December 21st, 2021 at 10:02 AM ^
Dude you are just being stupid. Testing athletes for Covid and just being a stupid human being are not the same. What exactly are we doing by making athletes sit out who are in a more controlled enviroment than a movie theater, mall, stadium, or work, and we can do whatever the hell we want? If the country were in a lockdown, I could understand, but they aren't controlling the spread of aanything by making a player sit out, but are selling out stadiums.
December 21st, 2021 at 10:21 AM ^
You are obviously working in a place that permits COVID positive people to continue to work. It is not the same elsewhere. You may not have children. If you did, you could draw the comparison to having COVID positive kids and the fact they are not permitted to attend school. So, if you want to name call, have it. If you are comparing intellect, well I guess you have made your case.
December 21st, 2021 at 10:27 AM ^
I work for Ford Motor Co, and they don't test anyone. Where do you work? I went the mall, and they don't test anyone. The movie theaters aren't testing anyone. Kroger and Sam's Club isn't testing anyone. Hell, Disney World is open, and they aren't testing anyone. Why are they testing athletes but not the people in the stands? I went to visit my newborn grandchild at the hospital and they didn't test me. They took my temperature and so go in. This stuff is ridiculous at this point. Testing players isn't preventing anything other than a competitive balance in that sport.
December 21st, 2021 at 10:49 AM ^
See this is where you continue to fail. Testing does prevent something more than competitive imbalance. You try to have a point but the point is that testing is a viable and reasonable mitigation strategy, much like masking and social distancing or washing your hands in flu season.
It's obvious your position. You are fine to have it. But your displeasure with it doesn't make it senseless to do it. Again, mitigation is the effort. You can choose to go to Kroger or Wal-Mart knowing you are at risk of exposure. When you play across from another athlete or are required to attend practice or position meetings, mitigation is the respect given to those requirements and the athletes associated.
If you are a salaried employee at Ford, you are required to be vaccinated. Vaccinations mitigate transmission. The new year will bring a mandate to all employees to be vaccinated or, wait for it....be tested.
December 21st, 2021 at 10:59 AM ^
The hourly employees arent required to be vaccinated and they worked right along side the salaried personnel. It just ridiculous at this point to believe they are preventing the spread with different places having different rules, or the same place having different rules. I'm vaccinated and boostered, and a lot of the players being quarantined are also, what exactly is your point. Stadiums can mandate a vaccine, but they don't. Vaccinated players are being tested and the fans aren't. Again, how are they controlling the transmission of the virus by treating athletes different? Without a lockdown, the whole thing is pointless.
December 21st, 2021 at 12:00 PM ^
I do not know about the bowl games, but I went to a Timbers game last month and they definitely made everyone show their card and wear masks.
December 21st, 2021 at 2:39 PM ^
You’re literally weeks away from being required to either be vaccinated or undergo testing.
December 21st, 2021 at 10:50 AM ^
Regular workers and athletes have different working environments. Most people are not in close proximity to their co-workers, like athletes. Except for hockey, players are handling the same ball. They're also in close proximity to each other in huddles and other spots on the field. And unlike many employers, they're doing this with the freedom of not wearing masks.
While I don't understand all the testing requirements put in place, the working environments that athletes and most workers have a very different.
December 21st, 2021 at 11:49 AM ^
There are employers that require testing. Just because yours doesn't really doesn't mean anything.
December 21st, 2021 at 10:32 AM ^
Permitting COVID positive people to continue to work is a very misleading line. Obviously little to no employers are telling positive tested people to ignore it and return to work. What I have seen at many places of employment is purposefully making updated COVID policies grey and muddled. Employers are tired of employees out of work. I think very few companies are testing their employees themselves. If one wants to, on their time, go get a test and then can prove theyre positive theyll miss some work. But this seems to be the opposite of what companies want. They're hoping asymptomatic employees just dont notice or get tested and continue to come in and make up the profits they lost in 2020.
December 21st, 2021 at 10:05 AM ^
"I can still grow my tab."
WTF is this? Your bar tab? Do I really want to know?
December 21st, 2021 at 10:19 AM ^
At a bar saying what I want and can still grow my tab, it seems clear. Hope you are still with me. It is similar to a theater where the private owner can determine who enters or exits. Still got it? Now, transition to employers. They do not operate under the same independent structure. There are rules in place that limit employee and employer freedoms. One being engaging in a hostile workplace (a hostile workplace is one that engages in sexually harassing and racially biased activities). Still getting it? Therefore, comparing the activity in an independent place of business to an activity of employment is not the same.
Let me know what you missed.
