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Should the NFL Play at all in 2020? RBF

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i could be wrong, but some of the posters on in this thread may not have/want access to the politics forum.
And? The thread isn't about the Browns playing football anymore, it's about arguing for kids to go to school. The damn Rona thread got put into the politics forum because we are stupid enough to assign politics to everything. Here we are doing the shit again in a Browns thread, but it's perfectly acceptable because an admin started the hijacking.

Humanity can't die soon enough.
 
We actually agree that those stats are incredibly problematic, and I did categorize. I do believe 100% in the rest of my statement. The people who followed guidelines from The National Institutes of Health of the United States should not be blamed in the hindsight game, the people who ignored The National Institutes of Health of the United States should.

I agree with that. However, I'm not sure that "blame" matters in terms of formulating policy.

The reality is that compliance was never going to be universal simply because we're dealing with human beings. Especially ornery Americans who tend to be more mistrustful of government than most. But even if everyone's "intent" was compliance -- which was never going to happen -- there are simply too many essential jobs that require too much contact, masks aren't even close to being 100% effective, etc.. So, any strategy that required universal compliance to succeed was never going to succeed. Covid is/was going to be bubbling around out there for a long time, just waiting for the first large-scale lifting of restrictions to re-emerge. Whatever strategy we adopted had to begin with that assumption.

One idiot whose name I won't mention said a few weeks ago that if we all are just good about wearing masks and social distancing for a month or two, we'd be able to open schools as normal in the fall. Well, no. Covid won't be eradicated by then, and the second you open back up, it will pop back up. That has happened time and time again everywhere.

The only realistic choice is between either 1) maintaining social distancing -- including no in-person schooling, no mass returns to work, no bars, not clubs, etc.etc. masks, and other prophylactic measures indefinitely, unless/until an effective vaccine is widely available to everyone, which could be 12 months or more (Fauci said yesterday he hopes we can see a return to "near normal" in "a year or 18 months", or 2) open things back up for the general population, with the most the most vulnerable population most likely to need hospitalization continuing to self-isolate, and let it run its course otherwise without shutting down sports, schools, businesses, restaurants, etc., just because people get sick.

I think there are perfectly valid arguments in support of either approach. I just can't stand the bogus argument that if we just comply for "a little bit longer", things can return to normal. That's like telling your kids that you'll be at Grandpa's in 15 minutes when you know damn well you've got 6 more hours in the car.
 
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i could be wrong, but some of the posters on in this thread may not have/want access to the politics forum.

Or, asked for access and were denied for vague, ambiguous reasons.
 
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But in general, the COVID deaths are the best indicator we have of the way the virus hit each country.

Just because something is the "best indicator" does not mean it is sufficiently accurate to be a valid basis for cross-national comparisons. Your best indicator can still suck.

Also, the whole COVID-for-profit conspiracy that it's a prevalent, rampant problem tends to fall apart when you look into it.

Let me be clear -- I have never believed for a second in any "conspiracy". It is not fake, it is a real disease that has killed/hurt a lot of people. But there are shitloads of other things disease, activities, etc., that do the same. The question is whether the magnitude of this particular disease is sufficient to justify the reaction. Because the reaction is not without very real costs of its own. Not just in terms of health/life itself, but in terms of quality and enjoyment of life, which is something that has been massively under-discussed. And how individual people choose to balance that is not something for which there is an objectively "right" or "wrong" answer.

Now, some people who do believe there is an objectively right or wrong answer to that may, in good faith, slant or steer facts, recommendations, etc., in their direction so as to lead people to believe that their approach is the wisest/best. That doesn't take a conspiracy, though. It's just a normal way that people behave when attempting to convince others. And because so many doctors are risk averse in health matters...they naturally lean in that direction.

I have to imagine this conspiracy theory originated from only one place--that Medicare insurance reimburses hospitals more for a COVID patient than they do for a simpler respiratory illness, like pneumonia, the cold, or the flu. Is this accurate?

If you're talking about the specific issue of some deaths being wrongly attributed to Covid because of reimbursement, there are a bunch of sources for that. One of whom is the director of the CDC himself who testified to that, and noted that they've seen that phenomenon before with other diseases:


That doesn't mean that all the numbers are fake -- it just means that there is some degree of inflation which makes it more difficult to simply compare raw numbers cross-nationally. The exact magnitude of that is inherently unknowable. If you say that absolutely is not happening, well, people are free to decide whether to believe you, or believe the head of the CDC.

I think we're getting a bit off the NFL theme here....

This all goes to the same point -- should the NFL season (or any other sports season) be shut down if there is a Covid outbreak, or should that simply be considered -- to put it bluntly -- just something we (and not just NFL players) have to work/play through?

