Toronto's Latest Ban on All Public Events Should Be Death Knell for Sports in 2020 (UPDATED)

UPDATE: The office of Toronto Mayor John Tory clarified that this ban does not include sporting events held at private facilities.

Due to the advanced state of coronavirus spread in America and Canada, as well as a stark lack of preparedness before the crisis hit, it's going to take monstrous sacrifices by all of us to get our way of life back to normal.

Unfortunately, that likely means sports will disappear for far longer than we're comfortable with.

The city of Toronto released a decree on Tuesday that bans all public events until June 30, making it extremely difficult to foresee the return of the NBA, NHL, and, yes, MLB baseball this year.

Crushing, and we're sure Toronto's declaration won't go unnoticed by other major metropolitan areas in the days to come.

We've heard various timelines floated in recent weeks for a return to normalcy -- with extreme social distancing measures in place, it seemed that the end of May could signal some form of a return to the world we've always counted on. However, those among us with less optimism have always pointed to the 12-18 months it could take to find a vaccine as a more proper guideline.

Though everyone in America is yearning for live sports more than ever, Toronto just outright decreed that they won't take place within the city limits with any kind of an audience at least until the start of July. For the NBA to fit in a full postseason, as well as a regular-season warmup, things would almost certainly have to begin before that date.

This isn't the first bit of bad news on that front delivered on Tuesday, either, as China's expected resumption of basketball action was also delayed, leaving the NBA without a potential actionable blueprint.

It also seems fair to say the best-case scenario for a return of meaningful baseball now involves a July start, as well as empty stadiums. We'd all take that right now, but it would be wiser to brace for the worst.