Patsfan86 wrote: ↑Mon Sep 06, 2021 7:39 am
So what are we gonna do then? Test players for covid forever? Even if you are vaccinated? Covid is with us forever, its endemic, its how itll be. And football may just be unlucky enough to coincide with peak Covid seasonality, we arent 100 percent sure on that yet but it seems that way. I only see two ways out of this situation since i feel a vaccinated player should not miss any games. The player got the vaccine, the player did their part, its time to move on with life and let them play. So its Either not let players be in the league if they arent vaccinated (i dont like this option but if we are going for unrealistic Zero Covid in the NFL i guess this is the way to do it.) or pretty simple, stop testing vaccinated players. Once again Covid will be here forever, we tried to eradicate it, we failed for many reasons, its time we accept that and learn to live with the virus, and part of that is to stop testing vaccinated players. And yes i understand breakthroughs happen with Delta more often than other variants but again this is just a risk we are all going to have to adapt to and be willing to take at this point. Can anyone think of other ways to control this in the league besides the two options i just came up? If you can please tell me because i have no idea.
Let me end my rant by saying this, im not here to start a fight either, i understand how serious covid can be, its a horrible illness. Im vaxxed up and i made sure my wife who was a little hesitant got vaxxed up. With all of this said we need to really just move on, Covid is here forever and we just need to be taught to live with it unfortunately instead of being taught to hide from it. Hiding from it made a lot of sense pre vaccined, now it does not. Having a vaxxed NFL player missing the first game of the season and having other vaxxed players miss games down the road is not going to help inspire Lamar Jackson or Josh Allen or any unvaccinated players you can think of to get vaccinated. THey are going to say to themselves, "So wait im doing this and i may still miss games? Whats the point?"
I think the point is that the player does not live in a bubble all by himself. They did that last year with the NHL & NBA and no one wants to do it again. Therefore if a vaccinated player has covid-19, and it is the delta variant, which is much more transmissible than say the common cold or the flu ...
https://health-desk.org/articles/how-co ... s-diseases
My understanding from this is that the flu is 2x more transmissible than the common cold - and the original covid is 3x more transmissible. Delta variant is 6-9x more transmissible.
So assuming 9 people. And that is an average - not a worst case scenario. So you infect 9 people. Then they infect 9 people each. and they infect 9 each. That is 729 from 1 source within a matter of days. But if a player with covid plays in an NFL game in an NFL stadium where there are 60 00 people .... even if he does not have contact with the majority of them, he may still come into contact with people who do have contact with them. IE spends time with trainers who spend time with equipment people who spend time with delivery people who spend time with security people who spend time with ushers who spend time with fans ...
Covid cases spikes 700% after Sturgis as a good example.
If it was simply the common cold or a mild flu - then different story but it is the combination of increased transmissiblity and severity of the delta variant that comes into play.
(a) Vaccines decrease the length of time the illness can survive in your body
(b) decrease the severity of the illness
(c) decrease the severity of post-illness effects
(d) decrease the odds of infection sticking
Unfortunately, and many people in general (not saying anyone here) do not understand that vaccines do not make you immune from something - no more than a cold pill makes you immune from the next cold.
Just (A) alone is huge. If you go from 10-14 days of being able to transmit a disease to just 48-72 hours - then thats 10-12 days where you are not potentially infecting another person.
However that is still a 2-3 day window where you can be infecting - although if proper protocols are followed that risk is highly muted.
It would be a different story if
(a) everyone wore a mask to an NFL game
or
(b) 95+% of people were vaccinated
But barring that you're either going to need vaccine passports (so you know who is at risk), or these confusing (to the layman) but necessary protocols. Remember even 65% vaccinated means that 20 000 people might be unvaccinated at any NFL Game, and right now the vaccination rate is barely 50%. So thats 30 000 rather than 20 000.
In essence you can boil it down to Cole Beasley is keeping Zach Martin from playing. Because if every Cole Beasley was vaccinated we would not have to worry about the transmission or effects so much. But because they are not - and they can extend the transmission window and the effects/severity of the virus so Zach Martin has to not play so that he does not infect Cole Beasleys who by virtue of not being vaccinated make it much more likely they can be infected & spread that disease. The vaccinated player is being penalized due to the choice of the unvaccinated.