December 21st, 2021 at 10:32 AM ^
Private owners of properties open to the general public don’t have carte blanche to determine who enters or exits.
December 21st, 2021 at 10:39 AM ^
Agreed but my example still applies.
December 21st, 2021 at 11:17 AM ^
LOL this is a pretty worked up response to what I think was a fairly innocuous comment about an obscure turn of phrase "still grow my tab." Honestly, when I read it the first time it caught me for a quick sec too.
I think your other threaded conversation was pretty reasonable and well-rationed out.
December 21st, 2021 at 11:34 AM ^
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to confuse you with my complex and detailed question about what you meant by 'tab'. I mean, I did ask if you meant a bar tab... For all I knew, it could be some millennial term for growing out your fucking manbun.
But sure, feel free to be an asshole. You do you, right?
December 21st, 2021 at 11:49 AM ^
Millennials likely do not use "tab" to describe their bill, I assume. You likely knew that and had a dickish and unnecessary response. I helped you out with clarity and intent. You no longer have to feign confusion.
December 21st, 2021 at 12:14 PM ^
I'm a millennial, I call it a bar tab.
It is interesting that you call other people out for a "dickish" response when you are the most condescending person in the discussion. You can't see it, but everyone else can.
December 21st, 2021 at 9:59 AM ^
Because these organizations (universities, the NCAA) have the ability to mandate and enforce it. My workplace has gone through a few different phases of requirements, whether it be masking, temperature checks, etc. If movie theaters, stadiums, etc. wanted they could require vaccination cards or negative tests, they just don't see the risk as more important than revenue. Whether that's a reasonable choice at the moment depends who you ask.
December 21st, 2021 at 10:01 AM ^
I don't understand this sort of position. Wouldn't you want to know asap if you're sick and likely contagious with a deadly virus (with +850,000 dead in the US as evidence)?
December 21st, 2021 at 12:09 PM ^
Exactly.
Even more, don't the athletes have a right to know if one of the players across from them is carrying the plague, or is Typhoid Mary? I don't understand why people are actively discouraging testing -- if I were a player, and I would damn sure want to make sure everything possible is being done to know I won't be exposed to a deadly disease during the game.
Similar during practice. If we can separate players who have the virus from those who don't, we can continue to prepare. But if we wait until it's spread across the entire team, then we're fucked.
The -- I guess? -- counter-argument that "yeah, but Bob from Milwaukee isn't being tested, so why should football players have the right to know their opponents are disease-free?" is possibly the weirdest, most illogical thing I've ever heard.
December 21st, 2021 at 10:17 AM ^
Everyone should be tested exactly like athletes are. But we don't because A) we're a cheap country that values money over human life and B) testing everyone daily to control the spread of a very contagious disease would stupidly be considered a violation of "freedoms" by half the country. That's exactly why. Same reason we don't lock down when there are spikes in some areas. Same reason you are allowed to fill a stadium just as you said. Because money won out over science and reason and compassion. It's literally the same people complaining about exactly what you're complaining about that were the cause of what you're complaining about.
December 21st, 2021 at 10:21 AM ^
but to directly answer you question, athletes are tested more because they have to travel a lot as part of their jobs. This not only exposes them to more people and therefore more chances to get the virus, but also offers more chances for them to spread the virus. The more you move around, the more you should be tested so you have less of a chance to spread the virus yourself if you do catch it somewhere. It's really very simple stuff. How anyone can still be so confused by simple concepts like stopping the spread of a virus is unreal to me at this point. I mean literally what else would it be? Do you think it's like a conspiracy against sports or something? What would your logic tell you is the reason?
December 21st, 2021 at 12:43 PM ^
Lockdowns are a limited tactic that brings with it economic and psychological harm. The proposed solution should never bring with it harm equal to the problem being addressed.
We have to learn to live with it. What precisely this means is something we have to figure out.
I work at a hospital. The floor I work on has several Covid patients. I am suppose to go to my brothers for Christmas, but I don’t think I can because he has a 6 month old and my parents are immuno compromised.(but fully vaccinated with boosters)
I full vaccinated plus I have a booster. Even with that Omicron has changed the calculus for me.
December 21st, 2021 at 1:04 PM ^
Yes but until lockdowns kill 5.36M and counting, this logic doesn't apply. The harm from the problem far outweighs the harm from taking simple precautions like temporary lockdowns in high-infection areas, wearing masks, social distancing, etc. The people who claim "The proposed solution should never bring with it harm equal to the problem being addressed." are not accepting the real harm. They are, in reality, acting selfishly and don't want to be personally and temporarily inconvenienced for the sake of others. That's ultimately what it comes down to.
