Seriously. Whether or not we play a game in next 2 weeks is just not important enough compared to the kind of damage that an unchecked infections could result. People really need to re-evaulate their life if you are getting this upset over this.
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What unchecked infections? They undergo daily testing and literally lock down any infections as soon as possible. The existing protocols come as close as possible to eliminating any community spread from the basketball team to the AA general population.
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If the program is shut down two weeks, Iām not sure we can just turn around and play a game a couple days after that. The guys would need some time to get back up to speed. We might need another several days off from competition. Otherwise, asking a team that hasnāt played or practiced for two weeks to suddenly take on two of the best teams in the league (Illinois, Wisconsin) is a tall order.
To flip the page on this from a basketball perspective, if we could get going next week and still play @ NW and vs. MSU would give us a better chance to pick up where we left off than taking another week off and then hosting ILL and going to Wisconsin. Plus would only leave 2 games to make up.
First and foremost though, we have to make sure all are safe not only in athletics and the community as a whole.
Youāre not saying anything of real substance here. Sorry to be confrontational, but nobody here disagrees with taking player health and safety seriously. Thereās a difference between being serious about health and implementing an illogical policy on the 1% chance that someone from the swim team (or whatever) is coming in contact with a basketball player.
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This is well stated. When it was decided to play during a pandemic (for purely financial reasons I would argue) there was going to be some risk involved. Shoot, M decided to increase risk by playing Friday given Purdueās situation. But to have some agency far removed from the situation mandate a blanket shutdown but then essentially run away from the mandate given the article above is frustrating.
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Pretty much totally disagree. Very hard to argue the State public health org is far removed from a covid situation, and especially so when Mich Athletics depends on a waiver to play any games at all (see high school athletics, absent another Idiosyncratic exemption for playoff football). No wonder UMās AD considers public health recommendations very seriously!
Also think it is important to recognize that the athletes are 100 percent at the table here. They are used, they deserve compensation, but for the most part they have been all in when it comes to playing in covid. At least from what I can tell. Yes you see some comments in a presser but proof was in the pudding with the Purdue game. Itās not hard to understand, they have put tons of hours in and in some cases have careers on the line.
This is an epochal challenge and smart people will disagree. I hope they figure out a way to execute the test-trace-isolate-whatever protocols we have heard so much about. And that when that process unfolds they release the athletes so I can be Entertained ā¦ thanks Maximus.
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Goodness this thread has really gone some places huh? Definitely sad for the kids in this situation, also sad I donāt get to see them play for a few weeks here, hopefully they can still finish the season strong.
I guess all Iād really say on the matter is even though this really sucks for us as fans, Iām sure we can all get through it one way or another. There are certainly worse things that could happen than this. Hope people can try to take it a little easy on each other here and step away from the situation for a bit, (like I did,) if you need to.
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Guys and girls. Please try to keep this thread on the rails. I get that emotions are riding high but we donāt need to take this deep into politics.
Letās keep this focused on the facts of whatās going on, updates, etc. and not turn this into a political debate.
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Sorry you donāt see the humor in it, scroll on by if you donāt think itās funny.
This just seems so wildly dismissive. Seth brought this up on the MGoPodcast about this tonight, but ignoring the fact that a lot of these athletes are part of the same social circles and do interact on a regular basis, they also share a lot of facilities. Practice and training facilities, dining facilities, the people who wash clothes, clean the facilities, prepare the food for the athletes, etc. are common across multiple sports. Even if the athletes themselves donāt directly interact, thereās a very real possibility they interact with people or areas that other athletes interact with as well. So even if a basketball player and swimmer never cross paths, itās still very possible for the virus to make its way from a swimmer to a basketball player.
This strain of the virus is already well known to be more contagious than the original, which is already highly contagious, hence the 5 known positives and other 15 presumptives. Saying thereās a 1 percent chance of the virus spreading from team to team when A) thereās already been documented cases of team to team spread and B) you have literally no way of knowing that number beyond making it up, is just so unnecessary.
Now you can say āWe have COVID testing in place and protocols to prevent the spread of the virusā, but that doesnāt really hold weight. We all know COVID testing has its limitations (Sasha Stefanovic is example 1 of that). Plus whatever COVID policies we currently have in place allowed for us to play a game at Purdue 3 days after their entire team was in close contact with a confirmed positive, allowed for a student athlete to not quarantine after coming back from the UK, and allowed for the spread of this version of the disease across the athletic department. So maybe stricter policies are needed for a short time.
The response to this can obviously be āWell the athletic department messed up handling this in the first place, why do we trust this response now?ā And thatās fair, by no means am I trying to absolve the athletic department from blame here. But if things are bad, Iād much rather err on the side of caution.
I havenāt posted in this thread before this, and I wonāt afterwards because itās just a mess of opinions in here, but on the whole I think people here need to chill. Yes, it sucks that we canāt watch this team play potentially for a few weeks. Yes, I feel bad for the athletes who have done nothing wrong (especially those infected).
