tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
The thing is, in order for the sports leagues to start back up, the commissioners need to be 100% certain not a single member of any organization has COVID-19.
Then they may as well fold and sell off their assets. There will never be 100% certainty of protection. Not 5 months from now, not 5 years from now. Even after a vaccine is finally distributed many months from now, the virus is going to keep mutating as it is already doing. People will continue to fall ill for the indefinite future.
The purpose of shutting things down is not simply to prevent people from catching the virus per se. The purpose of the shutdowns is to create a longer timeline of exposure, delaying the spread long enough to allow for a coordinated response. Once that response is developed enough to be effective, things will go back to normal with the understanding that we now live with another serious illness running around in the world a la malaria.