Baseball is different for sure. But football isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be. Playing one way for a whole game of extreme tempo football a guy spends maybe 10 minutes tops playing plays. Pre snap, all but the linemen are spread out. For a lineman all 10 minutes are within 6 ft of somebody but mostly not face to face sharing a breathing zone. The other guys have split second contact but not usually face to face. If you breath on somebody’s shin it won’t hurt them. Everybody’s using mouthpieces so they mostly breath through their noses. The 6 ft thing is based on coughing. Nobody should be coughing and everybody should have brand new negative test results.The Jackal wrote: ↑Sun Aug 02, 2020 1:33 pmLet's pull this apart for a moment.apaladin wrote: ↑Sun Aug 02, 2020 12:29 pmExcellent post. Of course the fixation on “cases” will keep the hysteria going until basketball season, before the media starts letting up. It’s just like MLB overreacting by cancelling games when someone tests positive, The Marlins proved the likelihood of spreading it to another team is zero. If they are going to play they need to play thru “cases”. If not they may as well close it down.Furmanoid wrote: ↑Sun Aug 02, 2020 12:05 pmIn the spring people were dying like crazy in NYC and Gov. Cuomo said he needed 40,000 ventilators that didn’t exist. We thought you could catch Covid from contaminated surfaces. We thought it would kill children and young people like the Spanish flu. We thought it was much, much more deadly than it is turning out to be everywhere but the northeast. We had even fewer treatments than now (although one promising treatment is banned in many states).
We are in a different place now. Yes we have high new case numbers partly because we test like crazy. We now know that not only do most people have mild cases, but they don’t even notice symptoms. We choose to worry about asymptomatic spread, but the WHO experts let it slip that there is no evidence this is happening to any large degree. We are are exporting unneeded ventilators. Death rates are dropping. And there IS sign of letup. Even the press is now reporting that the virus has peaked in the south (probably a week or two ago). SC’s ICU and ventilator numbers have dropped about 10% since about Wednesday. There is still a really bad county in FL and there are a couple in TX but things appear to be getting better.
If we have college football, who will be the safest people on campus? Players will be because they will spend most of their time surrounded by people who are tested for Covid every week, and much of that time will be outside. The only way they can get it through football is via mechanisms the experts says are unlikely to spread it. So playing isn’t crazy at all. If you shut it down, you increase their risk to that of the average student.
- Baseball is a different game. It is comparatively low contact to football. Most players are "socially distanced" the entire game. There could be 50 yards between you and the next closest player. Football, as you know, is the complete opposite. There's hardly six feet of separation between you and any player, and if there is, it is only momentary.
- Baseball rosters have somewhere between 26-30 players. Furman's roster alone is probably over 100 players. So, that potential exposure rate is potentially 4 times higher.
- Most of the spread from the major league teams are from their own teammates not strictly following guidelines. Ok, sure, enforce guidelines. We are still back to relying on 18-22 year olds (an age group currently responsible for much of the spread nationally) and telling them to quarantine while in college. Good luck on that. It isn't impossible, it is improbable.
- Professional athletes are not "on campus" like college athletes are. They aren't mixed in with thousands of other students. They aren't engaging with older faculty and staff. Furman has one dining hall. They do not have segregated athletic dorms like larger universities. How exactly do you propose to avoid spread between the athletes and the student body generally?
- It isn't just about "cases." While the death rate is relevant, the reality is we know very little about this virus and almost nothing about the long term effects. There is a professional baseball player right now (Eduardo Rodriguez) who has developed a heart condition from COVID.
- Professional athletes have "opt out" provisions where they can just choose to sit out the season. There is no such protection for college athletes.
- Up until a few days ago, it was widely thought that the virus was unlikely to be transmitted by children. Just this week, there is a report of a YMCA camp in North Georgia having nearly 300 positive cases, many of whom were kids. So, what everyone assumed was accurate just days ago, has turned out to not be so accurate. Ihttps://www.ajc.com/news/coronavirus/260-corona ... 3JOPUAVSY/
- If anyone tells you they can predict the future related to this virus, they are either full of crap or trying to sell you something.
- And by the way, the summer was when this virus was supposed to be at it's least damaging under the theory that viral infections are more susceptible to heat. Winter is coming. Who is to say that what we saw in New York in March isn't going to show back up in October and November?
But sure, the players are more likely to get it from other students. So do we kick them out of school to protect them? Canceling football would only increase their risk because their buddies wouldn’t get tested every week. They’d have the same risk as the average business major.
Would this Rodriguez guy have evaded the virus if he weren’t a baseball player?
Do we really think schools are going to yank scholarships if players opt out? They wouldn’t and they don’t have to. College and HS players want to play, and they only have a few years to do it. Some will opt out. But plenty will play. Nobody wants to force anybody to play.
No we don’t know everything about the virus. It could fade out by mid September and jump back in November or March or next August. How did they know when the Spanish flu was gone for good? They didn’t. They just moved on.
But right now its doing pretty normal stuff. It pops up somewhere, accelerated, peaks, then ebbs. Even the media is saying the South is ebbing. No, it didn’t go away for summer. Seasonality is largely based on when you spend time indoors-not temperature. Northerners are inside for the winter. We are inside for the summer. We got hit in the summer.
Try not to be so negative, man. Things are looking up.
