Actual Big Ten Football for 2020! Discuss....

[THE_WIZARD_]

Dear Commissioner Warren,

First let me say from the outset that even a veteran commissioner would’ve had difficulty navigating these unprecedented times. The leadership challenges those in your position currently face are unparalleled in collegiate athletics, as they are for leaders across the cultural landscape.

Furthermore, I wish to take you – and the university presidents who likely wield the true power here – at your collective word that you originally cancelled fall football in our league out of an abundance of caution. I think it’s possible, if not even likely, you don’t completely agree with the decision – given the fact your own son is playing football as we speak in the SEC for Mississippi State. Nevertheless, a vital component of your job as commissioner is to represent the interests of the university presidents who call many of the shots in the Big Ten.

However, much has changed in just the three weeks since you made the announcement. And if you have any desire to align with the reportedly unanimous voice of our conference athletic directors who want to play a fall season, not to mention the legions of players and their families sharing that desire publicly as we speak, now is the time to reverse course. To use your office as a platform to make the case to those university presidents to undo potentially one of the worst decisions in the history of collegiate athletics. A decision that has only served to tarnish the league’s branding, generate perpetual public embarrassment, and harm the Big Ten’s relationship with its coaches/donors/alumni/players/fans.

Commissioner, much has changed with the virus since your cancellation, and it’s all good news. None of which you cited, by the way, in your recent clarification. In fact, you didn’t really cite any updated or stratified data in your open letter clarification, other than the global narrative of the virus in that moment. Except you’re playing Big Ten football, not planetary football. So all that really matters is what is happening in your country, and more specifically your own footprint.

Commissioner, permit me to share some of that data with you now:

According to CDC, only 6% of deaths can be directly tied to having died from Covid as opposed to with Covid. Meaning 94% of those who have sadly perished had other preexisting co-morbidities that could’ve led to their deaths. Given the age and prime health of college football players, this is a key data point. How many college football players have a preexisting co-morbidity?

According to CDC, confirmed hospitalizations for Covid nationwide are now at their lowest total since March 21.

Only 2.9% of the available hospital beds in the Big Ten footprint are being used for Covid patients.

According to CDC, only 1.9% of ER visits nationwide are for Covid-like symptoms, which means 98.1% of Americans are going to the ER for something other than coronavirus.

According to the latest active case numbers, only 0.26% of people living in the Big Ten footprint are an active confirmed case of coronavirus.

According to CDC, since March only 1.5% of deaths for those aged 15-24 have been with Covid.

According to CDC, 15-24 year-olds represent 12.9% of the U.S. population but just 0.2% of all Covid deaths.

The NFL has nearly completed its training camps, and heading into roster cuts currently has just one player on its Covid reserve list out of 2,560 total players. As you know, Commissioner, NFL teams have not been operating in a singular bubble like the NBA and NHL has, either. NFL teams have also been conducting padded practices for weeks, too. This means we have a proof of concept in real time for our league to emulate.

A leading cardiologist at the University of Michigan doesn’t believe myocarditis is enough of a concern to justify cancelling football. A top genetic cardiologist at the prestigious Mayo Clinic has said the same. Furthermore, if you were seeing an alarming rate of early onset diagnoses from just the already permitted workouts as some media reports suggested, then why has the league permitted those style of workouts to continue?

There have been three major testing innovations brought to market since the Big Ten’s cancellation as well. The University of Illinois, a member institution, received emergency FDA approval for a quicker and cheaper saliva-based test. The NBA Players Association, in conjunction with Yale University, has also received emergency approval from the FDA for a similar saliva-based test, which can cost as low as $4/sample. And now Abbott Labs has been granted emergency approval from the FDA for a self-contained saliva-based test that it will sell for just $5. Each of these innovations makes testing substantially more accessible and affordable than it even was a few weeks ago, when the conference called off the season.

The numbers are about as low as we can realistically hope for in a country this large, and a footprint as densely-populated as the Big Ten’s, minus an effective vaccine. The testing is more available and more affordable than ever before, too.

Commissioner, I implore you to follow the data, because it will align you with the overwhelming wishes of your players and programs – who simply want the same choice to play your family was granted by the SEC.

