Maybe I’m being dramatic, but this seems like way beyond a fireable offense for whoever the hell let this happen.
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Do we have to wait for all sports teams to have no cases before we can restart?
This is the important question right now, imo. The way the health department shut down the entire Athletic Department unilaterally makes it seem like the answer might be yes.
Alternatively they could shut down every team for up to 14 days, while they figure out exactly how far this variant reached throughout the AD, but still would be willing to allow certain teams to ‘test out’ after a week.
We don’t have a lot of info right now besides a purposely broad press release. If the latter ends up being true, then I think the department’s actions will look much more reasonable in hindsight.
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My heartfelt message to COVID and all of its strains:
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You know for a fact that it is those teams?
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Dunno if we’d direct this at the same miscreants, but I love this song. One of I and my sixteen-year-old’s drive time favorites.
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There are a fairly limited number of student-athletes from the UK on a Michigan women’s sports team.
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It is possible to care about the pandemic and also not blindly support any action any governing body decides to take to curtail it. The moral worth of these decisions come from their outcomes (or likely outcomes), not based on the presumed authority of the governing body. Sometimes, you can cede to authority based on not knowing data, but I feel pretty confident that there isn’t any data-based argument being made here for the currently taken approach. I have been very conscientious of COVID and supportive of various lockdown measures. If it turns out the release is more flexible than stated and unaffected teams can get back to playing in a week or so, that seems fine to me although still not particularly evidence-based if we can’t contact trace to them.
But there are two possible goals here
- Limit spread among affected groups
- Stamp out the UK strain in Michigan
Current procedures already accomplish goal 1. The new extension of the policy here seems to be claiming to accomplish goal 2, but clearly and obviously won’t. If they want to lock down Washtenaw County, that’s a much more defensible decision than arbitrarily choosing the Athletic Department as a unit.
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Michigan got itself into the COVID position it did because all of the armchair public health experts that know better. 400K are dead, but we’re theorizing about relocating a team of unpaid players out of state for our entertainment? Come on.
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I suppose if this was some sort of “morality” beauty pageant you would have scored yourself some points just now.
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A bit disingenuous to label a one-off tweet that was deleted as “theorizing” while no one else on this board seriously discussed and Dylan explained why he deleted it, imo, but you’re entitled to your opinion too.
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You’re definitely right in a general sense. But I don’t think any points I’m making would be really refuted by experts? I would imagine that the true recommendation from experts is to shut down Washtenaw, but doing that is a significantly greater expenditure of political capitol.
So if we’re not doing that, what is the utility of shutting down the AD broadly and without nuance? Restaurants are shut down because we know for a fact that keeping them open will lead to a lot of deaths. Can someone reasonably make that argument about the Michigan hockey team? Like we make these decisions because of the overall impact on human life. Is life made better in the long-run for people based on this decision?
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I don’t understand the broad brushstrokes. I wear my mask, I follow protocols set by the state. I’ve isolated myself twice because I want to protect my loved ones. If by some chance i express that this 14-day pause may be overkill for specific teams (which I use as a hypothetical; my personal opinion doesn’t matter) does not mean I’m wantonly contributing to the spread.
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I hear you and think you’re right.
If it’s even an option it should be explored. Stanford basketball had to relocate. It’s no different than the players on Friday they were asked if they were comfortable with playing after the news of Stefanovic being hit with the virus. If this is an option and the players feel comfortable doing it then it should be explored as an option.For some of these guys this is it for them as far as college basketball goes. I think a lot depends on how they feel about putting the rest of their career in the hands of a public health order or the school. I wonder how guys like Livers/Brown/Smith etc…feel that while they were busting their butt playing on Christmas Day there was another athlete that foolishly went to the UK. Now those players can’t play because the foolishness by a fellow student athlete.
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It’s clearly the health department thinking this will keep the UK strain away from the state. But that seems foolhardy to think this will accomplish that. And that leads to people speculating that at what point would they allow the department to start up again if they’re scared of the strain passing throughout the state. Does it need to be completely gone from the department 100%? Treating every team as patient zero seems unfair
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Read Ethans last post here. The State just recommended. Warde Manual and university physicians made the decision. It also states up to 14 days. This may still be reduced IMO.
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My tweet wasn’t worded well and was mostly just trying to point out things that have happened elsewhere in several notable instances.
Athletes are already being put in a ridiculous situation “for our entertainment”. That’s happening across the country and that bridge has been crossed. Having them practice somewhere else wouldn’t change that. These kids are being asked to stay in their rooms, go to practice and go back to their rooms and then travel across the country to play amidst a pandemic. They just were asked if they wanted to play a game against a team that had inevitably been exposed to some degree of COVID. It is a massive sacrifice and they make no money.
My point was just that if the basketball team is isolated and tests negative over some timespan while there’s an outbreak in other programs, what are the steps forward? Does the basketball team continue to isolate until everything is wiped out across the department? If that drags into March, does the basketball team forfeit appearing in the NCAA Tournament even if they’ve been quarantined?
Generally speaking (I believe 1 positive total in the last however many months) the steps that the MBB program has taken have been pretty successful.
We obviously don’t know the specifics of who is positive, etc. but the reporting is that WBB, MBB and hockey have no positive tests.
The only thing that really makes sense is that there’s some sort of spread at a venue where everyone is (something like housing) and that this is the stop that outbreak. Otherwise, it makes no sense to treat programs as one department after spending months coming up with protocols to isolate them.
It will be interesting to see how the whole situation plays out because other strains are going to become a lot more prevalent over the next two months. It seems like the idea is to try to contain this strain to the AD and not let it out across the state. Even if you contain this outbreak, I think it would be a shock if there isn’t a lot more of B117 across the state in 1? 2? 4? weeks?
You can bet that the NCAA decided to put the tournament in Indianapolis with some pretty strong assurances from state/local health departments there because they are absolutely going to figure out a way to play the tournament but things will be very interesting especially if B117 is treated differently to this extent.
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Crap! It was probably inevitable, but CRAP. UM hoops was the one sports thing I could look forward to twice a week.
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