Sports and The Pandemic

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Prederick wrote:

LOL, wrong thread Jowner. :D

*Looks around*

I blame the pandemic!

Don't let it dominate your life!

Top_Shelf wrote:

Don't let it dominate your life!

Lol

The end of the football game before SNL was surreal.

#1 - Why are we playing college football during a pandemic?

#2 - Why are there even fans?

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EmRrxTnXEAAQCFZ?format=jpg&name=medium)

Was watching SportsNight (!) tonight and caught that game's highlights followed by shots of large numbers of college kids squishing together to rush the field. Because f*ck grandma amirite?

And my local health department keeps telling us we have to keep kids at home so they can not learn sh*t but bars can stay open and hey! Who wants some sports!?

Yay Capitalism!

DSGamer wrote:

The end of the football game before SNL was surreal.

#1 - Why are we playing college football during a pandemic?

#2 - Why are there even fans?

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EmRrxTnXEAAQCFZ?format=jpg&name=medium)

1. Money

2. Money

UpToIsomorphism wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

The end of the football game before SNL was surreal.

#1 - Why are we playing college football during a pandemic?

#2 - Why are there even fans?

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EmRrxTnXEAAQCFZ?format=jpg&name=medium)

1. Money

2. Money

3. Indiana

4. Catholicism

Great that in 2 weeks all of these kids will be going home for Thanksgiving.

What could possibly go wrong?

Godzilla Blitz wrote:

Great that in 2 weeks all of these kids will be going home for Thanksgiving.

What could possibly go wrong?

I’ll weigh in as someone who works at ND — this is not good. Not a good look either. All students had to be tested negative this week in order to be allowed in (digital tickets make this possible). But some could definitely have caught it between testing and Saturday, so there was likely some COVID on the field.

But on the going home question — ND now has mandated exit testing for students at the end of finals (week after next), with associated quarantine. If you don’t participate don’t get tested or don’t go into quarantine on a positive test, you can’t reenroll on the spring. So it shouldn’t lead to many students taking it home with them.

Except testing doesn't show a positive until at least 3-4 days after infection usually. There were absolutely infected people on that field.

LeapingGnome wrote:

Except testing doesn't show a positive until at least 3-4 days after infection usually. There were absolutely infected people on that field.

Agreed. I said as much — there was some COVID on the field.

But ND is running 1800+ tests a day. Only 8500 undergrads. They will end up being tested a few times. They don’t leave for another 20 days.

I’m not arguing this was great. But, there are plans to address the specific issues of them taking COVID home.

That's good information Firesloth. We can all have our differing opinions on college football, testing and what should or shouldn't be done. I think most (all?) of us were quick to judge what we saw at the end of that game. It's good to know that there are plans are in place and precautions were taken before and it seems like after the game.

By comparison, as I posted in the college football thread, the COVID protocol in the city of Berkeley is one confirmed positive = automatic 14-day quarantine and anyone linked via contact tracing must also be in quarantine regardless of testing (probably due to the 3-4 days delay that Gnome mentions). As a result, Cal's game was cancelled since we couldn't field a full D-line unit, even though only one player actually tested positive.

As a Cal fan I was obviously disappointed since I was really looking forward to getting the season started, but I also will respect the protocols the city has put in place to keep everyone safe.

Every COVID infection is a link in a chain that could very likely end in someone's death. It's great that Notre Dame has better protocols than most, but fans didn't need to be at that game and they didn't need to rush the field and someone will inevitably die as a result. That seems like a high price to pay to me.

DSGamer wrote:

Every COVID infection is a link in a chain that could very likely end in someone's death. It's great that Notre Dame has better protocols than most, but fans didn't need to be at that game and they didn't need to rush the field and someone will inevitably die as a result. That seems like a high price to pay to me.

I do not think that having fans at the games is a problem. We've had no cases of transmission in the classroom, where students are indoors. Given that, I highly doubt simply attending a game is a problem. Outside of players' families, the only allowed attendees of these games are students and staff – people in the "ND bubble" that are regularly surveillance tested (or in close contact with those who are...I could have taken one of my boys). I have more contact with students in the classroom than I would at one of these games. The attendance Saturday was about 10,000 – most of whom are already in some contact with one another – in a stadium built for 80,000. If you look at the videos of the fans during the game, almost the only one not masked was the father of the visiting QB.

Agreed that fans shouldn't have rushed the field. That was an awful, awful idea, and it would have been prevented if no fans had been in attendance. It was almost as bad (though probably not quite) as our president hob-knobbing indoors, maskless with Trump et al. in celebration of the Supreme Court nomination of Barrett.

However, I suspect the rushing the field won't produce as many cases as the Supreme Court event – the students were outside and 99% masked up; all had been tested with PCR tests (I believe...could have been our saliva tests, but I think even those are a lot better than the tests the White House was using, which only detect 50% of the cases); I suspect it lasted ~15 minutes, though I don't know that.

What will make a spike in cases is the inevitable parties afterward...maybe I mentioned that I moved my last two class meetings of the semester to a virtual format?

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