One the one hand, professional sports needs a hard reset. On the other hand, a world without ANY sports would be the poorer. For better or worse, pro athletics has long been a cultural staple of American life and I’m not eager to see it get Cancel Cultured at the same time as the entire rest of American history.
Why COVID -19 Outbreaks in College Sports Are Scary as Hell
https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-covid-19-outbreaks-in-college-sports-should-scare-you?ref=home
By Emily Shugerman, Gender Reporter, 12 July 2020
Like I said, HARD RESET.
“COVID-19 outbreaks in college sports are scary as Hell” because for the first time in their sheltered, overpaid, unproductive lives, the cost of their next meal is telling overprotective, hysterical Karens to sod off. As predicted by Christianity, most men would rather die.
Gene Taylor thought he was playing it safe when he allowed preseason football practices at Kansas State University to start on June 15. It was two weeks later than some other teams had started practicing.a significant setback in the hyper-competitive Big 12 conference. Every athlete was quarantined for at least a week after they arrived, then tested for the virus. Those who tested negative underwent daily temperature checks and questioning before they could work out. For the first week, it looked like the team had pulled off the impossible: Not one player tested positive.
But a few players showed up late, either because they were freshmen or transfer students, and weren’t tested until the Friday before. The athletics department told them to isolate themselves until the following Monday, when they would get their results back. But college students are college students, and two of them didn’t listen. One player went to a birthday party over the weekend; another went to play video games in an apartment with eight to 10 other people.
Good for them. They aren’t putting their lives on hold for a do-nothing disease.
.That’s when it started to spread,. Taylor told The Daily Beast in an interview this week..We had two more, and then we had six, and then we had eight..
On June 20, after 14 student-athletes tested positive for the coronavirus, the school suspended football practice until at least July 14.
That’s “tested positive”. Not “symptomatic”, “sick” or least of all “dying on a respirator”.
.The worry for everybody is, how do you protect these kids?. Taylor said. .We can’t put them in a bubble, they are going to go back to their apartments and dorm rooms..
He added: .It’s going to be a bumpy road for college football..
“If it save JUST ONE LIFE from testing positive for a disease so deadly that it INFECTS MILLIONS OF PEOPLE then we must exterminate all fun in the world!”
In many ways, it already has been. In the six weeks since the NCAA allowed colleges to start preseason training, at least nine schools have suspended practices because of virus outbreaks on their teams. More than 50 schools have reported one or more cases in the athletics department, and over a dozen have reported more than 30. The Big 10, Pac-12, Atlantic Coast, and Patriots League conferences have all made significant changes to their season schedules, and 14 schools have cancelled them altogether.
Of course, sports teams aren’t the only places on campus where coronavirus can spread. (The University of Washington was recently commended for “staying ahead of the coronavirus” after no new athletes tested positive for a week, despite the fact that at least 117 people living in the school’s frat house had tested positive days earlier.)
That’s the smart move. Spread the virus now, college kids, or you’ll be locked down and quarantined indefinitely “for your safety”.
But experts say the results of preseason training contain clues about what we can expect when hundreds of thousands of students return to the 60 percent of U.S. campuses that are restarting in-person education this fall.
These athletes, some experts say, are essentially canaries in a very contagious coal mine.
“I think [these outbreaks] tell us more about what may happen when we get thousands of students back on campus than just what’s happening on athletic teams,. said Zachary O. Binney, an epidemiologist at the Oxford College of Emory University.
Specifically, NOTHING. A mild bug running through a very healthy population… less the grievance studies department… oh, okay, I understand now and their worry is legitimate. If severe lockdowns and behavior modification tricks can’t protect healthy athletes from exposure then they can’t protect the morbidly obese vegans with Human Immunodeficiency Virus, either.
Good news, feminists! You’re about to become a REAL victim! How fortunate that you have trained your lives for this moment!
.In a group that is interacting a lot with one another, this virus spreads quietly,. he added. .We’ve seen this happen on college campuses with summer sports workouts, and I think there is reason to believe that we may see something similar in the fall..
George Floyd protests = summer sports workouts?
The first team to suspend practice this summer was the University of Houston, which temporarily paused workouts on June 12 after six students on various sports teams tested positive for the virus. (Players at Arkansas State University, Auburn, Texas Tech, Boise State, Florida State, the University of Central Florida, the University of Alabama, and Clemson University others had already tested positive, but the teams elected to continue practicing without them.) Taylor’s team at Kansas State was next, followed by Austin Peay and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.all before the beginning of July.
