Illinois senior RB and senior OL opt to sit out 2020 season due to COVID concerns
In what is likely to be a continuing trend around the nation, some healthy players are starting to sit out the season as a personal choice due to COVID. Illinois AD and HC are both supportive of the decision publicly.
I was expecting more of this. Only because there has to be a number of athletes who have immediate family members with compromised immune systems or elderly family members living with them at their main homes. It would also be a way for players to heal injuries without using a redshirt.
You wrote: "... compromised immune systems or elderly ..."
That's not a bad start. Obesity seems like the most underrated risk factor. Nearly every young victim I've seen pictured has been big. Want to make a dark bet? If a college football player ends up dying from COVID-19, odds are that it will be a "space eating" defensive tackle in the SEC. It will most likely not be a defensive back in a more enlightened area of the country.
I can't picture the 22-year-old version of myself (who lived with a bunch of students) giving a shit about COVID-19. I can't say I'd blame him. It's not easy to extend your thinking to the larger population (like the 64-year-old professor with diabetes).
Watch as a bunch of commenters fail to hold two somewhat opposing ideas (risk of a complicated COVID-19 experience is really low for most people; COVID-19 has been -- to put it mildly -- inconvenient for health care systems in Phoenix and Houston) in their head at the same time. Throwing rocks is more fun.
Death isn't the only negative effect of COVID.
Red Sox pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez confirms he's dealing with heart issue stemming from COVID-19 infection
A friend of mine had it and has thankfully "recovered" enough to go home. He may never talk again due to vocal cord paralysis and has a number of other issues he is still dealing with. A lot of scary stuff can still happen outside of death.
This isn't to minimize his condition, only to provide context. Myocarditis is an extremely common side effect of a whole host of viral infections (and bacterial and fungal) including fifths disease, hand foot mouth, common colds, etc (per https://www.myocarditisfoundation.org/).
I think caution is the right way to go with this novel virus, but lots of players probably get myocarditis throughout baseball seasons and we never even know about it because they aren't getting MRIs every time they get a cold.
There may still be more. Most teams don't even know who/when/if they'll play this fall.
So get ready for old time 8 man football?
Will anyone notice ?
Probably not. They weren't major contributors which is why they weren't willing to take the risk (and really weren't willing to take the precautions).
Shut everything down until there’s a vaccine!
/s
why the /s?
Because it's a completely unrealistic plan?
Because 1) we've never successfully made a vaccine for any coronavirus in existence so we should be careful about acting like it's right around the corner and 2) a huge number of businesses and governments are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy right now because of the first shutdown.
Big Ten sees a spike in players opting out of the season due to Covid concerns.
I can't blame them, I imagine they have no idea at all that their risk from Covid is, as an objective statistical fact, lower than the flu or getting struck by lightning. If only we have a press that could report accurately and with context, we would see far less of this, and far more concern from the people truly at higher risk.
Of course it's certainly possible that they have a high risk family member, and if that's the case that's another reason I couldn't blame them
When I read posts like this, I feel like I’m living in some alternate reality. “Yeah, why would these kids want to avoid a communicable disease whose full consequences we don’t yet know? Because they’re stupid!” Must be it. Only explanation.
No, the other explanation is that they are fearful because they don't know the facts. If they knew them and were still fearful then they'd need some counseling to further understand risk.
16 children have died, of 140,000 from Covid. Far more have died with the flu, and all other causes in the same time period. People that don't acknowledge the facts, and what that says about risk to kids, are quite literally not serious people and are being absurd.
I would look at this a bit differently but agree these types of decisions are based mostly on fear rather than facts.
Why?
I think the safety calculation is much different for a football player versus most other sports. Football players may be experiencing brain damage every single time they play or practice. You can lose your ability to walk or even die on the field on any given play. Football is FAR more acutely dangerous to football players than this virus as a result of playing football. Michigan players are forced to medically retire EVERY year.
Do you think the Illinois RB and OL are going to shelter in place isolated from all others and never leave home until the virus subsides? That seems far fetched at best. Even if they live with their immune compromised family member or elderly grandparent you can bet that they will be going out and doing whatever their Governor allows them to do. They are AT RISK.
