COLUMN: How COVID-19 will change college football forever
- Thread starter ChrisMWilliams
- Start date
Especially when there is more risk for the player to catch the virus from a House Party than in actual football activities.
This is the issue. Schools said it can’t be mandatory since not everyone has access to internet. They checked and found 9-10 of the 600 students did not have access so they made everything optional. Less than half are doing the work
Big choice to make. Much safer on the West side but I think there is little doubt the people on the east side would be in a happier better place.
There will be players on the current team who will have life long health consequences from playing, period, COVID or not. What I don't understand is why COVID is somehow different than just getting it from playing and why you refuse to address it.
My daughter, her husband and son live in Northern Wisconsin. My grandson is 8 years old. Because of all the snow, they would potentially be facing many snow make up days. They do not do that. Every kids gets a school issued iPad. They have school even when snow prohibits them from attending. That is what they have done for Covid. He has had assignments every day since this started. It can be done.
IMO a zero tolerance approach is unrealistic. Something like 40,000 people die annually in the US from influenza and WE HAVE a vaccine.
HIV is a virus that has been around for 50 years and a vaccine has never been found. Somewhere around 20,000 people die annually, after peaking around 50,000 annually in the mid 1990's. The treatments are drug cocktails.
Ideally there will be a vaccine. But more than likely people are going to need to ACCEPT mitigation strategies. If people aren't willing to accept the risks they will need to live in a manner to meet their safety needs. That will have to balance with their economic needs as well.
Same goes for businesses. Thriving businesses will evolve to meet customer needs/wants in a safe manner.
HIV is a virus that has been around for 50 years and a vaccine has never been found. Somewhere around 20,000 people die annually, after peaking around 50,000 annually in the mid 1990's. The treatments are drug cocktails.
Ideally there will be a vaccine. But more than likely people are going to need to ACCEPT mitigation strategies. If people aren't willing to accept the risks they will need to live in a manner to meet their safety needs. That will have to balance with their economic needs as well.
Same goes for businesses. Thriving businesses will evolve to meet customer needs/wants in a safe manner.
The bolded: contained. There is knowledge on the subjects and the general population knows where they stand. The ways they are infected are also very different than this. The ways to avoid contracting those viruses are concrete and generally very simple.
We don't even know if there's real immunity yet or for how long, and we have many people that are still stuck in the 'Well, I'm not sick so I'm going to still visit people and go out to eat' train of thought that's putting themselves and others at risk, by choice.
I think the answer is that certain people just aren't willing to logically evaluate its risks and compare those risks to other risks already faced. Gunnerclone is one of those people. He and I had this same argument a month ago. We are talking about an athlete's risk of death or disability while playing football, including the portion of that risk created by Covid-19.
I mean to put it in simple terms the way we should look at it is this:
A player has X% chance of death or disability playing football pre-Covid.
A player has X+Y% chance of death or disability playing football during Covid.
A player has Z% chance of death or disability from living in America during Covid without playing football.
In my view, if Y is less than or equal to Z, then football should be played. If not, then it shouldn't be played.
We know that playing football during the Covid-19 outbreak will add a new, additional risk to players' health. We know that if football is played, there will be strong preventative measures in place to protect players' health, but some will almost certainly still get it anyway. The NCAA and/or conferences and schools need to have a plan in place for what to do if that happens. And the leadership of these organizations needs to have a strong will and ability to accept that certain people will blame them and call for the end of all sports if someone does die from Covid-19 in a way related to the sport. They need to have a good logic based answer ready and be willing to accept that for some people that will not be enough. They also need to be ready to shut things down if it becomes clear that the preventative measures are not working and a significant number of players are getting infected.
Also, I want to be clear that none of this means I don't take Covid-19 seriously or that I think people should just ignore it. It just means that I believe it is a manageable risk that can be mitigated in a controlled environment. The risk to a limited group of athletes and staff living and working in a controlled environment is much different than the risk to the population in general.
CycloneErik
Well-Known Member
There’s obviously nothing I can say to you to help you understand so I’m not going to try. I don’t know why you just refuse to admit that. I’m not here for you, I’m here for me.
So for those of you that think football should be played (and I'm not sure I disagree), what happens when a person tests positive? Do we just ignore the recommendations that everyone in contact self isolate? What would the opposing team do if Mike Rose tests positive, but we play other LBs that have been around him all week?
I think the only way it works like everyone claims is if the entire team is tested regularly. We better pray that this country gets the testing figured out.
I think the only way it works like everyone claims is if the entire team is tested regularly. We better pray that this country gets the testing figured out.
I think the answer to this question is exactly what you are saying -regularly testing the team and staff. The reason we have people who contact those who test positive self isolate is because we don't have the testing infrastructure to test everyone in the general population who has a possible contact with an infected person.
In this case if (for example) Mike Rose tests positive for the virus, all other players and staff who had exposure to him will be immediately tested. Most likely, the team would be testing everyone regularly anyway. Those who test positive will be isolated until they are no longer infected. Those who test negative have been confirmed to not have the virus and therefore do not need to self isolate.
As a reminder, and I'm not saying this is good, this is a billion dollar business. They will have the money to pay for testing through private sources. I have a feeling that neither you nor I could be tested regularly by the time August and September rolls around, but I think it's reasonable to expect that in certain types of businesses that require in person interactions there will be testing available as long as you pay. We're talking something like 300 people per team that would need tested regularly, not an insane number.
