I really think people need to just take a breather. There is quite a bit of wiggle room here and the only thing that has been consistent over the past year is things can and will change. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a scenario where this doesn’t end up as a full two week shutdown for the team assuming they can demonstrate no exposure to the new strain. It’s also possible that this is just the start of another wave that shuts everything down in a matter of weeks.
The only thing I can say with certainty is implying a persons alumni status is going to lead them to make a vindictive decision in the names of sport rivalry is idiotic.
I’d also add: If you are seeing spread of B117 across multiple teams that you are having trouble tracking… it might make a lot of sense to at least pause for some point until you can get a handle on it via testing, etc.
It makes a lot less sense if it is spread across isolated teams and your contact tracing is still in place for other teams but even 3-4 days of testing/quarantine could give you a clearer picture of that.
When you said, “I wouldn’t be surprised to see a scenario where this doesn’t end up as a full two week shutdown for the team assuming they can demonstrate no exposure to the new strain.”
Are you kidding? There is context to this situation. Being in Michigan, I’m predicting that the student athletes will be in isolation for the full 14 days (and what happens if some student athletes come down with the variant 5 days from now?). If we were in Florida there may be that wiggle room. Based on recent history, here in Michigan, I see no reason to be optimistic. Just look at what they have done to H.S. sports. The experts just keep making stuff up and call in “science”. I call BS.
As mentioned above, the report that this was a “recommendation” and not a command from the health department to the athletic department indicates that our AD may be able to decide when or who gets to begin competition again.
Granted, we don’t really know how much weight a recommendation like that carries. Not sure it would be a good look if our AD blatantly ignored recommendations from the state health department.
I have to agree with many above that this decision to shut down MBB makes no sense. It has been reported that more than 50% of the positive tests in Israel are of the new UK strain (strangely calling this strain the UK strain does not seem to elicit any opprobation from the usual morality police). It was first detected by our AD because they are doing a lot of testing. This strain is probably spreading fast in 100+ venues in Michigan now.
Shutting down MI athletics in such an arbitrary way seems to be nothing but theater from folks who specialize in theater.
And we all have to miss the great show Juwan’s team was putting on for us.
Except Michigan was struggling a bit at the time of the runway incident and it helped them rally as an 8 seed in the Big Ten tourney. They were bubbly going into the BTT and winning the tourney only got them a 7 seed. This Michigan team is rolling heading into this road block so they didn’t exactly need a spark
Warde should take personal responsibility for the botched effort.
If it is just a recommendation from State, Warde should at least try to find exception for players/program who had no contact with all and suspected affected personal. If they had contact, then they should be quarantined and no one should be upset.
If the goal is to stamp out the new strain or at least slows it down, there needs to be more actions beyond shutting down UM AD.
Yeah that would invite huge liability to the university. They can’t and won’t go against state health recommendations and the State knows it.
Also in regards to this variant- I read that only .3% of positive tests are being tested for variant strains right now. This decision is a blinking red light for no other community to test their positive cases and a punishment for the university trying to actually figure this crisis out.
The state should focus on getting vaccines to its citizens as quickly as possible. Washtenaw county alone is holding 24,000 vaccines and cancelling appointments for eligible individuals.
My 60 year old mother (Washtenaw County resident) who is a volunteer pharmacist at Hope Clinic 4 days a week got her appointment canceled with no explanation. I was under the impression that they just ran out. Do you have a source on them holding the vaccines? I really cannot put into words how frustrating and disheartening that would be if true.