Then, on June 20, at least a quarter of Louisiana State’s football team was quarantined after being potentially exposed to the virus. According to Sports Illustrated, 30 of the team’s 115 players either tested positive for the virus or were found to have been in contact with someone who had. Some of the players were quarantined after going out to nearby nightclubs, where more than 100 patrons had tested positive.
The contact tracers have apparently been starting with the colleges. Baby steps, I guess. It would be a sharp learning curve to start with the Bundy Ranch bunch.
Still, the NCAA continued with its plan to let schools start mandatory workouts as early as July 6. (At the time the plan was announced, NCAA Football Oversight Committee Chairman Shane Lyons said he thought the association had “landed in a very good spot..) By July 8.two days after mandatory workouts were allowed to start.three more schools had suspended practice.
The NCAA correctly realizes that the cost of preventing the spread of C-Virus will be its continued existence.
One of the schools, the University of North Carolina, reported 37 positive cases in its athletics department in less than a month. In an interview with the News and Observer weeks earlier, head football coach Mack Brown had hinted that the team was having trouble, and seemed to question whether the game could be played safely.
.The young players had a player-led practice the other day and I asked, .how did it go?. he said. .One of them said, .Not very good.. Nobody knew how to social distance and play..
Which is it? Risk a few small boils or live in a HEPA-filtered basement for the rest of your life? I’m having flashbacks to the media crying over Death Row inmates dying of COVID. What part of “natural causes” do you not understand? The “nobody gets out of life alive” part?
.We’re all trying to do what’s right [by the government], we’re trying to be safe [from the government], but we’re trying to [keep our jobs] get our questions answered,. he added.
It.s not that sports are necessarily more dangerous for the spread of the virus than other on-campus activities. In fact, many athletic departments are taking more precautions than will be in place for the general student population.including weekly testing, daily temperature checks, and regular symptom screening. It’s just that the athletes were the first to confront the inherent safety risks of coming back to campus.
Dean L. Winslow, an infectious disease expert at the Stanford University School of Medicine, noted that the LSU players appear to have contracted the virus at bars in town, not at practice.
In this grand contest between Nanny-state tyranny and young adult hormones, my money is on the latter.
He emphasized that the most important factor in virus spread is not cleaning or hand washing, but the small particles that linger in the air when people congregate indoors.
That’s yet another lie from yet another infectious disease “expert”. Cleanliness in general and hand-washing in particular is THE PRIMARY way to prevent the spread of ALL diseases.
Segue
On August 12, 2013, Dr. Dean Winslow, a respected Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases physician, Stanford Affiliated Clinical Professor and U.S. Air Force colonel was abruptly fired and escorted from Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. Although there was no official reason given for his termination, Dr. Winslow had spoken out against recent management decisions that negatively impacted patient care and work conditions. We believe he was fired for exercising his right to free speech in his efforts to advocate for our patients and the staff who care for them.
You don’t have a right to free speech against your employer.
Dr. Winslow has dedicated his life to serving the poor and disenfrancished and to training the next generation of doctors. He started the first AIDS clinic in Delaware shortly after the start of the epidemic. For nine years, he served as the Chief of the Division of AIDS medicine and director of the PACE (HIV) Clinic at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, a public teaching hospital, before being elected as Chair of the Department of Medicine.
Most of the infectious disease experts pushing the Chinavirus narrative are longtime AIDS activists. I want to give them a pass because AIDS was where all the infectious-disease money was in the Eighties and Nineties but it’s getting hard to believe they aren’t Sodomite activists working together. Especially with pictures like this one:
I don’t mind him posing with young Afghan boys in his medical office… except one of them has his hand on Winslow’s lap and very close to that sidearm, too. Not a pic I would use for a petition to reinstate me after telling off the hospital director.
Note that Santa Clara is in the California Gay Area.
Dr. Winslow is also an Air Force flight surgeon who has received numerous medals for flying combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq during 6 operational deployments since 9/11.
End segue.
“It’s nothing specific to sports or sports facilities,. he said. .It’s really just the amount of time spent indoors with large numbers of people..
But sports teams do provide one of the most clear-cut examples of what’s pushing colleges to rapidly reopen: political considerations and financial concerns. Republican governors eager to reopen their states have egged on athletics, allowing stadiums to open up as early as last month and declaring that all professional sports teams are welcome in their states. In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp has been pilloried in the press for saying residents should wear masks so they can have a football season.
Problem: COVID-19. Solution: quarantine Republicans. Hmm.
And while Trump has yet to speak out about college sports, some of his most ardent supporters are demanding the season move forward.
Pre-crime is the law enforcement tool of the future.