Leadership isn’t tested by always making the right decision, because no one is perfect, but in having the humility and courage to reverse course when it’s obvious you made the wrong one.

[Hannibal]

According to CDC, only 6% of deaths can be directly tied to having died from Covid as opposed to with Covid. Meaning 94% of those who have sadly perished had other preexisting co-morbidities that could’ve led to their deaths. Given the age and prime health of college football players, this is a key data point. How many college football players have a preexisting co-morbidity?

That 6% number is mind blowing.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Yeah even Fox & Friends had a doctor on to push back on people misinterpreting the 6% figure. What percentage of people who die from 'the flu" every year do you think had pre-existing co-morbidities? If you're 66 and have been taking insulin for your diabetes for 35 years and then catch covid and die, was that because your diabetes suddenly turned fatal after 35 years and it just coincidentally happened at the same time you caught covid?

I will agree the risk to football players and college age students is very, very small.

The CDC also keeps track of the number of excess deaths any given year and since Feb. 1 the US has had between 183,000 and 245,000 more deaths than what you'd expect in an average year.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

[lineygoblue]

Wiz - You should send that to Warren.

It probably won't get past his leggy secretary, but it might be worth a shot.

[Hannibal]

Yeah even Fox & Friends had a doctor on to push back on people misinterpreting the 6% figure. What percentage of people who die from 'the flu" every year do you think had pre-existing co-morbidities? If you're 66 and have been taking insulin for your diabetes for 35 years and then catch covid and die, was that because your diabetes suddenly turned fatal after 35 years and it just coincidentally happened at the same time you caught covid?

I will agree the risk to football players and college age students is very, very small.

The CDC also keeps track of the number of excess deaths any given year and since Feb. 1 the US has had between 183,000 and 245,000 more deaths than what you'd expect in an average year.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/c...ess_deaths.htm

What's perhaps more significant is that the average victim has about two and a half pre-existing conditions.

You don't just die of Covid-19 from being old. You die of Covid-19 if you are old, asthmatic, and obese.

The 6% number is at least important in the context of moronic discussions about how teachers deserve hazard pay for teaching classes in person, and other similar discussions about how anyone but an easily identifiable (and isolateable) minority of the population is at risk.

[iam416]

I definitely side with DSL in that the 6% is misleading. However, as Hannibal points out, it does have some value in describing the true at risk population. Healthy adults aren't at risk in any meaningful sense.

[Hannibal]

If only we could go back and replace the out of control hysteria in the early days of the pandemic with a realistic and down-to-earth conversation about whether we should shut down the country and put ourselves into double digit unemployment to save overweight asthmatic 80 year olds in nursing homes. Perhaps the answer would have been the same, perhaps not. But boy, it sure would have been nice to have some intellectual honesty in the debate.

[iam416]

The thing that I found most frustrating is that they weren't reporting deaths by age group early on. We only saw Italy and NY and saw the huge death numbers. We didn't really have a breakdown of what was happening in terms of age or co-morbidity. And that information was surely available. We did have average age of decedent, but that wasn't all that useful.

But, this whole thing has been politicized out the ass. Most of us said as much 5 months ago. The HCQ stuff is the most perplexing example. I mean, it was clear PDJT was talking out his ass, but, at the same time, that didn't mean that HCQ couldn't be effective in some situations. But, if you thought the latter you were automatically some nut.

I dunno. It's just gross. And on topic, I feel disgusted that the B10 was pulled into it whether they were explicitly political (unlikely) or implicitly political (very likely).

[Hannibal]

yeah. Agreed about HCQ. It's not The Donald's job to say whether it works, but it doesn't sound like a complete waste to look at it. You would hope that the medical community would be willing to throw anything at the wall and see what sticks.

Donald isn't blameless in this though. His crisis management, messaging, and leadership were all very poor. Covid-19 could have been his ticket to a landslide reelection.

[iam416]

Heavens to Murgatroyd, PDJT is almost always waist deep in whatever trouble he finds himself in. I can run down a list of things that undeniably make it harder for him, but I also hold no illustions that his predicament is more his own making than anything else.

