Taking a little break from politics and discuss college football today. Well, that actually is politics as Trump has been telling the Big Ten and Pac 12 to join the other three big conferences to play this fall. The Big Ten has decided to play an 8 game schedule and the Pac-12 will probably announce that they will play also. Is this the right choice?
I was against playing college football before. I think college basketball with much smaller rosters and less physical contact, is much more safe to play. Given that the southeast and southwest areas of the country were still seeing high number of cases, I thought that those conferences should not have started. There were quite a few positive cases when training started but they kept going. I have not heard much about cases in those conferences recently. Either things are much better now or they are hiding the truth.
The other day the LSU coach said something to the effect that a great number of his players already had been infected. They have recovered and are able to play now, he said. He would not say how many players were/are infected. It seems very suspicious to me. Sure most young people are asymptomatic or recover quickly after being infected by this virus. But they can transmit to other people and since they are not in a lockdown like NBA players and they are young and in many cases immature, I think the transmission rate would be high. Also many young athletes develop myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, after being infected. It may not lead to damage but we are not so sure about it, especially years down the line. So I still think it is risky for them to play football now.
Having said that, I think the Big Ten and Pac-12 are in better positions than the other conferences when they start in October. They will have daily testing. There is the antigen test which is cheaper than the standard PCR test. The results are available in minutes as oppose to sending the tests to labs and results may not come back for days. If the athletes are tested daily, then the chance of a positive person transmitting the virus will be very low. I believe the antigen test, which is not as sensitive as the PCR test but is much faster and is good enough for screening purpose, gives college football a much better chance of successfully play out the season. If this occurs, it may be used for opening schools for in person learning throughout the country.
The playoffs spots will be even more controversial this year as teams are mostly playing within the conferences. How do you judge teams from different conferences when there are no interconference games? It will be even more of a beauty contest than ever before.
I am still skeptical about playing this year. Heck, most of the high schools are playing now but at least there are rules in place. The rapid testing is fine but why are these not available to the public? It's another case where the rich and the privilege have it better than those that aren't.
ReplyDeleteThe thing for a few of the Big Ten schools is that they are online right now, so no students are technically on campus, so that kind of makes the football players in a bubble-like situation. I don't know what they are doing in the other conferences, but I suspect that most of the schools will try to fudge numbers. There really isn't much concern for the health of the kids.
We still don't know the long term effects of this virus. The only thing I can say is that you can choose to opt out, so I suppose that's a personal choice. But I'm sure there's some kind of peer pressure or just pressure from outside sources telling the kid to come back and play.
I know a guy at my work who has two sons that play football in high school and he's letting them play. The school is in session as well, but they are in a more rural area. I don't know if I would let my kid play or even go to school right now. In some ways, I am glad I am not a parent and have to make these decisions. I don't think I could sleep at night.
I think once we see a death in a big school, the season might change. The way the Big Ten is doing it, there are no more weeks to have a make up date. Some of the teams down south have had to postpone games, which is a luxury. So the Big Ten is really forcing the schools to be ultra cautious, because you don't want to miss any games if you're in the playoff picture or are trying to get to a bowl game.
Back to politics. I did see that Collins and Murkowski did send letters of their intent not to vote. This will be tight if McConnel is able to push it through for a vote before the election. Romney can go either way considering that it is a big religious issue. Though for some reason, I remember him not being a pro life guy, per se.
Graham looks like he is pushing back and saying that he changed his mind because of the way Gorsuch was treated (though I thought he'd be more mad about Kavanaugh).
-LBOAYM
-LBOAYM
I think the rapid antigen test would close the gap between the rich and the poor in testing. But I think either there is politics involved or that there is a lack of common sense of our regulatory agencies. Without being overly technical, here is my understanding of the tests.
ReplyDeleteImagine a bell shape curve where the amount of virus in your system start to go up when you get infected until it peaks about 7 days and then decreased to zero after 14 days. The first two or three days there are not enough virus in your system to infect others around you. The same goes for days 12-14. The rapid antigen test is less sensitive in that it won't detect the low virus count for those days. But when the viral load is high enough to infect ie days 3-12, the antigen test will detect it. The PCR test will be able to detect the virus in all 14 days. But the difference is not important in real life as both can detect the infection when the person is infectious to others and thus spread the virus. In fact the antigen test is more practical as people could theoretically go back to work, if feeling well, on days 12-14. The antigen test would give the go ahead to go back but the PCR test wouldn't.
Somehow the FDA refused to certify the antigen test until recently. Even then, it has to be tested with a machine with a nurse or lab tech. So football teams can do it since they can hire a nurse and purchase the machine. It will cost $5 per test plus the salaries of the nurses. If done at home, similar to a pregnancy test, it would cost $1 or $2. So there is still a gap in the testing despite the availability of this test. The only reasons I can think of why the delay of using this test is that there is political or lobbying effort from labs or companies associated with the PCR test. Either that or the regulators are hung up on the sensitivity rate and ignore common sense. Given what I have seen in this pandemic, neither surprises me.
Football players are generally less concern about their health than others. They are young and feel they are invincible. They are not worried generally about concussions and other injuries. They would hide their injuries to keep playing if they could. So very few will opt out, especially those with NFL dreams.
If I have school age kids now, I would not let them go back. I would home school them. Ironically, those people who normally home school kids are generally conservatives and I bet they think the public schools should be open as Trump demands.
With Romney announcing that he will vote if Trump's nominee is up for a senate vote, it means that the GOP will likely get their 6th justice. It also means that Romney is a hypocrite. He may say that he wasn't around when Obama's nominee in 2016 was refused even a hearing by senate Republicans. But he did vote to impeach Trump. So if you think this president is a criminal, unfit for the presidency, what legitimate reason is there for you to accept his authority to nominate a Supreme Court justice? I used to say that if McCain or Romney were elected president, I would not have been upset since they are honorable men. Well make it one who is honorable between these two. There are no Republican men in the senate today who are honorable. They are liars or hypocrites, or both.
ReplyDeleteLindsay Graham says that the election will probably end up in court, regardless who wins. He says he will accept the verdict of the Supreme Court. That is easy to say since the Republicans have the majority. Other than Roberts, there are no nonpartisan justices on the court. So if the GOP gets another justice, we are all but assured that Trump will stay in power if this goes to the Supreme Court as Graham suggests. Besides, Graham's word is no good. He already has gone back on his words many times. I would not trust his words. As I said before, McCain is turning over in his grave.
The PAC-12 announced that a 7 game football season will commence. Certainly, the west coast area is doing better than the southwest and southeast so if those two areas are playing, then the PAC-12 athletes are in less danger than those of other areas. Add the improve testing, I can see why they are going to do it. I still think it is not a good idea. European soccer has been playing for several months and they are doing ok. But the cases are increasing again in Europe. I don't think we are out of the woods. I think western countries, including the U.S., do not have the resolve to do all the right things. So even if can get away with a relatively safe football season, I am afraid the overall effect is that we are going to have a much more malignant course for this epidemic than the Asian countries.