97and03

That’s interesting, as I remember him losing weight before last season. Billy does that sound right?

Hopefully he ends up a grad assistant here someday.

In June, Sweden’s top epidemiologist that crafted the strategy said the strategy was flawed. I believe their deaths and infections have slowed dramatically of late so he has been feeling more vindicated. Honestly the jury is still out and reactions in Sweden mixed. They do note that even with lax restrictions, social distancing is largely being followed. This article is fairly current: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53498133 This is from a June interview: Sweden’s top epidemiologist has admitted his strategy to fight Covid-19 resulted in too many deaths, after persuading his country to avoid a strict lockdown. “If we were to encounter the same illness with the same knowledge that we have today, I think our response would land somewhere in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world has done,” Anders Tegnell said in an interview with Swedish Radio.

Maybe if Arkstfan says it someone will believe it, bc I am having no luck convincing anyone here that COVID isn’t just about deaths.

And Sweden has stated that they probably got it wrong.

If you don’t curb the spread then a 99% recovery rate means 3.27 million dead from the virus if everyone gets it. You ok with that? That is completely ignoring the economic and public health impacts and only focusing on deaths. Also ignoring the medium to long term negative health effects on those who recover. Herd immunity without a vaccine is bullshit. But let’s look at the minimum for herd immunity at 60%. That means close to 200 million infected. Again, ignoring the health care costs and missed work of those that get sick (-and the impact on the healthcare workers who have to treat them) that puts us at nearly 2,000,000 dead. You ok with that?

I’m digging these short, to the point responses.

Ok that is fair. I understand hyperbole isn’t helpful in this case. And I missed the last line of your post and I apologize. I know you haven’t been all-in on some of these measures like masks but I appreciate that you are asking questions and listening - even if you don’t agree in the end. In the long term, for ourselves personally and our country, listening is pretty healthy.

San Antonio Community College and Washateria

What the douchebag are you talking about? Social distancing is to prevent infections. No infection, no need for expensive treatment. You should argue that the political leaders arguing to open early or ignore the virus were hoping to profit from the spread of the virus. Again if this is a bit it is the worst. If it isn’t then you are the worst. This whole experience has been a stark lesson that our healthcare system from top to bottom need to be reformed. And nothing more than this bullshit where we subsidize companies to develop drugs them they turn around and gouge us.

Thomas, you asked how they could have been prevented and I gave you my best analysis of how. We definitely would have experienced deaths had all I mentioned occurred but much fewer. Tens of thousands less, maybe well over 100k less. Easily. We know this by looking at the data. Many countries that had the virus early on took decisive measure and largely stopped it or slowed it dramatically. New Zealand, Thailand, and Singapore had a couple dozen deaths. South Korea around 300, Australia 255. Japan and Nigeria around 1000. These counties did what they had to do. But all of those countries are smaller than the US, so probably more informative to look at per capita deaths rather than absolute numbers. In those terms we are 8th worst in the world at 483 per million. In the top 20 you see countries of all sizes and demographics. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/ Bottom line is that with proper measures - many of them as simple as good information and messaging - we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

Even as a bit, not funny.