But itās been 24 hours since this news was announced and people already have pitchforks in hand. The announcement was pretty ambiguous in its timeline for how long this will last (āuntil further noticeā). Itās very possible that in 5 days no one from the menās team has tested positive and theyāre cleared to start playing again, and then almost all of this anger was for nothing (Iām also sure that in that scenario very few people would consider the fact that pausing activities like this may have prevented the spread to the basketball team, especially if we see a rise in cases in other sports).
But even worse, itās possible that in X amount days members of the basketball program start testing positive, and then this pause was thoroughly necessary. Or maybe sports are shut down for 14 days, no more spread occurs, and thatās it. In which case peopleās worst case fears come true.
Any of those scenarios could play out. But to be freaking out 24 hours later when we clearly donāt have all the info on how this has played out to this point, or will play out, is just so unnecessary. So maybe everyone can save the anger until we know what actually happens. Because yes, I get it, itās sad we canāt play basketball for 2 weeks in the middle of a pandemic, but maybe thatās okay for 2 weeks.
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Just FWIW, but some of this is covered in current protocols from what I gather. For example, thereās no training table so players are having to cook their own meals instead of getting fed after practice.
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Definitely, Iām sure Michigan and every other school have done what they can to cover all of that in existing protocols. But considering that inter-team spread has already occured, there are clearly either gaps in the protocols or failures in enforcing the protocols (or inter-team interactions outside the scope of the protocols which is just as big an issue with regards to virus spread) that have resulted in the inter-team spread. So taking a pause of up to two weeks to correct those issues/limit any further spread seems incredibly logical to me.
I think the big question is to what degree of āinter-teamā spread there is. I donāt think we have any reporting right now about that. We do know that itās been reported that the MBB, WBB and Hockey teams donāt have positive cases (right now).
We have no way of knowing that right now. I assume the first step to all of this will be a lot of testing starting on Monday. Based on the memo, PCR testing not rapid.
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Agreed. Step one is figuring that out. But since we donāt know the answer, it seems like a much better idea to try and isolate everyone right now, prevent as much interaction between people as possible now, and then run some tests over these next few days/week to figure it out. Then once we have our answer, we can hopefully move on from an athletics wide ban to individualized policies for each team/person.
Itās being reported that thereās no cases in MBB, WBB and hockey like you said, but just because there are 0 cases today doesnāt mean there will be 0 cases in 3,4,5 or more days. Since the athletic department clearly doesnāt have a high level of confidence in how vast this inter-team spread is, once again Iād rather err on the side of caution and get an idea for what that answer is before we operate as normal. Because if somehow the inter-team spread has made its way to those 3 teams and they operate as normal, now youāre risking mass spread around not only those teams, but the teams they play at other schools.
Best case scenario, we find out it hasnāt spread to those teams (or any besides the ones affected now), and the un-affected sports can start to continue ASAP (ideally less than the 14 days in the memo now, but Iāll leave the timeline up to the medical experts).
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My question is what happens to a program that catches a positive test of the B117 virus in a month. Whether it is at UM or another in-state school. Is the plan to handle that differently than āold COVIDā moving forward? Because there is only going to be more of the new variant, not less.
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I donāt know the answer to that, the medical experts are probably the best suited to answer that. And maybe the new variant is a game changer that shuts down athletics in the same way we saw last year, at least until the vaccine is widely available.
Or maybe the answer is it gets treated the same way as the current strand, once we have a better grasp on where it stands now so that we can effectively contact trace. Clearly the original strand was potent enough to cause program wide shutdowns at other B1G schools and schools all over the country. So an individual program being shut down isnāt anything new. What is new is an entire school shutting down athletics for this new strand. However, thatās only happening because Michigan doesnāt feel like it knows how vast the spread of this new variant is. And if you donāt know who has the disease, you canāt really trace where the cases have been and will go.
So hopefully the answer is pause for up to 14 days, get an understanding of how wide-spread this is, and then we feel confident in operating under previously established policies that allow us to test/contact trace effectively so we donāt get mass inter-team spread. Or maybe the answer is this new strand is too contagious to effectively contain while trying to play sports without a vaccine.
I think youāre asking a good question, but a really hard one to answer and one that I sure as he*l donāt know the answer to. And maybe the medical community doesnāt yet either.
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Yeah, to be clear I wasnāt just asking you. More just asking out loud about the situation and how it plays out moving forward.
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The āUP TOā 14 days part is what Iām choosing to focus on. By late in this week weāll have passed the 5-day threshold, and if everybodyās testing negative hopefully there can be something worked out.
Failing that, it would be nice to have confirmation on who we can blame for at least something. Waiting for so long to find out if we can blame somebody for something is very stressful.
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According to the Michigan Onesie Maize Rage member (great source, I know), the only way to distinguish the variant from normal covid is to genetically sequence the test. Something that is only done to 0.3% of Covid tests.
So it seems like the answer so far to that question is to ignore it.
Said source: https://twitter.com/michigan_onesie/status/1353450505201188866?s=21
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