We could have paid people to stay home so they didn't lose money from temporarily not going to work or running their business, but we choose not to. We choose to keep the economy going above all else. And then people wonder why we're still dealing with this so intensely a year later. They wonder why the things they used to take for granted are now questionable. It's fucking insanity. Literally.
December 21st, 2021 at 1:15 PM ^
"We have to learn to live with it. What precisely this means is something we have to figure out."
I agree. And we are figuring it out. But we can't wait until everything is 100% "figured out" before we take what we deem to be necessary precautions to save lives. Some may turn out to have been unnecessary or short sighted. Remember people cleaning their groceries before coming into their house last year? Yeah that wasn't necessary, but still essentially harmless.
Lockdowns may have hurt some, but that's because we half assed it in this country. There is a right way to do it. All of these things require sacrifice for the greater good. Not "learning how to live with it" which really means "I don't like being inconvenienced so let's move past it". No offense to you personally, of course. Sorry you can't see your family this holiday season. Everyone is making sacrifices. Or should be, at least.
December 21st, 2021 at 11:02 AM ^
Bowl monies.
December 21st, 2021 at 11:12 AM ^
December 21st, 2021 at 11:13 AM ^
I do think testing athletes as often as they are, provided they're vaccinated, feels unnecessary. But my kids are tested 1-2 times a week at school and they are vaccinated as well so we do seem to treat certain groups more stringently than others.
My guess is that we'll see a reduction in testing going forward for vaccinated players if this keeps up because I do think these bowl games don't want absolutely barren interest due to guys held out.
December 21st, 2021 at 11:30 AM ^
Yep. And it is beyond time for us to have a serious national discussion on this.
I am a middle-age guy who has received a couple of shots and hasn't felt sick for the last 2 years (last time was December 2019). In the past year, I've gone to a handful of football games, went to Vegas, gone on other weekend trips, visited my office and worked w/ colleagues a number of times, been to bars and restaurants, et cetera.
I've also never been tested once. Is it possible that I have spread Coronavirus myself, while being asymptomatic? Absolutely! If it's alright for me to do those things and theoretically have spread the virus, why not athletes?
December 21st, 2021 at 11:42 AM ^
I've also never been tested once. Is it possible that I have spread Coronavirus myself, while being asymptomatic? Absolutely! If it's alright for me to do those things and theoretically have spread the virus...
This is your premise? No cognitive pumping on the breaks on this at all?
December 21st, 2021 at 11:52 AM ^
Absolutely not! I might (nobody knows for sure) have spread the Coronavirus at some point in the last 6 months. I concede that.
And to be very blunt - I don't care if I did, nor do I think I should have any responsibility if I did. IF I WAS SICK in a post-shot-availability world and went out and about (I put the qualifier "haven't been sick" in my original post), I would still have a degree of responsibility for spreading, yes. But that hasn't been the case.
I understand other people may think differently, but I 100% disagree that asymptomatic people who have received shots should have to prove that they are negative to go out and do things that they enjoy in life. 100% disagree.
December 21st, 2021 at 1:10 PM ^
"I understand other people may think differently, but I 100% disagree that asymptomatic people who have received shots should have to prove that they are negative to go out and do things that they enjoy in life. 100% disagree."
Then you don't fully grasp the reality of the virus. You don't understand how it has spread around the world and back in less than a year. Or you don't care.
Even if you're vaccinated, you can spread the virus. Even if you're asymptomatic and vaccinated, you can spread the virus. You can spread it to others who may have a worse time than you did. You can spread it to someone who may die. You can spread it to others who will then spread it to others who will then spread it to others, etc.
If we knew ahead of time who would have a hard time with it and who wouldn't, then the virus would be much easier to deal with. But we don't. And we knew even less last year. That's why precautions like testing everyone even if you are vaccinated and feel healthy is the right approach to this pandemic. In fact we should be going farther and contact tracing everyone, but again that will never happen in America because of the 2 reasons I listed before - we're cheap and "freedom" loving people value themselves over the good of the population as a whole.
December 21st, 2021 at 1:42 PM ^
I grasp it and I understand it. It's been 650 days, I'm not ignorant (if you are implying that) of the things you say.
My rationale is this ---- there IS a cost involved in testing asymptomatic persons who have received shots. And it's not just a monetary cost - it's an opportunity cost (a "everyone who is positive must quarantine, regardless of symptoms policy in an environment where shots are available" precludes the opportunity to play college football games, or gather with friends and family, or go on vacation, et cetera ..... e.g., things that add joy and happiness to life).
I concede and admit there is also a benefit involved in testing asymptomatic persons who have received shots. In theory, it would reduce the spread.
