Branno

And how exactly does that make it safer to play football than staying home?

I found the pedant! Are you seriously suggesting that the virus gives 2 s#!ts about whether the sports being played are youth or college? Or that simply the level of competition changes how it spreads. Please, enlighten me, on how playing sports is safer than staying at home. I'm all f#&%ing ears.

Oh, I don't know.... some little known organization called the CDC. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/youth-sports.html

If a player follows social distancing guidelines, wears masks, takes online classes, and DOES NOT PLAY FOOTBALL they are significantly less likely to contract COVID-19. I don't understand how this concept is so hard to understand. If we don't have this under control by the start of the season, we just shouldn't play. Period, end of story. Our desire for entertainment shouldn't trump the health and safety of players, and before we ask them to sacrifice we should be willing to sacrifice for their benefit.

That's a bad argument to make and you know it. In fact, it's the definition of the logical fallacy of equivocation. There are things we can't avoid in football, for example contact, without it becoming soccer. You just accept the risk and do whatever you can to mitigate it. But, you can avoid COVID-19 related issues. To suggest we can't, is nonsense.

Since we're bringing dates into the equation, please tell me how an article from mid June proves that hospitals aren't overwhelmed in July.

Even if the hospital remained closed, the argument that it's proof of anything is fundamentally flawed.

I think the biggest problem here is that you're focused on a trailing metric and using it to argue against leading metrics. To decrease deaths, we need to decrease infections and reduce the strain on our health care system. Remember, there has been a significant increase in excess deaths that haven't been directly attributed to COVID-19. One reason (among many I assume) is that hospitals are overwhelmed and people cannot receive the treatments they need. Infection rate and hospital utilization are leading metrics. We know that when they decrease, deaths decrease. But it takes several weeks for the death rate metrics to change. So, please tell me what it matters whether we're focusing on infections rates, death rates, or hospital capacity if all 3 correlate? Does it make sense to talk about 3 week old death rate data or up to the minute infection and hospital capacity data?

I'm not sure if this is joke or not. I mean.... In before the pedantic "BUT I DIDN'T SAY IT VERBATIM"

More infected? Yes More deaths? Yes Lower mortality rate? Not necessarily The only way we can know for sure is to greatly increase the amount of testing done, something the Senate and our current President want to avoid. I personally think the 10x number is WAY off, but I'm willing to admit I'm not an expert and could be wrong.

So you can make all the claims you want (for example your claim that hospitals are not overwhelmed) and provide no sources, but when anyone contradicts your unsourced opinion they have to provide sources. Cool.

I apparently somehow messed up my original response, sorry for any confusion. No, that would be ridiculous. Just look at the number of excess deaths and use that number. We can't simply just count deaths directly related to COVID-19 as not all deaths are in a hospital from a person that tested positive. Any death at home from a person that did not get a test wouldn't count towards the total. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html

https://lmgtfy.com/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.webmd.com%2Flung%2Fnews%2F20200713%2Farizona-florida-texas-face-hospital-capacity

That's only the case if: You don't also increase the number of unreported COVID-19 deaths, deaths that are most likely due to COVID-19 but not reported as such The 10x number is accurate What's absurd is the amount of self-projection going on in this argument. Many hospitals are overwhelmed, but not all are. It depends on the area in which you live. I know it's hard to understand, but hospitals in different areas can have different levels of capacity (and you can't just transfer a patient from Arizona to South Dakota). I mean, dude... in Texas we're converting convention centers and arenas into hospitals. It is a fact that our hospitals are overwhelmed. It's also important to understand that hospitals are not designed to work at high capacity all of the time. They need to be able to take in new patients, and due to the needs of COVID-19 patients they have to remain in the ICU for extended periods of time. Our healthcare system just isn't designed to handle this load for so long a period of time. If only we'd done more in March/April to prevent ourselves from getting to this point again.

1 death is too many. The only acceptable number of completely preventable deaths is 0 in order for us to have football. The number entirely depends on the political party you support. We're projected by the CDC to have 150k-170k deaths by Aug 8 but students are expected to go back to school in person, the Gov of Georgia is suing the Mayor of Atlanta over a mask mandate, etc.

Is this the best place to vent about covid-19? What does this thread have to do about football at this point?

Devil's advocate here. Maybe it's time for this thread to die.

