Georgia 247 thread discussing their covid protocols

Submitted by MrWoodson on December 22nd, 2021 at 11:16 AM

Per a Georgia 247 staff member:

"Players and staffers who test positive are required to quarantine 10 days from when symptoms began.

I've done some digging on the testing out of the COVID protocol and I believe the rule is the individual must test negative twice and 24 hours apart in order to exit quarantine early. As of right now, there's no surveillance testing at all, to my knowledge, unless the individual is unvaccinated. Players who show COVID symptoms are tested."

https://247sports.com/college/georgia/board/19/Contents/jake-what-is-the-covid-protocol-right-now-178941058/?page=1

Hab

December 22nd, 2021 at 12:38 PM ^

There was an interesting article in the NYTimes (MSM, I know) distinguishing between the medical end of a pandemic and the social end of a pandemic.  This subthread neatly illustrates the topics it discusses.

How Pandemics End ($)

When will the Covid-19 pandemic end? And how?

According to historians, pandemics typically have two types of endings: the medical, which occurs when the incidence and death rates plummet, and the social, when the epidemic of fear about the disease wanes.

“When people ask, ‘When will this end?,’ they are asking about the social ending,” said Dr. Jeremy Greene, a historian of medicine at Johns Hopkins.

In other words, an end can occur not because a disease has been vanquished but because people grow tired of panic mode and learn to live with a disease. Allan Brandt, a Harvard historian, said something similar was happening with Covid-19: “As we have seen in the debate about opening the economy, many questions about the so-called end are determined not by medical and public health data but by sociopolitical processes.”

Endings “are very, very messy,” said Dora Vargha, a historian at the University of Exeter. “Looking back, we have a weak narrative. For whom does the epidemic end, and who gets to say?”

It discusses historical ends to other pandemics (black plague, spanish flu, smallpox, etc) and what made success easier (smallpox - There is an effective vaccine, which gives lifelong protection; the virus, Variola major, has no animal host, so eliminating the disease in humans meant total elimination; and its symptoms are so unusual that infection is obvious, allowing for effective quarantines and contact tracing) and pandemics that have not gone away, but have been largely forgotten (HK 1968 flu - one million people died worldwide, including 100,000 in the United States, mostly people older than 65. That virus still circulates as a seasonal flu, and its initial path of destruction — and the fear that went with it — is rarely recalled). 

Worth a read if you've got the subscription.

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BlueinKyiv

December 22nd, 2021 at 2:47 PM ^

I read this but thought a much more straightforward statement of the reality was in a Time's editorial yesterday.  We have been ignoring the reality that is society's attitudes toward health issues for a long time.  Two great stats help understand this undiscussed reality:

1) A study has found that women who survived the very lethal, cervical cancer, are NOT more likely than a control to have their daughters get the HPV vaccine that reduces their risk of cervical cancer by perhaps the best efficacy in the business (90%). 

2) A study found that doctor's are not any better than a random individual at following medical advice related to their health issue. 

You cannot trust your neighbors to do the right thing in an epidemic. Most people do what they feel is right, regardless of how well educated they might otherwise come across. We are hosting down here in Miami an ER nurse and her family from the beleaguered Lansing Sparrow hospital. She says that even at this point in the virus that many of her dying patients as she changes the ventilator will get mad at her and tell her "I don't have COVID."  Most humans will go to the grave certain that what they feel is right regardless of the quantity of objective facts around them. 

 

 

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TESOE

December 22nd, 2021 at 1:28 PM ^

In a championship, all players should (I'm thinking out loud only here) be tested and counted positive only on the second test. There is too much at stake to allow an asymptomatic carrier to transmit to others. Two tests with cycle time (CT) above a certain threshold should allow a player to return to sport (RTS).  I don't know what that value should be (maybe >35??),  The PCR test is way too sensitive to determine RTS.

What is really going to happen here?, what the policies are? what is best for players or in general?... I have no idea.

The losing team could cripple the chances of the finalist with poor Covid protocols.

These are fraught discussions as there isn't great data ever on the current situation/variant/science.  You never know.

Its been a  while since I checked what each team/conference is doing. This data is private as well to some extent.

There's a model where ~10% of all carriers are supercarriers asymptomatic or not ie one of these can spew to the entire unit (WRs/RBs..) or team if infected. There is no test for secondary attack rates or who is a supercarrier.  The science here is a cluster.  Public policy is always going to be changing.

The omicron doesn't change the best policies for preventing outbreaks which is helpful.

In the end - you need to pick a policy and stick to it.  Too bad we all can't follow one policy here. There is no review from the booth for some.

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JonnyHintz

December 22nd, 2021 at 3:07 PM ^

I would think policy is to test the unvaccinated and then test the vaccinated when they show symptoms. If someone pops positive (vaccinated or not) then the close contact group would get tested and quarantine regardless of their vaccination status. At least that’s what makes sense to me.

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