This Week's Obsession: Is Football Feasible This Year?
In which we attempt to answer the looming question.
Is there going to be football this year? And how?
Seth: Clearly the answer to this is "it depends" but we're at the point now where we can set some contours of the possibility right?
Ace: To some extent, sure. The NCAA and individual conferences are laying the groundwork for athletes to return for workouts, so there’s clearly an intent to move forward. We even had Gene Smith suggesting Ohio State could play games in front of limited crowds. I find Smith’s statements to be, uh, perhaps too optimistic.
Brian: They're going to try because they've backed themselves into a corner where all money must be spent immediately so it looks like these athletic departments aren't wildly profitable and no one has a reserve. Except Georgia.
Ace: Plus they lost the NCAA basketball tournament, which is a massive pile o’ money.
Seth: I imagine everybody's having sober budget meetings right now.
Ace: Smaller schools are already cutting sports. Unfortunately, there’s not really a good way to sell off the unnecessary pieces of the lavish facilities everyone’s built to launder their profits. Not a big market for indoor waterfalls at the moment.
Brian: Put your Lockers From Space on craigslist maybe?
Ace: [greg dooley has logged on]
media day or live auction? [Fuller]
Seth: A lot of that pay-immediately money goes to the huge staffs athletic departments carry. They are also the most dischargeable. Which means this conversation is about trying to save peoples' jobs.
Ace: The NCAA literally dispersed the emergency backup fund in the year or two leading up to when they actually needed it. Everyone spent the money.
Brian: It feels like college sports is steaming right at an iceberg, everyone knows it's there, and they're having tea while looking in a different direction. And there are three guys who are planning to shoot up the iceberg, do a flip, and be legends.
Seth: So they're going to play football, because the alternative is the iceberg.
Brian: Football is the iceberg!
Ace: Yeah, football at any point in 2020 feels like a very bad idea.
Seth: I thought it was making zero money in 2020.
Ace: Both are bad but one doesn’t kill people.
[After THE JUMP: icebergs everywhere.]
Brian: This is a Korean study about a call center outbreak:
There was one infected person who sat in the top area.
Ace: There’s another study that traces a massive number of COVID-19 cases in South Korea to one fitness class. Working out together is the worst possible thing to do if you’re trying to prevent the spread of this.
Seth: Singing together is worse. So "The Victors" is out.
Brian: And the US lockdown has been halfass and is moving into a quarter-ass period.
Been playing around with FT's data for an article I'm working on.
— Jeremy TEST/TRACE/ISOLATE Konyndyk (@JeremyKonyndyk) May 22, 2020
This stat blew my mind.
Italy and Spain had among worst outbreaks in Europe. But by day 80, Italy was down 80% from peak, Spain was down 93%.
US (top line in chart) at same point is down only 28% from peak. pic.twitter.com/TC70RCGAD7
Ace: The idea of social distancing at a football game is laughable, too. Sure, you can sit apart in the stands if you limit the crowds, but how are you managing the lines to get in? What about the concessions and the bathrooms? It’s a logistical nightmare.
Seth: Ingress and egress. Outside the stadium.
Brian: That's a separate issue from whether football can be played at all, IMO.
Ace: Yeah, then there’s the issue of even getting the teams together. Players are currently spread across the country. Testing capability is limited at best. Schools aren’t necessarily bringing their students back. Even getting to the point of being able to practice together seems like an enormous hurdle. Then you get to the notion of players working out in close quarters during a pandemic.
Seth: So the one thing the colleges have going for them is if they're open they're going to be controlling the student population.
Brian: I have serious doubts about how much schools can police house parties.
Ace: Same.
Brian: These are young, fit people and some of them have chosen to go to Michigan State.
decisions were made [Patrick Barron]
Seth: They're going to have widespread testing. They're going to have contact tracing. The players are getting three tests a week and the student body is getting one a week, and their temperatures taken when they enter every buildings. They're also going to lock down the campuses. It won't make it 100% safe, but might make it workably safe?