In an interview on Fox News, former Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz.an early and vocal Trump supporter.compared playing sports in the pandemic to the storming of Normandy: .[The soldiers] knew there was going to be casualties, they knew there was going to be risk, but it was a way of life,. he said.
At the same time, colleges are bleeding money due to the pandemic. For larger institutions, a canceled or even reduced sports season could be a significant blow to their bottom line. According to the U.S. Department of Education, colleges made $14.8 billion off of athletics in 2018, the last year for which data is available.
Texas A&M, one of the top-earning schools, made $192.6 million from its teams in 2013 alone. (Head football coach Jimbo Fisher recently praised Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to reopen stadiums, telling a local radio station he thought the school’s season would be “pretty close to normal..)
Perhaps because of this, some student-athletes have started advocating for their own protection. In mid-June, as UCLA athletes started pre-season practice, 30 football players signed onto a document saying they did not trust the school to act in their best interest. Among other things, they requested the presence of a third-party health official, protections for anonymous whistleblowers, and a guarantee that each player could decide whether or not to play without fear of losing their scholarship.
Come on, dude. You already made the decision to sacrifice your long-term health to be a chemically-fueled sports god for a decade.
.The decision to return to training amidst a global pandemic has put us, the student-athletes, on the frontlines of a battle that we as a nation have not yet been able to win,. the players wrote, in a letter obtained by the Los Angeles Times. .We feel that as some of the first members of the community to attempt a return to normalcy, we must have assurances that allow us to make informed decisions and be protected regardless of our decision..
Cowards. You don’t get assurances. We do not live in a reality of assurances.
Their concerns may not be too far off base. While many schools have promised not to revoke students. scholarships if they don’t participate this season, several have also required them to sign a waiver releasing the school from liability if they choose to play. A Southern Methodist University waiver obtained by the Dallas Morning News requires players to sign 11 different times, agreeing to “voluntarily assume all risks related to the COVID-19 virus. and waiving their right to litigation.
Ohio State University has asked players to sign a similar document, called “The Buckeye Pledge,. requiring them to adhere to safety protocols but also to acknowledge that they may be exposed to the coronavirus during play. (Gene Smith, Ohio’s athletic director, told ESPN the pledge was more of an educational document than a legal one.) Just this week, the school announced that it was pausing voluntary workouts due to a virus outbreak among student athletes.
It can be an educational document without a legally binding signature… yes?
Rather than have players assume this risk, or assume it themselves, some schools have elected to cancel their seasons altogether. Bowdoin College and the University of Massachusetts Boston were among the first to cancel their seasons in June, followed by the College of New Jersey, Pratt Institute, Williams College, and Morehouse. In the largest such announcement to date, the presidents of all eight Ivy League schools said this week that they would be cancelling their seasons, too.
The presidents of all eight Ivy League schools kept their jobs after this announcement. Victory!
Also this week, the Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences announced that they will allow only in-conference games this fall, reducing the need for long-distance travel and helping to promote more universal testing. The Atlantic Coast Conference is reportedly considering a similar move, while the Patriot League, a conference of smaller Northeast schools, has shortened its season and put restrictions on travel.
In a video for the NCAA released last week, PAC-12 commissioner Larry Scott sounded anxious about what the season would hold.
.I think what we’ve seen over the last few weeks gives us reason to be concerned that when campuses open up, there could be real spikes and pressures on the health-care system,. he said, noting the rising case counts across the country. .From my perspective, that’s really the biggest risk to college sports in the fall.”
And yet, like the soldiers at the Battle of Normandy, some teams are still charging ahead.
Author Emily dishonored those soldiers by comparing the Normandy invasion to contracting a generally asymptomatic virus.
After a 14-day pause, Kansas State athletes have arrived back on campus, in hopes of starting up practice once again.
Asked why it was so important for college athletics to continue, Taylor said the question was better suited for the student athletes.
.When I talk to our athletes, these guys have been dying to get back and working out and preparing,. he said. .These kids just want to play..
He added, .They love the game of football..
*GQ collects his bet on young adult hormones.*
Santa Clara, outside of the radiological issues, wishes they still had the shipyard nearby.
“When I talk to our athletes, these guys have been dying to get back and working out and preparing…”
Perhaps the young athletes have the intelligence to understand that all sports scholarships are dependent on the recipient playing sports… Not too complicated.
And maybe they recognize that the vast majority of people under 70 without pre-existing health problems do not get seriously sick from this virus, and thus poses an insignificant (although not zero) risk. Also not too complicated.
Maybe we should fire our politicians and put in the young athletes… the young athletes appear to be more practical / intelligent.
With the way things are now everything needs a hard reset.