[lineygoblue]

If only we could go back and replace the out of control hysteria in the early days of the pandemic with a realistic and down-to-earth conversation about whether we should shut down the country and put ourselves into double digit unemployment to save overweight asthmatic 80 year olds in nursing homes.

Here in Michigan its becoming more apparent that the overweight asthmatic 80 year old's in nursing homes were needlessly endangered as well. When the governor orders actively infected COVID patients moved into nursing homes, where caretakers were not prepared to handle the infection, that's just wrong. Even nursing home folks deserve to live their lives as long as possible, and not be deliberately endangered by politicians.

[iam416]

Vote to postpone was 11-3. OSU, Iowa and UNL stood tall. The rest were cowards.

[Rob F]

The 6% figure is VERY misleading. And, as would be expected, it's being used and misused by a lot of folks who are bound and determined to do everything they can to deny the scientific evidence of excess deaths and the role Covid19 played in those deaths.

Here's a quick lesson in cause of death determinations on death certificates from a paper written by Sarah Meyers, MD:

"When sequences of injuries or events occur, the cause of death portion of the death certificate may be further subclassified into immediate (the last injury or disease process in the sequence or the event immediately before death), intermediate, and underlying cause of death (the injury or disease that set off the sequence of events that resulted in death, also known as the proximate cause of death). These terms are connected via “due to” statements on a death certificate. For example, if an individual sustains a myocardial infarct, from arteriosclerotic heart disease, which subsequently ruptures causing cardiac tamponade from hemopericardium, the cause of death would be listed as such:

• Immediate cause of death: Hemopericardium with cardiac tamponade
• Due to: (intermediate cause of death): Ruptured myocardial infarct
• Due to (underlying cause of death/proximate cause of death): Arteriosclerotic heart disease"

It is pretty rare that a single cause of death is listed on a death certificate, for any illness or cause. Even things like gunshot wounds and drownings are rarely immediate causes of death, it's that they usually cause things like organ damage, internal bleeding, etc. They do this to be more descriptive of the actual death story.

Same thing for Covid-19. It might cause a heart attack or acute respiratory distress syndrome or something else that is the final blow.

But the deaths were caused by covid-19. These deaths are easily measured as excess deaths as well. And we're likely undercounting them.

Bottom line is that as much as some may wish to minimize, for whatever reason, the disaster we're still dealing with, it's intellectually dishonest to claim that only 6% of the 183500+ deaths were caused by the coronavirus.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6088476/

[Jeff Buchanan]

The accuracy of reports of deaths in the US has been compromised by a rush to report COVID-19 as a cause of death. It is further compromised by variance in reporting deaths. I don't care if it is the primary or secondary cause. There is a continuing, legitimate controversy over dying with or from C-19. IOW, as usual, absolute numbers of deaths is just fucking meaningless and so is this 6% thing. Ignore it.

The most meaningful death statistic in the US and globally is the Case Fatality Rate or the Infection Fatality rate, both still subject to error with the later to a large degree by projection error (how many people actually have COVID compared to those reported to have it via a test. CFR and IFR don't care if it is the primary or secondary cause. If COVID is anywhere on a death certificate it is counted as a COVID death and figures in to the CFR. No surprise here to anyone that is paying attention C-19 isn't as lethal as we've been lead to believe it is. Even with significant errors present in calculating this number, the risk of dying from C-19 is ridiculously low.

Accepted CFR's vary greatly by age and sex but overall, if that has any meaning at all, it's under 2% if you're under 70 and in some places way less than that. if you're under 40, i've seen numbers that suggest the CFR is 0.04%

...... and yet, we continue to do the stupid shit we do for Americans aged 0-65 thinking we are mitigating this thing with the hope of reducing the risk of not getting infected to near zero.

[lineygoblue]

Vote to postpone was 11-3. OSU, Iowa and UNL stood tall. The rest were cowards.

Agree. Michigan and MSU were definitely cowards. Neither of them were willing to infuriate the will of our dictator. Her mind was made up in June. She never intended to even consider fall sports at either university. She bullied the MSHAA into the same decision.

Ye must not rebel against the Queen