Ace: Wait… they’re going to have all that?
Seth: I'm supposing.
Ace: That’s a big supposing. Particularly on a timeline that’d keep the season on track.
Seth: The season's not going to be on track; I doubt they play a game before October 1st. But I think it's reasonable that a major university can accomplish with its population what South Korea or Germany can with theirs.
Brian: Okay but some of these major universities are Rutgers.
Ace: We also need to establish that, as a country, we are not in the same place as those countries.
Seth: As a country no. As a university campus, if they're going to be open, they HAVE to be.
Ace: Also, instead of acknowledging that, we’re on the brink of a lot of states opening up for business again. You can’t untie the campus from the country. The students are scattered around said country. How do you possibly ensure safety while bringing students back to the dorms in this environment? They need to answer that before even thinking about football.
Seth: The students are going to come back whether they want them to or not. The landlords aren't releasing them from their leases. I'm glad I'm not in charge of the thing, and I'm sure you're right they need to figure that out. I think they a) will, and b) have no choice but to, because the students will come anyway.
BiSB: Even if it is all possible, we also don't have unlimited resources, so spending that much extraordinary effort on football is tough to justify.
Ace: It’s going to take an incredible amount of resources to get the students back on campus in a way that’s safe. Is it worth it to keep things on schedule when you can do classes online? Football shouldn’t factor into that question.
BiSB: This also assumes that schools are going to trust the least competent school on their schedule.
/glances at Maryland
Ace: That’s three Big Ten East schools we’ve now mentioned as being untrustworthy. Ohio State hasn't yet been one of them.
BiSB: To be fair, I can see Iowa screwing this up.
Seth: This is a good year to say fuck Maryland and fuck Rutgers. Adding overnight travel to any of this is purely out of the question.
Brian: Right, it takes just one screwup and then half your conference is shut down. Even if we elide the moral and ethical implications of having football, on a practical level it seems inevitable that teams are going to get shut down for two or three weeks or a month.
Ace: It’s wild that this feels necessary to say: just one screwup, in this case, can lead to multiple deaths. It's not worth it! It's just not. I say that as someone who loves football and relies on sports happening to make a living.
BiSB: People want football. And they want normalcy. And they often equate the two. But even if there is football, it won't be "normal."
these stands might remain empty for a while [Barron]
Ace: I watched the crowdless UFC fights last week. It was sports. It was also surreal.
Brian: There is an argument that if the prospect of football gets someone to do a good test/trace/isolate regime that might be worth it, since you could then spread that model. You shouldn't have to do that since you have good models but Not Invented Here syndrome is real.
Ace: It sounds great in theory but isolating college students is like herding cats.
BiSB: Aside from "can football be played," there's also the question of "what does the season look like?" Are we talking about some teams playing 4 games and some playing 9 and Rutgers and Maryland playing each other 7 times?
Ace: If you push the season back even a week or two, you’re going to get some hellish weather games, too.
BiSB: (I am not opposed to hellish weather games)
Ace: Fair. It adds to the farce, though.
Seth: I think you have to start with no football in September. At least give the students a month on campus with their security protocols before throwing them at each other. Throw out all the Michigan at Washington games now.
Ace: But are they practicing during that time? It’d pose a lot of the same danger as actual games but you can’t start a season without some sort of training camp.
Brian: I think that is what it looks like. Certain teams don't play or barely play. Many games are cancelled. Conference titles are impossible to determine.
Ace: Rutgers wins the Big Ten by flagrantly avoiding social distancing measures and refusing to forfeit games.
Seth: This would hardly be the first weird-ass season in cfb history. We talk about 1918 but there were the WWII years as well under severe travel restrictions. There were intramural (e.g. freshmen vs sophomores) games for a month before any games were played. Honestly the least interesting thing to me about football in 2020 would be who wins it.
