08-24-2020, 08:28 PM
Again, positive tests, in and of themselves, aren't that big a deal, so long as a) they don't lead to serious disease (including myocarditis) and b) they don't propagate the infection to vulnerable populations.
The risk of b can be mitigated by making sure that athletes stay away from vulnerable people (perhaps easier said than done). The question is what is the risk of a is, and what the acceptable risk is. We know it is generally pretty low, but given the Georgia State QB, we know it is not 0. Would college football accept a 1% risk (one player per team) of myocarditis or severe COVID? And to what extent does the natural history of COVID-19 myocarditis change that. If any of the players wind up with permanent, career-ending heart failure as a result (it is worth reminding people that players intrinsically accept a small but non-zero chance of a career-ending spinal cord injury [as Curtis Williams, the UW linebacker, suffered during a game against Stanford]). There is a line somewhere; the problem is that we don't know which side of it we will wind up.
BC
The risk of b can be mitigated by making sure that athletes stay away from vulnerable people (perhaps easier said than done). The question is what is the risk of a is, and what the acceptable risk is. We know it is generally pretty low, but given the Georgia State QB, we know it is not 0. Would college football accept a 1% risk (one player per team) of myocarditis or severe COVID? And to what extent does the natural history of COVID-19 myocarditis change that. If any of the players wind up with permanent, career-ending heart failure as a result (it is worth reminding people that players intrinsically accept a small but non-zero chance of a career-ending spinal cord injury [as Curtis Williams, the UW linebacker, suffered during a game against Stanford]). There is a line somewhere; the problem is that we don't know which side of it we will wind up.
BC