• The KillerFrogs

If fall sports are cancelled, I don't see a way back for years.

HFrog1999

Member
Show me a doctor or medical professional that would ever assure you of a no-risk environment.


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CountryFrog

Active Member
It all depends on what the people asking questions of the doctors really want. If you're asking questions like "is there any chance that someone could die from COVID?" then it's because you WANT the doctors to say something that can be used as a recommendation to shut the season down.

If you ask the doctors "Is there a way to setup a relatively safe environment while playing sports?" then you're looking for something from a doctor that can be used as a reason to support playing.

And of course if you're just flat out asking the doctors "Tell us exactly what you think about playing football" then they're going to say everyone should be at home with a mask and a water gun filled with rubbing alcohol.
 

Paint It Purple

Active Member
Quick note before I begin: This won't devolve into a political post. Anyone that tries to derail this with rehashing political points already well documented in The Pit will get a short vacation. The point of this thread isn't to place blame at the feet of government officials or point fingers at political parties.

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Now that the twitter-vine is hyping the "news" that fall sports are on the cusp of being cancelled due to "Covid concerns" I'm left thinking we're not going to see college sports return for years to come. I don't see how administrations who are concerned with a single case of infection can allow sports to return under any circumstance in the future. Even after a vaccine for COVID is available and if it wildly exceeds the efficacy of all other respiratory vaccines currently on the market, it still won't be 100% effective against the virus. In fact, I'd be surprised given the mutation rate of this virus if we see a vaccine that is even 50% effective. So, how can these administrators allow sports to return under those circumstances given the current reasoning? What scenario using the current concerns over liability would ever be considered safe for the players and staff?

I believe this is the line, right now, and we're about to cross it and destroy hundreds of thousands of young lives forever.
It's about the politics. Few things aren't about politics these days. You can deny it and stick your head in the sand, but it's still politics.
 

Moose Stuff

Active Member
It all depends on what the people asking questions of the doctors really want. If you're asking questions like "is there any chance that someone could die from COVID?" then it's because you WANT the doctors to say something that can be used as a recommendation to shut the season down.

If you ask the doctors "Is there a way to setup a relatively safe environment while playing sports?" then you're looking for something from a doctor that can be used as a reason to support playing.

And of course if you're just flat out asking the doctors "Tell us exactly what you think about playing football" then they're going to say everyone should be at home with a mask and a water gun filled with rubbing alcohol.

Can I put vodka in my water gun?
 

Wexahu

Full Member
It all depends on what the people asking questions of the doctors really want. If you're asking questions like "is there any chance that someone could die from COVID?" then it's because you WANT the doctors to say something that can be used as a recommendation to shut the season down.

If you ask the doctors "Is there a way to setup a relatively safe environment while playing sports?" then you're looking for something from a doctor that can be used as a reason to support playing.

And of course if you're just flat out asking the doctors "Tell us exactly what you think about playing football" then they're going to say everyone should be at home with a mask and a water gun filled with rubbing alcohol.

If the decision is going to be deferred to doctors, there will be no season. In fact, football would probably never be played again, COVID or not, depending on which doctors are listened to.

A better route would be saying "doctors, we're going to play football and we are going to play the other fall sports, period. Make us some recommendations that we can consider in order to make it as safe as reasonably possible." Then if any player wanted to opt out, let them.
 
Let's assume your optimism (which I pray is correct) plays out and we have a vaccine by March or May next year. What level of efficacy will the vaccine need to hit in order for this situation to resolve itself and sports to return? Right now we're assuming 100% of players and staff are at risk. What percentage of at risk players and staff are the administration willing to accept to allow season to resume? Even in years when we get the right flu shot matched with the seasonal mutation the efficacy of the vaccine is only 40-60%—and that is the best case scenario. In year's past the efficacy was below 20%. So, are the players allowed on the field if only 80% are at risk? 60%? 50%? 40%? You can almost guarantee it won't be lower than 30% any given year. So, are we then okay with allowing just a 1 in 3 chance of catching Covid?

See the problem with acquiescing at this point?

I hear you, but there are few facts that you’ve got wrong here. First is your timeline: The NIH said it wants to evaluate each vaccine for 6 months during its phase 3 trial before making a decision. The first started phase 3 at the end of July, the second this month, the third next, so it’s likely we will have a vaccine approved by Jan-Mar, and manufacturing is already being completed now so we should have hundreds of millions of doses ready to distribute in the US. That should all be done by May-June, with the benefits coming incrementally as the population gets inoculated.