Ace: There were a lot of unnecessary deaths in 1918 because we’ve had a literal century since then to better understand concepts like germ theory. Meanwhile, world wars aren’t contagious.
Brian: "Is this a good idea?"
No.
"Is this probably happening anyway?"
Yes.
Ace: Yeah. Doing some half-assed season seems like the worst possible compromise.
Seth: I'm just saying you don't need a precise number of games versus these precise opponents to have a year of football feel like one.
BiSB: If you are suggesting the NCAA would avoid a worst possible compromise, I have news.
Ace: I'd do no such thing.
Brian: Given our luck the only game that gets played is OSU-Michigan and it's 70-15.
BiSB: We looked good in the first quarter, though.
Ace: Cancel the whole goddamn thing right now.
Seth: FWIW Notre Dame is desperately looking for opponents to meet their NBC contract. That tells you where the schools' minds are at. They're going to do this.
Ace: They’re going to try. I’m not sure they’re going to succeed.
Brian: I can't imagine the depths of weird a Michigan-ND game during a pandemic would reach.
BiSB: Oh god, the Michigan/Indiana Pandemic Game.
Ace: We haven’t yet mentioned that this comes at a time when the NCAA’s position on amateurism is weaker than ever. Justifying any games is going take a high-wire act and we may see players refuse. I think most guys want to play but it’d only take one incident to spark something.
Seth: I have a small idea of the temperature of the players; some might refuse, and damn any school that doesn't grant that, but you're right the guys want to play.
BiSB: There's also about 73 types of political implications to all of this, which is going to be oh so much fun to wade through.
Ace: Dancing Through a Minefield: Sportswriting in 2020
Brian: The Athletic has a survey of 45 players out today:
Almost 80 percent of players surveyed were comfortable returning to campus even if their fellow students were not allowed to do the same. Most universities have already elected to utilize online learning for summer sessions but are wrestling with how to manage an on-campus experience they intend to offer in the fall.
“If only athletes are on campus, it would not feel like our health is a priority,” said a Power 5 offensive lineman. “With adequate testing available, I am not worried about the return to campus. My biggest concern is what will happen if and when a player tests positive.”
Said a Power 5 quarterback: “I wouldn’t be concerned unless the numbers of cases suddenly went back up.”
On a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being extremely uncomfortable and 5 being extremely comfortable, zero players said that they would be extremely uncomfortable. Only three rated their comfort level with a return as a 2.
I don't know how that shifts if someone's QB gets hospitalized. COVID is weird as hell.
BiSB: Yep, there's gonna be a lot of "I ate the whole pizza" excuses.
Seth: I don't know that Alabama would sit their QB if he tested positive. That's the thing that scares me about this.
BiSB: You're telling me teams are going to sit their best player, who may be asymptomatic, from a big game? Neeeeeeeeever happen.
Seth: The fact is somebody's offensive lineman will test positive, the rest of the OL room will be put into quarantine for 14 days, and as the Brady Hoke study demonstrated you can't play football without an offensive line.
Ace: We also haven’t mentioned that, while the players are generally in lower-risk groups—which is a term I don’t love throwing around given the severity of the illness and the reports of long-term complications in people who’ve recovered—the coaches and other staffers are often very much not in the same category. Coaches have money and power and don’t necessarily have to do this.
Brian: Yeah, this post-distancing outbreak amongst Bryant-Denny construction workers bodes unwell.
Seth: This would maybe be the dumbest or greatest idea ever: what if we play the season without coaches?
Ace: Michigan tried that in 2014.
BiSB:
Seth: One issue with removing coaches: Penn State probably wins the Big Ten.
Ace: I think we’ve concluded that moving ahead with a season in most any form is a terrible idea that’s going to happen anyway?
Seth: I'm interested to hear everyone's ideas for what the hell it looks like.
BiSB: Our predictions?
Ace: They don’t play it. It’s too hard to justify. If they try, something happens in the leadup—namely, positive tests—that nixes the whole thing.