I'm not at all sure there is a single right answer to that, because people, including individual players, may balance risk v. quality of life differently, and therefore may make different decisions.
 
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Just because something is the "best indicator" does not mean it is sufficiently accurate to be a valid basis for cross-national comparisons. Your best indicator can still suck.
The level of "suck" depends on what you try and use the data point to represent.

Let me be clear -- I have never believed for a second in any "conspiracy". It is not fake, it is a real disease that has killed/hurt a lot of people. But there are shitloads of other things disease, activities, etc., that do the same. The question is whether the magnitude of this particular disease is sufficient to justify the reaction. Because the reaction is not without very real costs of its own. Not just in terms of health/life itself, but in terms of quality and enjoyment of life, which is something that has been massively under-discussed. And how individual people choose to balance that is not something for which there is an objectively "right" or "wrong" answer.

Now, some people who do believe there is an objectively right or wrong answer to that may, in good faith, slant or steer facts, recommendations, etc., in their direction so as to lead people to believe that their approach is the wisest/best. That doesn't take a conspiracy, though. It's just a normal way that people behave when attempting to convince others. And because so many doctors are risk averse in health matters...they naturally lean in that direction.
I'm not sure what you're responding to, but I'm simply referring to your insinuation that the US's numbers aren't worth their weight because of profit motive for reporting cases as COVID.

If you're talking about the specific issue of some deaths being wrongly attributed to Covid because of reimbursement, there are a bunch of sources for that. One of whom is the director of the CDC himself who testified to that, and noted that they've seen that phenomenon before with other diseases:


That doesn't mean that all the numbers are fake -- it just means that there is some degree of inflation which makes it more difficult to simply compare raw numbers cross-nationally. The exact magnitude of that is inherently unknowable. If you say that absolutely is not happening, well, people are free to decide whether to believe you, or believe the head of the CDC.
Or, you can be rational and understand that both can be true instead of the false dichotomy you're presenting. I never said this wasn't happening--I'm saying it's not rampant. I agree with the source you quote that this happened. However, I reject the editorial conclusions you draw from that information. The small level of occurrence isn't worth discrediting the overwhelming amount of data that's available. If that data is off by a few percentage points, it's still pretty useful.

This all goes to the same point -- should the NFL season (or any other sports season) be shut down if there is a Covid outbreak, or should that simply be considered -- to put it bluntly -- just something we (and not just NFL players) have to work/play through?

I'm not at all sure there is a single right answer to that, because people, including individual players, may balance risk v. quality of life differently, and therefore may make different decisions.
I agree with you here, but the impact to people who aren't competing on the field should be part of the equation as well.
 
Or, you can be rational and understand that both can be true instead of the false dichotomy you're presenting. I never said this wasn't happening--I'm saying it's not rampant. I agree with the source you quote that this happened. However, I reject the editorial conclusions you draw from that information. The small level of occurrence isn't worth discrediting the overwhelming amount of data that's available. If that data is off by a few percentage points, it's still pretty useful.

This x10. Not only is that not rampant and has been blown out of proportion, but it doesn't mean that COVID-19 wasn't spreading and causing deaths at a dangerous rate.

The US has only averaged about 11k deaths per week in the last 5 or so years (I don't know the numbers beyond that). There were fluctuations but nothing that was an extreme outlier. If COVID-19 reported deaths was replacing others at the rampant rate people have suggested, then that number (11k) would not have fluctuated much. However, in the height of the pandemic, the US weekly deaths averaged a WHOPPING 22K - that's a 100% increase. That's with social distancing and masks curbing the spread. So it's not just hospitals attributing other deaths to COVID-19 or we wouldn't have seen such a massive increase in total US deaths per week.
 
This x10. Not only is that not rampant and has been blown out of proportion, but it doesn't mean that COVID-19 wasn't spreading and causing deaths at a dangerous rate.

The US has only averaged about 11k deaths per week in the last 5 or so years (I don't know the numbers beyond that). There were fluctuations but nothing that was an extreme outlier. If COVID-19 reported deaths was replacing others at the rampant rate people have suggested, then that number (11k) would not have fluctuated much. However, in the height of the pandemic, the US weekly deaths averaged a WHOPPING 22K - that's a 100% increase. That's with social distancing and masks curbing the spread. So it's not just hospitals attributing other deaths to COVID-19 or we wouldn't have seen such a massive increase in total US deaths per week.
If you really want to do analysis based on the overall number of deaths, you need to adjust the baseline as well due to the changed behavior.

You likely drop the baseline due to people staying at home, which limits motor vehicle accidents and things of that nature.

You likely increase other treatable medical conditions, as people aren't going out to the doctor for preventative care as often.