Sitting out the football season (if there is one - looking highly unlikely at this point) probably won't reduce their risk at all. Fortunately, if they get the virus they are highly likely to be fine or not even know they have it. Yes, there will be statistical outliers. We've heard all about it. They're more than welcome to make whatever decision they want but if they're so risk averse they should probably quit football altogether.
I'll never understand how folks can be so confident about a newly-developing situation with numerous unknowns. Viruses change and mutate. How can we possibly know what the "risk" entails when this strain was first identified like 9 months ago? I am not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination, but even I remember how 7th grade science taught me that knowledge evolves as we learn more about a thing.
mgoblog, where facts go to get negged :)
Or where we misunderstand what a "fact" is, confusing it for "working knowledge." Or where we think we know everything because we saw a source and didn't read it all. Or where we are arrogant enough to believe ourselves to be the authority on a massive unknown.
The Mgoboard Difference.
I'm honestly asking you what the "massive unknown" is in the fact that kids have almost zero risk of death from Covid. Educate me
Why would I be able to educate you when all the teachers you've had for your entire life couldn't do the job? I'm just a humble commenter.
Got it, then you have no argument other than "I think your point is dumb." No worries, I'll stick to the facts that have led every medical authority worldwide to endorse children in schools, along with many major medical and pediatric organizations here and Canada. I'll stay with the knowns--meaning our actual global knowledge. You can stick to snark and all the great "unknowns". Have fun at home forever, because those great unknowns apply to you as well. Cheers.
No you just ignored all of what I said in my first comment because you are unteachable, you've made your bad-faith decision already. That bad faith is a fact to you. The earth is flat and the center of the universe, because according to you facts are immutable and don't change. Once something is out there, it's a "Fact" forever. You are a doctor and a scientician and we should all listen to you even though you will not do the same. Why can't you "Facts" people just be a LITTLE humble, you're not freaking all-knowing!
Lucky the internet keeps a record, and right above this is a question from me asking you to educate me-- "honest question" I said and meant. You replied with nothing, and again with nothing, other than insults, something I haven't once done to you. Now your counter is that I'm arrogant for laying out the facts--which you continuously refuse to either 1- engage with, or 2- counter, or 3- offer different ones. Yep, I'm definitely the arrogant one here.
And yes, I am a "facts" person. That is wrong why? Because I based my opinion on those facts? That's your argument? The substance of your first post was "there's still a lot we don't know about this virus." I did address that by saying the facts are what we know now. To not open schools (or anything) because "there's a lot we don't know" is a formula for nothing but despair, it will be literally years before we know everything. So we have to make decisions on what we do know, and what those facts are.
The major press, for the most part, has consistently reported what the major health organizations have found and are suggesting. Only Fox News and its ilk has demonstrably ignored the advice of medical experts, variously downplaying the threat and flacking bogus “cures.” Maybe you should broaden your reading and viewing habits. There’s no mystery here.
The major press, which I consume, is 90% "cases rise", and almost zero actual context of hospitalizations, and deaths, both WAY more important than case numbers for a virus with an infection fatality rate of under 0.50%. I don't watch Fox so I can't comment on them.
Now having said that, show me one post where I didn't confine my comments to known medical, not in dispute facts and then drew my own implications for it. Or where I minimized the virus. Then show me a single medical organization that states that schools are too dangerous to open. I'll wait.
If they have a high risk family member, then they should stay away from that family member. Which is not a problem, since these are kids living on campus and immersed in activities all the time. So even that is a weak reason.
I’m pretty sure that the risk of covid is not objectively less than getting struck by lightening.
Last year there were 20 total deaths from lightening strikes. 1 was under 18, 3 were under 20.
https://www.weather.gov/safety/lightning-fatalities19
For covid as of June 17 there were 26 deaths of kids under 15. Small, but objectively larger than lightening strikes.
Makes sense and I assume we'll see more guys do the same as the year carries on.
They should have their scholarships taken away. If you voluntarily choose not to play, then you don't get to go to college for free.
Football itself will do far more bodily harm to players this year than Covid-19.