Brian: Games are now dance-offs. Dennis Norfleet re-gains eligibility on a technicality and we win the national title.
Seth:
- Testing and tracing to the moon
- Only essential staff.
- Students only in the stadium, with some insane plan to get everyone in and out.
- Only nearby games are played, some schedule holes replaced with Toledo/Notre Dame
- Advertising in the Big House because it will save some jobs and at this point who really gives a shit so long as they burn the AllState nets at the end of the season.
- Many games canceled.
BiSB: The season starts more or less on time, but generally without fans and with some significant games canceled. Things go somewhat normally for a while, but a few positive tests here and there blow holes in rosters, and then knock out whole games. Eventually the thing takes on too much water, and the season gets scrapped by mid-October. Scott Frost claims a National Championship.
Ace: Unless we get the dance-off, even our best-case scenarios don’t sound very good.
BiSB: Replace football with zorb football. QED.
Ace: Fast-track a license for NCAA 21 and play the season virtually, this is not a joke. Each team gets to nominate their best PS4 player.
Seth: People are going to die this year. I don't say that callously, or advocating for anything, but as a simple fact. They're going to screw things up, and people are going to die so we could play a football season. This is the most surreal thing of all.
BiSB: That's a true statement most years. Football is, uh, rather unsafe. The threat is just more visible this year.
Ace: It’s a much greater threat this year. Cancel the season so people don’t die in order to provide a brief distraction while lining the pockets of people who are already rich, please.
BiSB: Of course that is the ethically and logically correct answer. On the other hand, SPORTSBALL. So it's impossible to say which is right.
Ace: Sorry, dancing in the minefield again.
Brian: <fin>
There's almost no way the student body of power 5 universities are going to get tested once a week. Even assuming that we scale up testing exponentially that's hundreds of thousands of tests weekly that go towards the lowest risk/healthiest section of the population. In a country of 320 million people those tests should probably be allocated towards essential workers and at risk populations.
The only way I see it working is to sequester everyone - including support staff/coaches/referees - in the dorms for the entirety of the season. Everyone's basically signing up for one of those "can humans stay sane during a mars mission" experiments.
"those tests should probably be allocated towards essential workers and at risk populations."
Hahaha, bud this is America. We don't allocate resources to the people that need it most, we allocate resources to those who pay for them.
And the P5 schools will pay for testing regimes that allow students to be back on campus. There's a lot of money that wants school back in session (and football back on TV).
Interesting article on how these regimes are already being tested at UC San Diego (where 5,000 (!!!) students still live because they couldn't/didn't want to go home in the spring): https://www.npr.org/2020/05/22/858601308/for-in-person-college-coronavirus-testing-will-be-key-but-is-that-feasible
Some interesting items:
- Many P5 universities and big systems (like UCSD) have labs, hospitals and public health schools that can perform the tests and design protocols all on site (provided they can get the materials which they're already stocking up on). Seth is correct that these universities have resources almost like small independent countries.
- Students overwhelmingly want to go back and are more than willing to get tested and allow for contact tracing to make that happen.
Yay capitalism!! For all the nagative things we hear in this country about ideologies like socialism, communism, and social democracy, we’re witnessing first hand the negative aspects of capitalism based on something you just pointed out.
Tests aren’t going to people who need them, they’re going to people who pay for them. Because even in a global health crisis, making a profit is still a major priority. To the point where people’s lives are at risk to ensure maximum profit.
Capitalism seems to always be judged on its failures, and socialism seems to be judged on its successes. (Rare as those may be.) But it's ridiculous to say testing is going to people who pay for it. Most testing is free right now. It's also widely available and getting wider, unlike in a place like Venezuela, where if the COVID hits, nobody's gonna test anyone.