I think most can agree that the PRC bungled their initial response. Suppression of truth or criticism is always going to be their initial reaction, as it is in any authoritarian society. Going back to @THOR's question about how the outcome here could have been different, I point you to the above statement. Our own leaders met this coming crisis in a similar fashion. Countries that contained this effectively did so early and through decisive measures with a combination of mask wearing, quarantines, internal and external travel restrictions, widespread testing, contact tracing, and information campaigns. It is impossible to take one country's example and use it as a template for the US or another country, but let me take a stab at it in general. First, from the very start our top leadership should have clearly messaged that this was a national security and public health threat (yes national security - not all national security threats are from or solved by a military). Instead we were given denials and vague promises that it all was well. It wasn't. It still isn't and it has taken until the end of July for the leadership to finally admit that. It was only in the last couple of weeks that the President signaled it was important to wear a mask despite rules in many cities and states that require them. Instead we got tweets encouraging resistance to mask and quarantine measures. We also would have benefited from a unified response from the National Security Council directorate for global health and security and bio-defense but unfortunately it was disbanded in 2018. Not having a QB to run the offense (well in this case defense) slowed our response. Our mask policy was also kind of a disaster. In many Asian countries, mask wearing is pretty normal for people with illnesses. We not only don't have that culture, but due to our supply chain weaknesses we didn't have the extra stockpiles to push for early adoption of mask wearing. Simply put, there was an impossible decision to make: push for ordinary citizens to wear masks or end up with medical workers without masks. In some cases, medical workers still ended up without masks, but had Americans gone out and bought masks like they did toilet paper, we would have had maskless doctors all over the country. Most of our masks are made in China or other countries where they needed the supply themselves. Had we ramped up domestic production of personal protective equipment (PPE) early on, we might have been able to push masks earlier and saved more lives. We had the legal mechanism to do so, but it didn't happen. Testing was another disaster. We rejected a WHO offer for tests and decided to make our own. That was fumbled and ended up with bad tests. Also, FDA rules initially prevented state and commercial labs from developing their own coronavirus diagnostic tests, even if they could develop coronavirus PCR primers on their own. So we ended up behind the curve in testing by MILLIONS compared to other countries. If you don't test enough, you can't contain the virus. You have to know where the outbreaks are happening in order to set the right policies for that location. Which leads me to contact tracing. We just didn't do it sufficiently. I know of many people who flew into the United States without any medical screening or registration for contact tracing. No one even asked them from which countries they had traveled. If someone ends up sick and they just flew in from overseas, you would want to know everyone they contacted including their flight and then test all of them. But we didn't have enough tests, so it was a moot point in some ways. In contrast, where I live all flights were canceled in March and then anyone who came in on special repatriation flights was tested and put in quarantine. After two negative tests several days apart, then they could go home to self-isolate for two weeks. If they tested positive they completed their quarantine in a special hospital. In the US, you showed your passport and then went to Chilis with your friends for margs and fajitas. A lot of this comes down to leadership. At the national, state, and local level many politicians were more concerned with the next election than with a real public health response to a national level threat. We had the experience of Wuhan and Italy to see what a poor response looked like. And we had South Korea and Singapore to see what a good response looked like. As I said initially, we could not have just laid down a Korean template here and fixed everything, but we certainly could have tried to pull lessons learned from around the world to come up with a response early enough to limit the damage. We did not. Thomas, I hope this answers your question, at least in part. TL;DR version: decisive action and clear messaging, ramp up domestic PPE supply chain, use existing tests instead of wait to mess up our own, better contact tracing and arrivals control, and masks earlier.

Good for you! Thanks for thinking of your fellow alumni!

I am not sure how many studies I need to post on this site showing unexpected lingering effects from COVID - and not just lungs. But let’s say lungs are the primary concern. How does that work out for an aspiring young athlete (or dancer, singer, firefighter, or any physical profession)? Not so great. You don’t go on a ventilator one week and back to practice the next. But it isn’t just lungs: there have been studies showing patients with brain, kidney, and heart damage as well. Still early to know for sure everything or how lasting this damage is, but I keep asking myself: why is it worth the risk?

Hopefully he doesn’t want to stay close to home, bc we are arguably the best program on that list, especially with our facilities.

Yes three LBs over 20 years is AMAZING!! Much better than 6 straight bowl wins and 14 draft picks over 7 years.. Being objective about how much we still need to improve is ok, boys and girls. “During his tenure, Holtz has built not just a winning program, but a consistent winning program as the Bulldogs have recorded six straight winning seasons and six straight bowl victories. In his seven years at LA Tech, Holtz has amassed 56 victories as head coach which is the third most in program history. He has had 14 players selected in the NFL Draft, the most in C-USA. Among them are defensive tackle Vernon Butler who was selected in the first round of the 2016 NFL Draft by the Carolina Panthers with the 30th overall selection as well as defensive backs L'Jarius Sneed and Amik Robertson who were taken with back-to-back picks in the fourth round of the 2020 NFL Draft by the Kansas City Chiefs and Las Vegas Raiders, respectively. Holtz has coached five All-Americans and 48 All-Conference USA selections”

That and also LaTech is a better program that consistently puts players in the NFL.

See? This is why we can’t have nice things. From what I have read on this board, I think many here would be ok with this. #itsonlyagame

This. I am not even sure I totally disagree with him or the article, but it just seems dumb for a coach to be so public and absolute about it on social media. Also he doesn’t just represent himself, it can be taken as AD policy.

Here is our softball coach saying “Bye Felicia” to players. Can’t imagine that will help with team morale.

Meanwhile on the other coast.. Up to 28 players