Overall, I think that baseline would be even lower than your 11k--but there's a lot to consider.
 
Or, you can be rational and understand that both can be true instead of the false dichotomy you're presenting. I never said this wasn't happening--I'm saying it's not rampant. I agree with the source you quote that this happened. However, I reject the editorial conclusions you draw from that information. The small level of occurrence isn't worth discrediting the overwhelming amount of data that's available. If that data is off by a few percentage points, it's still pretty useful.

The problem is that I identified five different sources of error when it comes to comparing death rates across countries. So every error -- whether it be different standards between countries, different standards within a country, different levels of reporting accuracy, or bias up/down, adds to the total error. That just means that any conclusions we would draw about cross-national comparisons based on those numbers has to come with a huge grain of salt. And I don't want to ignite a debate on this particular problem, but I want to give you an example of what I mean.

India's death rate from Covid is tiny. That is despite the fact that access to health care is poor, the country's population density is huge, and that there is tons of travel into and out of India. That low death rate has been cited as evidence that hydroxychloroquine -- which is widely used in India -- is very effective. So say the Indians. But here's the thing -- is that low death rate truly accurate? Because if it isn't, then any conclusions we'd draw from comparing their death rate to others could be wildly wrong. So that's the kind of thing I mean about not drawing policy-based conclusions based on cross-national comparisons that may be based on dissimilar data.

I agree with you here, but the impact to people who aren't competing on the field should be part of the equation as well.

Well, that's part of the problem. There are so many different people with different opinions, and different interests at stake, that it makes it very hard to reach a decision that will enjoy broad support. I'm personally in favor of forging ahead with sports at all levels, but I completely understand the perspectives of those who aren't.

82 year old guy with health issues in my veteran's group came to our last meeting, despite being told that anyone with health concerns shouldn't attend. We asked him why and he said "I'm 82, and I could die any day. I'll be damned if I spend what could be my last months not seeing my friends." There's nothing right or wrong about that -- it's just the way he personally values risks. And we're all really in the same boat in terms of valuing those things differently.

How to pro athletes feel about missing a season v. the risk of coronavirus? Well, they're not all going to think the same, but it seems apparent that most of them actually want to play. So why not?
 
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And? The thread isn't about the Browns playing football anymore, it's about arguing for kids to go to school. The damn Rona thread got put into the politics forum because we are stupid enough to assign politics to everything. Here we are doing the shit again in a Browns thread, but it's perfectly acceptable because an admin started the hijacking.

Humanity can't die soon enough.

For about a week the subject changed to compensation for college football players, I was proud to get it 50% back on track for a few hours.

Feel free to circle back to the NFL. I don't think it's going to last a whole season but I put most of my thoughts into the article.
 
Where do you get that they’re are LIFELONG issues when the disease has been here for all of 5 months?

I mean that can’t be proven at all.

You can choose to play coy or ignore that these effects are life long. While there is no evidence that if I cut someone's leg off that it wont grow back, we know it is lifelong damage. Same is true for scar tissue and weakening of the heart and lungs. We know what the damage is, there is 100+ year medical evidence that the type of damage being done to the heart and lungs is life long, but yes, Covid could magically grow extra lungs in the future, it is a very new virus.

Honestly your best argument for football is that the players both college and pros have a bigger risk in CTE. 1% or so of the population will have some type of permanent damage from Covid (it might be lower, just a guess), I think CTE will be far higher in the pro football players and most likely higher in people who stop playing after college. But arguing that the damage isn't permanent when doctors say it is quite frankly is disingenuous and just a deflection of what you know is the truth....Covid sucks.
 
82 year old guy with health issues in my veteran's group came to our last meeting, despite being told that anyone with health concerns shouldn't attend. We asked him why and he said "I'm 82, and I could die any day. I'll be damned if I spend what could be my last months not seeing my friends." There's nothing right or wrong about that -- it's just the way he personally values risks. And we're all really in the same boat in terms of valuing those things differently.

What makes the current situation difficult is that it's a shared risk. The 82 year old contracting covid-19 is putting friends, families, doctors/nurses, strangers, etc... at greater risk, even if he himself is content with that risk. People here in the US don't understand shared responsibility or simply don't care about it.
 
The problem is that I identified five different sources of error when it comes to comparing death rates across countries. So every error -- whether it be different standards between countries, different standards within a country, different levels of reporting accuracy, or bias up/down, adds to the total error. That just means that any conclusions we would draw about cross-national comparisons based on those numbers has to come with a huge grain of salt. And I don't want to ignite a debate on this particular problem, but I want to give you an example of what I mean.