All these complaints about the scarcity of testing ignore one thing: Last week, we ran almost 2.4 million tests in this country. A month prior, it was 1 million. This week we're on pace for about 2.7 million. If the number of infections were going up at that pace.....hoo boy. But when testing is going up like that, we still fret about scarcity? What will testing be like in September? Probably pretty goddamn widespread.
All because, by the way, our capitalistic society has given us the wealth to ramp up production like that.
No, sorry dude. It's ridiculous to say testing is free. Do the tests float out of the air?
Someone is paying for the tests. All of the tests are going to people or organizations or govts that pay for them. How they distribute/administer the tests is completely up to them after they've paid for them and that power is theirs because they paid for them. Hence, the tests are going to those who pay for them.
We're a very rich country so we're paying to test people (whereas to your point, Venezuela has fewer resources and will test fewer people).
So my point is that if universities want to pay for them, they'll get them, just like the NBA paid to test a bunch of people months ago. There's nothing wrong that. It's a great thing. I appreciate that we have a capitalist society. It means that no one can sit and tell the universities that want to pay for them that they shouldn't get the tests.
It's also important that people who need them get the tests which is why we should demand the govt use our tax dollars to test people who can't afford it (which to your point is increasingly happening), or use charity, but it still does all come back to being able to pay for them.
I'm all for reopening slowly and leting small group outdoor activities hapen (less than 25 or so participating and less than 50 spectators with masks and SD). Has to be outdoors tho.
But having even 10k at a football game, even outside is probably too great a risk to the curve flattening. I don't see how fans happen at all, nor do I see amusment parks opening but that's also a huge money issue so IDK.
I agree with you 100%.....I also agree that people are neither patient enough or trusting enough for this to happen. Today the government is opening churches....which is scary when you look at those studies from Korea.
Yesterday I heard about a local youth baseball team (competitor of my son's team) who is secretly having practice across the border into Wisconsin at a remote field and planning to play in a tournament on June 1st. MLB has billions of dollars and total autonomy and isn't even practicing yet, but some youth program with volunteer coaches is going to make their kids safe at this tournament.
Football is going to happen....they'll try to do their best....I hope it doesn't end in total disaster.
Again, outdoors with 10-15 people at a baseball/softball field for practice is perfectly fine, IMO.
Odds of transmission are very low if you're outside.Temp, sunlight, humidity attenuate virus transmission. Viral load is obviously low. Time spent in direct contact (within 6 ft) of others is small.
People are more safe outside than inside.
Churches however, are a non-starter at this point. If they hold servces for less than 25-50 outside (or less than 10 inside? IDK) for small weddings, funerals - fine. But there's no way a couple hundred people should be packed inside an enclosed space, probably until next spring.
Is this the Cal phase 2 let's open movie theatres but not churches argument?
There's no way you should be able to buy addictive cigarettes that will absolutely kill you but you can, also a personal choice.
10,000 people are killed every year from drunk drivers in the US (and spousal and child abuse numbers are much higher). Think of all the lives we would save and drastically improve by outlawing an entirely unnessisary drug. Those victims had no choice.
Poverty and social injustice create so many long term and cascading problems; tons of abuse, neglect, and an estimated 11,000us homicides a year. We don't even attempt to tackle this. In fact, while the middle and upper middle class people huddle in their homes, and order home delivery groceries and essentials from Amazon, it's the low class "essential workers" making the products, stocking shelves and dying after making deliveries. As bad as Covid is it's absolutely a poverty issue nobody wants to talk about.
But no, let's keep those things, ignore the issues, but shut down churches. They really are the problem.
PS not a church person but I fought for this country and value freedom and know overreach when I see it. Pps I am very grateful for all essential workers. Ppps I heard urban meyer goes to church.
Here's the thing with the churches argument: the people at highest risk (i.e. the old folks) are the ones who are *not* going to be told they can't go. At least, that's true of the senior citizens in my local parish. This is still a free country (so I've heard, anyway) which means that personal responsibility plays a role in the outcome of this pandemic. To that end, it seems pretty clear that many people judge their spiritual health to be more important than their physical health. And it's pretty illogical to allow a place like a movie theatre or retail shop to open but not a church. If that's the case, then as long as churches do what they can, including requiring masks and limiting singing, among others, and allow people to make their own choices.
