2021 shutdown

In the time of thumb-twiddling. Hey guys. Whole bunch of nothing going on. The Daily has you covered about the nothing going on with a timeline of events leading to the shutdown and what the implications are for various sports including men's and women's basketball.

Also there was the now-obligatory open letter asking to play:

The source of Hubaker’s frustration, though, was a sense that the MDHHS directive was poorly aimed.

“It’s foolish to think that the variant isn’t gonna be around in two weeks and it’s probably gonna be a bigger deal,” Hubaker told The Daily. “Because we’re the only sector of the community that’s being shut down right now. And we’re, in my opinion, the safest and have the strictest guidelines of anyone else in the community.

“So if we had it, the community definitely has it. And we’re worried, a lot of us are worried … and we’ve heard this two-week period thrown around a lot before and we’re worried that this isn’t gonna be a two-week thing.”

I completely understand the frustration since Michigan athletics will still be on pause when Michigan re-opens restaurants on February 1st, but the problem there is the latter. Fears about the pause extending past 14 days are probably unfounded. After that long anyone who has the B117 variant will have had enough incubation time for a test to show it, and further transmission is going to come from the community.

Some people were holding out hope that the MDHHS memo that caused the shutdown said "up to" 14 days and that things could get going faster, but it doesn't look like that's the case. MSU has rescheduled MBB games against Iowa and Nebraska for February 2nd and 3rd and has a game against PSU February 9th; previously they were scheduled to play Michigan February 6th.

Also off: a 1-vs-2 wrestling dual meet against Iowa.

I am still baffled that nobody from the Federal government on down didn't impose a mandatory quarantine. Nicholas Stoll in the Daily:

Currently, the U.K. is on the CDC’s list of countries with high-risk travelers, and travel from the U.K. to the United States is prohibited — with a few exceptions. Included within those exceptions are F-1 student visas and U.S. citizens returning to the states, one of which the U-M athlete almost certainly fell under.

Now, I’m not saying people should not be able to return home to the U.S. or that a student should not be able to visit their family in the U.K. and then come back. That’s not what inherently caused the B.1.1.7 outbreak in the athletic department. Instead, it’s the inability to enforce quarantining on individuals.

The CDC requires a negative COVID-19 test result one-to-three days prior to traveling back to the U.S., and although that is a good procedure, it is the only enforceable step and not impervious to the transmission of the virus, as proven by the U-M athlete. The CDC recommends a 14-day quarantine, but at every level, it has no power to actually enforce it.

What are we doing dot gif.

[After THE JUMP: achievement unlocked: Not Tennessee.]