I do not, however, believe the benefits outweigh the costs, particularly the opportunity costs. I have not come to this opinion flippantly, I have had 650 days to consider this opinion. I'm not saying you're wrong (I admitted that I understand other people think differently as regards the benefits outweighing the costs). I understand your POV. But after 650 days of consideration, I 100% disagree and reject that POV.
December 21st, 2021 at 9:59 AM ^
The amount butt hurt anytime someone mentions Covid on this board is astounding. I could care less about any of the political opinions on this board. In fact I come here to get away from the nonsense but it's hilarious how some folks have to bring their vitriol with them everywhere they go. I think most of the people here are adults but damn it doesn't hurt to act like it every now and then.
December 21st, 2021 at 10:14 AM ^
Couldn't care less.
December 21st, 2021 at 10:14 AM ^
It's funny but I don't see it as 'butt hurt' at all. People can disagree when they discuss a complicated and important issue, and one of the things I've appreciated the most about MGoBlog over the years was the level of discussion about COVID here last year. I'm not saying I want to re-visit it here indefinitely, but if COVID starts impacting college football again I don't see the harm in discussing it.
December 21st, 2021 at 10:27 AM ^
I agree with you. I have to assume the "no politics" stuff is more about relevance because I don't really know the history of the rule and sports aren't insulated from politics and COVID. I understand it's nice to have a space away from arguing on politics or epidemiology, but it gets annoying when people whine that this board isn't the place to talk about it because it makes them uncomfortable.
December 21st, 2021 at 10:29 AM ^
A big part of the problem is people who think this is a political issue. Covid doesn’t care if you are republican, democrat, independent or completely apolitical. It just seeks hosts to infect.
December 21st, 2021 at 10:58 AM ^
Covid isn't political, but people are labeled by their views on it in a political way. I know plenty of people that do not view covid the way their political party does.
December 21st, 2021 at 11:18 AM ^
Covid isn’t political but the irrational reaction to it on both sides partially is.
December 21st, 2021 at 12:46 PM ^
Agreed, but there is an political issue associated with the virus. Specifically, its origin. We'll never get to the bottom of how this originated as the Chinese government is not cooperating with the any external (WHO or US's CDC) investigation.
Transmitted innocently from a bat (maybe to another animal) and then to humans or was it engineered? We just don't know either way.
It's actually important to know how this got started so humans can learn from previous mistakes and not do it again. Hence the political angle for this.
December 21st, 2021 at 2:52 PM ^
If we knew with 100% certainly that it came from a bat in the wild, that it escaped a lab or that it was intentionally released, how would that change the question about what we should be doing now to address this particular, particularly contagious strain?
December 21st, 2021 at 3:18 PM ^
Exactly, where the virus came from doesn't really matter. Protecting yourself (and others) from it is the most important thing. That is how we defeat it.
December 21st, 2021 at 3:42 PM ^
It doesn't impact how we should deal with it from a public health perspective. That does not mean it isn't important to find out what role, which organizations played in its creation, and dispersal, if any.
December 21st, 2021 at 5:19 PM ^
Yeah, I didn't mean to sound like it doesn't matter. It certainly does. But, at the moment, what matters more is getting control of it and mitigating the amount of damage it does. There are a handful of people in this country who are incredibly eager - just itching - to blame China for this (that certainly could be the case). But, these same people (I'm thinking of someone in particular who shall remain nameless) will turn around and do absolutely nothing to actually fight the spread of the disease; they'll refuse to get the vaccine, they'll rebel against mask mandates and they won't safely/responsibly socially distance. To me, that's a bizarre mindset. If it did come from a lab - and let's say for the sake of argument that it was even done intentionally as an act of biological warfare - wouldn't you want to reduce the amount of damage it could do?
December 21st, 2021 at 4:42 PM ^
True, we need to address the current strain, but we shouldn't sit back and wait for something new from a bat or out of a lab.
What matters is how do we prevent a completely new strain from showing up...some completely new version of Covid...maybe number 99.
If it was transmitted from a bat, how about people who eat bats don't do it? In the US we have laws about selling unpasteurized milk. How about places where people eat bats pass a law to make it illegal?
If it was created in a lab in Wuhan or wherever, how about an international agreement not to create such things?
Yes, it's important to get as many people into the lifeboats as possible this very moment, but how about we don't hit that iceberg in the first place...or at least steer clear of it the next time we are crossing the Atlantic?
December 21st, 2021 at 10:39 AM ^
After two years, you should know not to come here if you want to get away from the political opinions on COVID.
December 21st, 2021 at 12:07 PM ^
Couldn't care less about political opinions
*reads 100 posts about political opinions*