What is it with youth basebal? My sons 8 yr old travel team in San Diego asked us if we would be able to play a tournament in Phoenix in 3 weeks. My question: why ?
why not?
A TRAVEL team for 8 yr olds?! There's your problem right there.
^^^ This is gold
Cause every frustrated non-athlete is absofuckinglutely SURES his offspring has the latent athletic genes they missed out on. And if only they get the right coaching they are destined for greatness.
I wasted 5 years of my life coaching youth football/basketball. Parents are fucking lunatics with no ability to see their precious and wonderful children for what they are.
I was so fortunate with my one coaching experience. Neither of my kids are particularly interested in athletics, so both played rec soccer. I coached my son's team from fifth to eighth grade. Had the same group of kids for all four years. Had a handful of travel-quality kids so we were always competitive. Made it clear right away that I was going to coach like it was rec league so no berating of kids and everyone played equally.
Didn't hear a peep from any of the parents. Was very lucky everyone liked each other and bought in to my approach.
But holy shit some of the other coaches were batshit crazy. Coached like it was P5 conference football.
I’ve coached a handful of Ann Arbor Rec/Ed teams the past few years and have had zero issues with parents, and have only encountered a couple nuts on opposing teams. I’m a very mediocre coach too, so I suppose I’ve been lucky. One of my assistants used to coach 8 year old rec Ed basketball in Redford, and he said the parents were bonkers. Like complaining about playing time (he played everyone equally), going nuts after losses, berating refs and such.
Had a great experience coaching/organizing youth sports. Was so excited for big things in high school. But high school sports was a miserable experience thanks to so many bad coaches who didn't give a crap. Lessons: enjoy the journey and make sure you live in a really good school district.
That’s what it takes to produce the high caliber athletes we see today. Starting at a younger age and traveling around to play the best possible competition. The best college basketball players are typically guys who play on the AAU circuit. The best college football players (at least skill position wise) play on 7-on-7 teams and travel to the national camps. Sports like baseball and hockey aren’t far behind in that regard.
I admittedly don’t follow some sports at all, but I would assume sports like soccer and tennis are very similar too.
Tennis was like that long before other sports.
I think as there are outbreaks within teams in June and July (when the players are back and working together), the entire thing gets scrapped. Then, the fun begins when the NFL tries it, too.
You avoid this scenario by testing them all daily. If a player tests positive, he quarantines.
Maybe. But the tests with quick turnarounds aren't as reliable.
What? The turnaround comes down to lab access, it has nothing to do with the test itself.
Testing isn’t instant. A player could be infected and have practiced for a week before results show he’s positive. A week of practice and interaction with teammates would spread the virus amongst teammates. Him quarantining at that point is almost pointless.
You can test and have results that day. U-M has labs for that.
Everyone getting it in June July probably be perfect as all but guarantees someone immunity this season.
It's understandable if you haven't been keeping up with all the latest news, but it is now all but certain that people can get it again within several weeks of being pronounced healthy and Covid-free. Whatever immunity is bestowed appears to last a month, maybe two.
15 minute results are now a thing. You could test each team and coaches before the game, twice. No spectators.
Why would we be surprised that mostly asymptomatic people can have this in their system twice? Likely from close connections. This will still likely be possible once there's a vaccine, though that will skyrocket heard immunity. Its whether the transmission risk can be managed. We knew this in Feb when they were we're testing quarintined cruise ship passengers weekly.
No, the most recent study from South Korea concluded that they weren't reinfected. The PCR was picking up particles of inactive virus, which is possible.
