comparing-apples-to-oranges/
It's written by Dr. Jeremy Faust, who spent four years in an emergency medicine residency and has since spent three and a half years as an attending physician. You can read the article in it's entirety but, I want to point you to a couple of keys parts. From the article;
"In early April, as social distancing measures began to succeed in flattening the curve in some parts of the country, an influential forecasting model revised the number of American deaths from coronavirus that it was projecting by summer downward to 60,400, and some people again began making comparisons to the flu, arguing that, if this will ultimately be no worse than a bad flu season, we should open the country up for business again. (On April 22, the model’s forecast rose to 67,641 deaths.) But these arguments, like the president’s comments, are based on a flawed understanding of how flu deaths are counted, which may leave us with a distorted view of how coronavirus compares with it."
"When reports about the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 began circulating earlier this year and questions were being raised about how the illness it causes, COVID-19, compared to the flu, it occurred to me that, in four years of emergency medicine residency and over three and a half years as an attending physician, I had almost never seen anyone die of the flu. I could only remember one tragic pediatric case.Based on the CDC numbers though, I should have seen many, many more. In 2018, over 46,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses. Over 36,500 died in traffic accidents. Nearly 40,000 died from gun violence. I see those deaths all the time. Was I alone in noticing this discrepancy?"
"I decided to call colleagues around the country who work in other emergency departments and in intensive care units to ask a simple question: how many patients could they remember dying from the flu? Most of the physicians I surveyed couldn’t remember a single one over their careers. Some said they recalled a few. All of them seemed to be having the same light bulb moment I had already experienced: For too long, we have blindly accepted a statistic that does not match our clinical experience. The 25,000 to 69,000 numbers that Trump cited do not represent counted flu deaths per year; they are estimates that the CDC produces by multiplying the number of flu death counts reported by various coefficients produced through complicated algorithms. These coefficients are based on assumptions of how many cases, hospitalizations, and deaths they believe went unreported. In the last six flu seasons, the CDC’s reported number of actual confirmed flu deaths—that is, counting flu deaths the way we are currently counting deaths from the coronavirus—has ranged from 3,448 to 15,620, which far lower than the numbers commonly repeated by public officials and even public health experts."
"To do this, we have to compare counted deaths to counted deaths, not counted deaths to wildly inflated statistical estimates. If we compare, for instance, the number of people who died in the United States from COVID-19 in the second full week of April to the number of people who died from influenza during the worst week of the past seven flu seasons (as reported to the CDC), we find that the novel coronavirus killed between 9.5 and 44 times more people than seasonal flu. In other words, the coronavirus is not anything like the flu: It is much, much worse."
Next, here is a link to the website "Statista";
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1113051/number-reported-deaths-from-covid-pneumonia-and-flu-us/
From there comes the following; from Feb. 1st thru May 30th, there have been 84,735 deaths from just Covid, 37,020 deaths from Covid and pneumonia combined (or, a total of 121,755 with some type of Covid involvement) AND, just 6,320 deaths from influenza during this time frame. I'm sorry Bill, I'm not sure where you're getting your info regarding these comparisons but, it's quite evident it isn't very accurate. I get that you disagree with your governor's stance on the lock downs. Unfortunately, since our federal government dropped the ball so badly in its initial reaction to the virus -- remember that us and S. Korea had our first confirmed cases on the same day and S. Korea is currently at 273 deaths vs our 106,181 according to the John's Hopkins site -- there isn't a single scientific/medical expert in the area of this type of virus that didn't agree with the severity and length of the stay-at-home orders in order to flatten the curve and limit spread in order to allow our health care system to build up on PPE, ICU beds, and ventilators. In fact, there isn't a scientist/medical expert that felt we should open things up as quick as we have.
Don't get me wrong, I understand as much as anyone what it has and is doing to our economy -- I've been laid off from my job -- so, I'm not against trying to get things moving a little, even if that means increasing the risk of spread a bit. Of course, the devil of that is in the details and the nuance of how you "open". Unfortunately, IF the NCAA/leagues/teams are really going to follow the CDC/state health dpartment guidelines about quarantining people who test positive for 14 days AND, anyone who was deemed to have had close contact with that person, the moment any player tests positive, the entire team, to include the coaching staff, trainers, equipment people, and possibly even the media who travel and are around the team on a regular basis, SHOULD all be in quarantine for 14 days. And, if the player tests positive within 5 days of having played a game, if you're truly following those guidelines, anyone who played in that game for that opposing team should have to quarantine for 14 days as well. Talk about creating havoc with a schedule...
Not to mention the overall viral load of droplets that would be hanging in the air from the middle of the 2nd period thru til the end of any game if there happen to be even just 3-5 asymptomatic players playing between both teams. Here's an article from Science Magazine published May 27th regarding the latest info on how the virus is being transmitted, including the fact they now believe it is being aerosolized and that, in an indoor area it might actually hang in the air for hours vs the previously believed 6-8 minutes. The point is, unless/until we have a mass produced/widely available vaccine or a therapeutic that literally keeps 99.999% of anyone who gets it out of the ICU or put on a vent, I find it very difficult to believe we'll be playing games. Stay safe and I look forward to reading your future posts on LSSU hockey!