India's death rate from Covid is tiny. That is despite the fact that access to health care is poor, the country's population density is huge, and that there is tons of travel into and out of India. That low death rate has been cited as evidence that hydroxychloroquine -- which is widely used in India -- is very effective. So say the Indians. But here's the thing -- is that low death rate truly accurate? Because if it isn't, then any conclusions we'd draw from comparing their death rate to others could be wildly wrong. So that's the kind of thing I mean about not drawing policy-based conclusions based on cross-national comparisons that may be based on dissimilar data.
Like everything in life, you have to analyze situations independently and make the best decision you can.

I am not going to pretend to be an expert on Indian society, but in India's case, I would imagine that their population, coupled with their infrastructure, wouldn't lead to accurate COVID-19 counts. If I wanted to attempt to draw a conclusion of what the impact has been in India so far, I would look at the death rates this year compared to previous years. I would adjust each data point to exclude things that are atypical, like a natural disaster (not removing 100% of deaths due to the disaster, but rather 100% minus the expected death rate in the locality where the disaster occurred). I would then adjust again for any behavioral changes this year. From a wildly ignorant standpoint, that should give you a data point you can work with and start to compare to the impact elsewhere.

Well, that's part of the problem. There are so many different people with different opinions, and different interests at stake, that it makes it very hard to reach a decision that will enjoy broad support. I'm personally in favor of forging ahead with sports at all levels, but I completely understand the perspectives of those who aren't.

82 year old guy with health issues in my veteran's group came to our last meeting, despite being told that anyone with health concerns shouldn't attend. We asked him why and he said "I'm 82, and I could die any day. I'll be damned if I spend what could be my last months not seeing my friends." There's nothing right or wrong about that -- it's just the way he personally values risks. And we're all really in the same boat in terms of valuing those things differently.

How to pro athletes feel about missing a season v. the risk of coronavirus? Well, they're not all going to think the same, but it seems apparent that most of them actually want to play. So why not?
Huh, imagine that. The issue is complex and affects a lot of people. You don't say!

I don't know what the exit strategy is now, but I feel we should have a plan and then the NFL, and other organizations, should analyze how they fit into that plan. I was arguing in February for an eradication strategy that started at the smallest level and worked its way up. I still think that's the best way to handle this disease, but every day you let it grow that becomes harder. So, from that standpoint, I would push for schools and other organizations to just not open--let's finally put a fucking stop to this thing. For the NFL? Eh--I don't think it's realistic to have a safe season. Even under the assumption of no fans, each player, coach, and staff member comes from different social circles. The biggest thing you need to stop is these events where people from different circles meet, exchange the virus, and bring it back to their circle.
 
What makes the current situation difficult is that it's a shared risk. The 82 year old contracting covid-19 is putting friends, families, doctors/nurses, strangers, etc... at greater risk, even if he himself is content with that risk. People here in the US don't understand shared responsibility or simply don't care about it.
Imagine if he lives in a nursing home, and brings that virus back, and kills 50 people. Let's say he only lives with his grandson, who catches the disease, doesn't die, but has tissue scarring that negatively affects the rest of his life. This individual shouldn't be allowed to make those decisions for innocent bystanders. Your rights are not absolute. They end where they infringe on the rights of others.

Just... I'm so sick of the selfish fucks we have to deal with. It's half a year gone with no end in sight.

I'm a little hopeful that the US's social circles right now look like one giant fucking ring with people who have been ignoring everything, and then a bunch of isolated circles with people who have been responsible and mindful, and want this disease to end as quickly as possible. I also hope the 5 million reported case number represents about 10% of true cases. I also hope that most people are immune or more safe from the disease after they have it once. IF all those come true, then we might be closer to a herd immunity amongst the shitty group than we realize, and this thing could start to die off.

That's... a lot of hoping, and probably not realistic. But hey, you gotta cling to something, right?
 
I don't know what the exit strategy is now, but I feel we should have a plan and then the NFL, and other organizations, should analyze how they fit into that plan. I was arguing in February for an eradication strategy that started at the smallest level and worked its way up. I still think that's the best way to handle this disease, but every day you let it grow that becomes harder. So, from that standpoint, I would push for schools and other organizations to just not open--let's finally put a fucking stop to this thing. For the NFL? Eh--I don't think it's realistic to have a safe season. Even under the assumption of no fans, each player, coach, and staff member comes from different social circles. The biggest thing you need to stop is these events where people from different circles meet, exchange the virus, and bring it back to their circle.

I find the NFL case interesting like I said before. If we take all the risk playing, CTE, injury, other brain trauma, and then take that risk vs the Covid risk alone, I think the Covid risk is far less than just playing the game by itself.

So from a pro (Not college) stand point, how much greater of a risk is it for them to try and play during the outbreak? I think the NFL can have a fanless season with an acceptable risk to me as the risk of just playing the sport is decently high.
 

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