As time moves on and more is understood about the virus, people will become more comfortable with the risk of contracting it. We've already seen a large shift the last few weeks -- justified or not. The initial lockdown was to flatten the curve. We've largely done that. What's never really been addressed is what we do after that, and what you're seeing now is part of it. There will be outbreaks, but for the most part, life will go on unabated because you can't keep things locked down forever even if people die. Because frankly, people die all the time, and at some point (probably now) a number of deaths is going to be deemed acceptable as a general course of business. Think back to Fight Club.
The NBA and maybe MLB (if the MLBPA and ownership can ever come to an agreement) will both be playing games before football. The NFL doesn't give a fuck, and the SEC really doesn't either. Football will start on time.
the players want to play, take that as a given.
yeah, that’s the least interesting part of it...
*i* want football, too. what i want isn’t really germane.
there was no reference to you (or me) in my comment. the players want to play. them. those guys. i'd guess a 97% participation level if in fact given the choice. their desires seem very germane. to put it another way, their desires definitely have to be taken into account in the decision making process.
oh, hey - it wasn’t meant to be argumentative...sorry if it came off that way.
maybe “germane” was the wrong word. my point is that what any of us want probably doesn’t matter in that it will be safe to play, or it won’t.
I cover the sport. Travel every single week of the season. I'm ready to do what I need to do to *try* and stay safe during the season, solely because I love what I do and want to keep doing it. Gotta imagine the vast majority of the CFB community (coaches, players, media, broadcasters, etc) feels the same.
I think it is clear that football -- or any other team sport -- probably shouldn't be happening this year. I also think that plans to have college resume in-person in the fall probably aren't workable.
Even if class sizes were kept to 10 or 25, the problem is the social mixing that occurs from a varied class schedule, clubs, dining, and close-proximity living in the dining hall.
Say you have ONE sick person come to campus in the fall who does later develop symptoms. That student goes to a few days of classes before developing a fever and being isolated. In that few days, the student has been in close proximity to maybe 50 kids in classes and maybe another 50 or more through activities, parties, dining, etc. Now there are 100 kids who have been exposed and maybe if you're lucky only 30 of them got enough of a viral load to get sick. By the time all of those kids have been identified and isolated, another 1000 or 2000 kids have been exposed.
The issue is that in re-opening, the most important thing is to have limited exposure to other people and to keep those groups relatively static. The more social mixing that is occurring the faster an outbreak can spread.
Nationwide, according to the CDC between Feb 1 and May 16, there had been somewhere between 76 and 267 deaths from COVID-19 among 15-24 year-olds in the whole country. (76 is the number of reported COVID deaths; 276 is the number of reported COVID+flu+pneumonia deaths, allowing that some in the latter two could have been mis-attributed as non-COVID. Figures culled from here).
Even at the midpoint -- 150 -- I'm guessing the number of deaths for that age group by suicide, car accident, fire, or allergic reaction, or any number of ostensibly preventable causes is much higher.
So my guess is that the problem is not so much young people putting each other at risk, it's young people passing it around and eventually carrying it back to the old folks in their lives. Which means that if fans -- especially non-students -- were kept out of stadiums, the epidemiological impact would be probably be felt more after the semester was over.
Maybe the best thing to do would be to play the season more or less under isolation, and then quarantine players (and all students, really) before they returned home to their families.
(This could apply to all NCAA fall sports, actually).
Odds are that if players do contract the virus during the season they would've cleared it before they return home at the end of the semester anyways.
Interesting data - thanks for sharing. I know that any data associated with Covid is sketchy right now (which fuels the people who don't want to wait on science to catch up). I think the description you have provided is how pro leagues are going to make it work. Isolate, test constantly, keep the fans away, etc. Can you do that with college kids? I'm not sure.
There are two big concerns. One concern, which you raised, is that students will act as transmission vectors and re-seed COVID-19 in their home communities across the country. The second concern, is that we really don't know the long-term impacts of COVID-19 on the body. Even though the CFR is much lower among young adults, that doesn't tell us what kinds of long-term harm COVID-19 might be doing to the lungs, heart, liver, kidneys, or brain.