Before I get into my opinion on this argument, I want to make sure we all get on the same page when it comes to terminology. Stolen wholesale from lifehacker.com because they stated this way better than I was going to: Fact: Observations about the world around us. Example: “It’s bright outside." Hypothesis: A proposed explanation for a phenomenon made as a starting point for further investigation. Example: “It’s bright outside because the sun is probably out.” Theory: A well-substantiated explanation acquired through the scientific method and repeatedly tested and confirmed through observation and experimentation. Example: “When the sun is out, it tends to make it bright outside.” Law: A statement based on repeated experimental observations that describes some phenomenon of nature. Proof that something happens and how it happens, but not why it happens. Example: Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation. I have a problem when someone uses the process of discovery as an excuse to not follow guidance from scientific leaders. This is the exact line of reasoning that leads to people who: Don't wear a mask Don't socially distance Take their covid-19 positive children to school/daycare Believe vaccines give you autism Believe the earth is flat (in 2020) But let's take a deeper dive at the language used: Remember, facts are things we can directly observe. So, what facts are being stated that are in fact false? That infections in the US are going up? That deaths in the US are going up? These are things that can be observed, and are thus facts. Maybe the intent was that we take hypotheses too seriously. This appears to be the crux of your argument, that you believe all opinions are equally valid and we should treat them as such. I don't agree with this suggestion, and never will. Maybe y'all will think I'm an a$$h@!e, but I'm going to side with the people that have MDs and PhDs over our Donald "it is what it is" Trump and his enablers. In normal times, this is something we could have a real substantive debate over. For example, I'm not going to ridicule someone for not believing in evolution and I'm willing to have a good faith debate over it. But when the world is collapsing around us, the time to debate is over. We need to take seriously any guidance given to us by the people who know the most, and if that guidance changes over time we need to be agile. Far too many people are not willing to take this guidance seriously, and it is directly causing hundreds of thousands of Americans to lose their lives. And that is where we come back to "ridicules others". Let's say you're in a burning building and a firefighter is telling you to leave the room. If you refuse to listen to the expert, you kind of deserve to be ridiculed.

Multiple bars in Austin had their liquor licenses suspended before the recent ordered closures because they weren’t following occupancy restrictions. People have packed green spaces and public springs, causing them to be closed. Now that there are restrictions in place we hopefully we see a reduction, but it’s going to get worse before it gets better because of how lax people were here.

I’m not defensive, I’m annoyed. Saying “explain this to me” over and over and over is not a discussion. Regardless of your intent you have to be aware of how your actions effect others. The late June mask order in SA wasn’t in all public spaces, just in businesses in which “6 ft of separation isn’t feasible.” No really what I would qualify as a mask mandate. What is the point you’re trying to make here?

Dude I live in Texas. We didn’t have a mask mandate until July. Bars closed only just recently and restaurants are still open at reduced capacity. Gov Abbot overruled any city that tried to mandate masks, stay at home, and restaurant/bar closures. How do I explain San Antonio? The state opened too early. Not enough people wearing masks. You know. The same thing that happened to most states having large spikes right now. This “explain this area to me” schtick is starting to get boring. My answer isn’t going to change, because the facts aren’t going to change.

Maybe Louisiana is an outlier, maybe they shouldn’t have reopened restaurants back in March during their first spike, maybe they should mandate masks. Who knows.

1. I’m not an epidemiologist. It’s not my job to explain why the virus is spreading the way it is. 2. From what I googled it appears the explanation is that they reopened their economy too early, people gathered at indoor locations without wearing masks. You know, the exact things I complained about over and over and over again. https://abc7.com/new-cases-of-coroanvirus-in-california-ca-covid-updates-is-covid-19-airborne-can-you-get-twice/6272694/

More accurately, look at places like New York where BLM protests were prevalent and we didn’t see a major spike in COVID infections. BLM protests are a red herring. It’s a way to assign the blame to people with no power. Its not a coincidence that the states hit hardest now at the ones that refused to fully shutdown and re-opened their economy too early.

I don’t take it as criticism, as I feel I’ve been consistent in my messaging that I don’t feel it’s safe and we won’t have football because of it. I do want to address one part of your response though. “because we cannot get our football, people are being blamed for us losing a season of football” People are to blame. We’ve seen, in all but 4 countries (US, Brazil, Russia, India) people do the necessary things to keep the virus in check and move on with their lives (albeit in a new normal). We’ve seen the return of sports in many of these countries, including rugby. Is the US somehow special or unique, that we would be in this situation regardless of how people acted? No. If people would have stayed home instead of demanding they get haircuts, be able to eat at restaurants, drink at bars, etc we wouldn’t be where we are now. If the idiots that refuse to wear masks worried more about their health and the health and safety of others than imaginary attacks on their “freedom” we wouldn’t be where we are now. People are entirely to blame for us not getting college football. You just need to be able to look outside our borders to see what is obvious.