Second, in terms of efficacy, the sars-cov-2 virus is very different from the flu in how it evolves. The flu has four different strains that move through populations (human+animal) around the world and each rapidly change and in significant ways on an every six month basis. In our history with SARS viruses, both human and in animals, there are far fewer subtypes and the evolutionary process is much much slower and less severe. With the latest version of SARS-2, this has played out, with only a couple sub variants and minor differences between them. Thus, the latest thinking is that the vaccine will be highly effective (90%+). In the phase 1 and 2 trials of both vaccines that are now in phase 3, the vaccine was 100% effective.

But the effectiveness of a vaccine is not just about the drug, but also about how many take it overall. If we gave a 50% effective vaccine to 100% of the population, we’d be able to keep SARS-2 extremely contained.

So, to your question of effectiveness and risk, again because we will likely have a litany of defenses and offenses against SARS-2 next year, the risk will be several orders of magnitude lower than it is today.

As I mentioned, there is a tami-flu like drug for COVID that should get approved any month now... oral pills you’d pop the minute you have any symptoms. Very very promising.

I get that many of us are wired to be negative on all these things, but please trust we have made an astounding amount of progress on this and the dividends will pay off.
 
we have invested over half a trillion dollars in hiv research since 2000 so it isn't for a lack of resources or effort

1. Globally we’ve invested far more in SARS-2 and COVID in the last 8 months. US alone will be at that mark by year end.

2. HIV is a completely different animal from SARS, that’s like comparing a broken arm to a cracked tooth. And we’ve long focused on treatments, not only vaccines, for HIV so if your comparison is to that, you’re again not comparing correctly.

3. We’ve made incredible strides on HIV, thanks largely to government funded research, and today a person infected with HIV can largely expect to live a relatively long and normal life, without even the fear of transmission. This has helped to, largely, arrest the spread in most developed nations, certainly well well below former levels.
 
Also, important for all to note that we really had a head start on a vaccine before SARS-2 made the jump to humans... several groups were well down the path on a vaccine for SARS-1 and that work was 80% of the way there for the SARS-2 solve, thus the expedited timeline and positive outlook generally vs other viruses we’ve failed on.
 

ifrog

Active Member
1. Globally we’ve invested far more in SARS-2 and COVID in the last 8 months. US alone will be at that mark by year end.

2. HIV is a completely different animal from SARS.
3. We’ve made incredible strides on HIV, thanks largely to government funded research, and today a person infected with HIV can largely expect to live a relatively long and normal life, without even the fear of transmission. This has helped to, largely, arrest the spread in most developed nations, certainly well well below former levels.

Comparing HIV to this virus is insane. Who is the genius that posted that?
 

McFroggin

Active Member
I hear you, but there are few facts that you’ve got wrong here. First is your timeline: The NIH said it wants to evaluate each vaccine for 6 months during its phase 3 trial before making a decision. The first started phase 3 at the end of July, the second this month, the third next, so it’s likely we will have a vaccine approved by Jan-Mar, and manufacturing is already being completed now so we should have hundreds of millions of doses ready to distribute in the US. That should all be done by May-June, with the benefits coming incrementally as the population gets inoculated.

Second, in terms of efficacy, the sars-cov-2 virus is very different from the flu in how it evolves. The flu has four different strains that move through populations (human+animal) around the world and each rapidly change and in significant ways on an every six month basis. In our history with SARS viruses, both human and in animals, there are far fewer subtypes and the evolutionary process is much much slower and less severe. With the latest version of SARS-2, this has played out, with only a couple sub variants and minor differences between them. Thus, the latest thinking is that the vaccine will be highly effective (90%+). In the phase 1 and 2 trials of both vaccines that are now in phase 3, the vaccine was 100% effective.

But the effectiveness of a vaccine is not just about the drug, but also about how many take it overall. If we gave a 50% effective vaccine to 100% of the population, we’d be able to keep SARS-2 extremely contained.

So, to your question of effectiveness and risk, again because we will likely have a litany of defenses and offenses against SARS-2 next year, the risk will be several orders of magnitude lower than it is today.

As I mentioned, there is a tami-flu like drug for COVID that should get approved any month now... oral pills you’d pop the minute you have any symptoms. Very very promising.

I get that many of us are wired to be negative on all these things, but please trust we have made an astounding amount of progress on this and the dividends will pay off.

Tamiflu is one of the biggest wastes of money in medicine. It barely does anything. Probably the biggest joke amongst doctors. If the drug is really like Tamiflu, it will be just as effective at slowing my car down as the next insect.
 
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