I want to watch Michigan football (and basketball, and baseball, and softball, and whatever BTN will give me). But I don't think that the risk is worth it.
Maybe the best thing to do would be to play the season more or less under isolation, and then quarantine players (and all students, really) before they returned home to their families.
Better yet, test them for the virus.
The problem with those numbers is only a small fraction of people have actually gotten the virus. Serology tests in all the hardest hit countries show only around 5 percent of people have antibodies.
Which means we must come up with plans how to deal with fact lots more going to get this. Cancelling everything until this has gone away simply isn't realistic. This just started and likely going be here some capacity for a while
Per CDC data, those age 24 years old and under have a ONE IN ONE MILLION odds of dying from this. This has to be taken into account. I know this part upsets people but again according to the data those in that age group have higher odds of dying from flu. Not my opinion I'm just stating facts from CDC numbers.
The Pac 12 seems to be the conference having biggest issue with coming back but in ALL the states those conference teams reside in, not a single person age 18-22 has died from covid-19.
And no I don't watch Fox news or thinks this is a hoax etc. Before anyone comes in with a "yeah but......." the bottom line is there always going be outliers with everything so I'm not here argue about each example. We are not stopping this thing completely maybe ever. We need come up with a plan going forward that takes into account the information we have gathered so far.
People that age don’t usually die, but they do end up in the hospital and in the ICU. It’s just that they are healthy and strong so they don’t die. It doesn’t mean they don’t use care and resources.
So they do have to be accounted for. You could let it rip through the student population and a relatively small number would actually die, but the hospital system would still be overwhelmed and healthcare workers would still die. Not to mention older people who wouldn’t be able to get the care they need because the hospital is already full of young people.
Why would you think clubs and dining and non-essential things would go on as normal?
The important thing is the eductation part of it. None of that other stuff needs to happen to allow for the education thing to work.
There will be very little university sanctioned social mixing. Dining hours will be staggered such that there won't need to be very many people in the halls at any given time. Or they'll simply have students pick up food at certain times to bring back to their dorms to eat so there doesn't even have to be anyone eating in dining halls. Clubs and extracurriculars won't happen in person. These are all sacrifices everyone will be happy to make to continue advancing towards their degrees.
As for classes, all lectures online since they're not interactive anyway. Sections and small classes done with masks and distancing to protect faculty. Vulnerable students have the option to attend remotely, etc.
Yes, the parties and off campus socializing is a concern but I think people are underestimating what rules kids will be willing follow to make sure things don't get shut down.
Schools are definitely going to give this a shot. But yeah, things are going to spike again in the winter and then we'll see how they deal with it.
Even if class sizes were kept to 10 or 25, the problem is the social mixing that occurs from a varied class schedule, clubs, dining, and close-proximity living in the dining hall.
At some point we have to demystify this virus and be realistic about how we should go about things. We've probably had far more exposure than we want to admit, just from regular grocery shopping. It's a virtual certainty that COVID carriers have shopped at your favorite grocery store, when you think about how many people have walked in and out those doors every day.
Yes, we should take precautions - wear masks inside, keep safe distance, limit large gatherings. But there's a point at which it becomes paranoia. There are limits to how much we can protect everyone. Realistically, a lot of people will end up exposed no matter what we do. Fortunately, most will have few symptoms, especially if they're college-aged.
Remember, the curve we should focus on is of hospitalizations. The curve of confirmed cases is affected by how much testing we're doing and tells us nothing about the infected population. If we've lowered the threshold of symptoms necessary for getting a test, then there is probably a greater proportion of mild cases being documented. What ultimately matters is how full our hospitals are getting.
I think the population of people with antibodies is actually much smaller than most would expect.
Second wave in South within next 4 weeks. Whole state of Alabama is cited for having the worst outcomes. Opening is not nearly quarter assed.
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