It's Wednesday October 14 2020 and this is where we are at as the COVID-19 pandemic enters the autumn season:
The United States is seeing a spike (upwards!) in positive infection reports across much of the nation in the past week, with the likelihood of deaths spiking in the next week.
The National Football League is seeing an uptick in positive cases from team to team, especially a Tennessee Titans team that had members refusing to abide by social distancing guidelines. Celebrity players like Cam Newton were infected. The sport is finding out that when they cannot play in a neutral setting - within a Bubble that enforces testing and reporting - they cannot control the exposure to this highly contagious virus. It's disrupted scheduling to where games might get cancelled, negating the whole point of the NFL playing these games in the first place.
College Football is in worse shape. Combining the recklessness of being on-campus with other students who fail to abide by masking and distancing rules to the reality of traveling to new locations that were and still are COVID hotspots, more teams are reporting cases and cancelling games. This one hits me in the alma mater: up to 18 scholarship players and 3 walk-ons with the Florida Gators tested positive with the odds that more players are infected by them.
And today, the top coach in the Division I programs - Alabama's Nick Saban - tested positive as well (from a university campus that had been having COVID exposure issues already)
What the hell were universities thinking about forcing their students to attend on-campus in tight environs, indoor classrooms, and rule-breaking parties? Oh, right. The universities were thinking about making revenues.
And try this one on for size, trump supporters: trump's teen son Barron may have tested positive (they're now saying he's tested negative). This underscores how rickety and unreliable the testing at trump's White House has been, and it's tragic for anyone to get exposed to a coronavirus that can affect a youth's health further down the road.
It does not help that trump - desperate for the adulation and eager to show off his "strength surviving COVID" - keeps going to cramped, unsafe rallies that are pretty much traveling super-spreader events.
This is where we are at, America.
COVID-19 has not gone away. COVID-19 will not go away until a reliable vaccine is out there for people to take.
trump and his Republican lackeys have fucked up the pandemic response, and he keeps refusing to treat reality with the seriousness that a GOOD President would act.
God help us, vote this moran out of office this November. It's the only way to make sure we can survive past 2021.
2 comments:
It wouldn't surprise me if the Big Ten comes back to it's senses and reconsiders their reconsideration. Or not. After all, it's about that sweet TV money.
Who couldn't have seen this coming? If they were going to have a chance at all it would have been with some sort of bastardized abbreviated season when the weather still gave them a chance. Even then the conventional approach to strength training, training table, practice, etc would have needed to be modified in a way that coaches and the NCAA would never agree on.
I have a hard time fathoming that there would be compliance to tailgating bans in Columbus. If OSU plays you can bet that there be large gatherings around the state at private residences that would put the spread into overdrive.
After forty years of high school and collegiate coaching I had to throw in the towel this year. I love the guys and the sport, so much so that I couldn't profane either by being party to this travesty. It would have happened even if Fergus hadn't decided on mass negligent homicide (I'll stop short of murder although that's what it is), at least I think that the season still would have been compromised.
Basketball? Good luck.
All the people bitching at governors for losing their precious sports, hating on school administrators and the like forget that it comes down to one dude.
Khrushchev was right.
And add to all of this the fact that Fergus is fully on board with the "herd immunity" approach, which happens to be the approach he's taken: none at all.
"It wasn't mass murder, it was brilliant strategy!"
Sir, the body count of your brilliant strategy is obscene.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
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