The NFL Solves COVID
The National Football League (NFL) has succeeded in following the science where the CDC, NIH, OSHA, White House Coronavirus Task Force, elite Universities, and most States’ Health Departments have failed. A sports league has shown they are superior at assessing changing circumstances, analyzing data and rapidly implementing new guidelines. Moreover, these new scientifically valid guidelines support a return to open, normal operations. Nonetheless, Clutchpoints -a social media-based website- called the NFL’s decision “shocking.”
Increased positive covid tests wreaked havoc with the Week 15 NFL schedule. Games were moved to Monday and Tuesday. Key players were ruled ineligible to play. Not only were the teams affected, but millions of Fantasy Football players competing in their playoffs found a season’s worth of planning in danger. How would the NFL save its season?
Taking decisive action, the NFL decided to DECREASE covid testing. Whereas Harvard increased testing of asymptomatic vaccinated students to thrice weekly, the NFL STOPPED testing asymptomatic vaccinated players altogether. While New York is considering closing schools again, while Radio City Music Hall shut down the Rockettes Christmas Show, the NFL is going full steam ahead:
“The NFL will stop mandating weekly COVID-19 tests for asymptomatic vaccinated players, according to memos distributed Saturday that described a major shift in the league’s approach to the pandemic.
The new protocols, which take effect next week, could allow the virus to spread undetected through locker rooms, and could increase opportunities for infected but otherwise healthy players to participate in games.
The changes come two days after the NFL eased its return-to-play protocol for players who test positive, one day after three games were postponed, and at the end of a week in which the virus sent over 100 players to the league’s reserve/COVID-19 list.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in a Saturday memo, however, that “roughly two-thirds” of cases among NFL players and staff this week have been asymptomatic, while “most of the remaining individuals have only mild symptoms.”
Those facts, amid what NFL chief medical officer Allen Sills called ‘a new phase of the pandemic,’ led to Saturday’s change, which some experts believe endangers not only players themselves but their family members and people they come into contact with away from football.… Sills said earlier this week that many of the 100-plus who’ve tested positive this week would not have even sought a test based on symptoms. Washington Football Team doctor Tony Casolaro told reporters Saturday that of his team’s 23 players who tested positive this week, only two would have been held out of practice solely based on symptoms.”
God Bless Dr. Sills. With his advisers, he decided that the reality of COVID today calls for actions different than 2 years ago. A fly fisherman and tri-athlete, Dr. Sills trained at The Johns Hopkins and is now a full Professor of Neurological Surgery at Vanderbilt. His C.V. is as impressive as any I’ve seen. Now, if we could only persuade him to become the Chief of COVID Policy for the entire country, we would be on our way to a quick recovery.
