Hi all, I updated the story. The city of Berkeley's public health division confirmed there have been 44 "lab-confirmed" cases of COVID-19 from Cal's football team.
If this were an equipment issue with the tests, then I'm guessing there would be more false positives across all groups who get their tests done here. Unless the testing is done by a group exclusively for the Cal Football team, this would potentially affect the Cal student-athletes of all sports, the UC Berkeley broader student population, and maybe even people in the city of Berkeley. If we aren't seeing outbreaks in those groups, then it seems unlikely to be false positives only affecting the football team.
Plus, there's the statement from Berkeley Health Department that cites people in the football program did not (1) get tested when sick, (2) stay at home when sick, or (3) wear masks indoors. That implies people were symptomatic and still showed up to indoor events unmasked--a recipe for spreading.
Is it reasonable to assume that 30 are players and the others are coaches and staff? This would be based on what the idiot...sorry Knowlton said today about 30 players.
Great question! Of the 44 confirmed COVID-19 cases: 39 are players and five are coaches.
Last week, 24 players and five coaches tested positive. This implies an additional 15 players tested positive this week, as Director Knowlton noted no coaches tested positive since last week.
39 holy bagels!! It would have been prudent to ask the knucklehead how many players that tested + were symptomatic. As I recall, during CG's presser last week he appeared healthy. His tweet would suggest that he was asymptomatic and, in his mind, cleared to play.
Most unprepared CEO I've ever seen. He was just going through the motions and it revealed how utterly incompetent he is. No wonder he needed a search firm to find the unwanted retread Fox.
He communicates like most administrators I know. He tells you what he wants to tell you. And he's covering for whatever it is he doesn't want you to know.
I was a little surprised to see Justbear write "Hopefully this is the end of extra cautiousness with covid." To start off with, Stanley McKenzie's dad just died from Covid. I think we could just stop right there. It's an ongoing, lethal threat. It's never magically disappearing like someone infamously said it would. We are a long way from it being a minor issue with over a thousand people still dying daily (November 8th 1,307 deaths). Even if no player dies or becomes seriously ill, a high percentage of people who have had Covid have long-term symptoms. If nothing else, they can hamper your athletic performance. Anyone remember that Clemson's football team had a HUGE outbreak last year. Hmm... how are they looking this year? Coincidence? At least one of them had serious long-hauler symptoms: https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/32127148/clemson-defensive-end-justin-foster-my-struggle-long-haul-covid. Even if nothing happens to them, they can spread it to members of the community. People like Tony McKenzie. There is a GoFundMe for him.
This episode should reinforce that people and organizations need to continue to be vigilant. Multiple measures need to be taken. The Cal football team, from the information that is coming out, seems to have taken the approach of "Okay, we got the shots, we're all good now." At a minimum, they should have maintained masking while indoors, for prevention, and random testing, for detection. They should have told the guys to continue to be careful: "If you do go to the frat party, chug the beer OUTDOORS."
Well, just to defend myself, I am one of those people that have been extra careful. I counted and I've only hung out with a friend 5 times since the pandemic started and take it seriously.
And I am sorry to hear the loss of Stanley's father. But we have another 10 months until next year's fall season, and what is wrong to hope that things will be better by then? Don't we all wish things get back to normal sooner than later?
THIS! I completely agree napabear. What most people don't understand is that getting vaxxed and taking precautions is not only for yourself, but for others and the community. Unlike say measles or God forbid ebola, COVID is a very difficult one for all of us to deal with rationally because it's more like the common flu. Measles and ebola are more clear cut and the consequences are dramatic so that very few people will doubt it or become lax. With COVID, it's getting harder and harder to maintain the same level of vigilance and caution because the consequences on each individual varies greatly! From nothing all the way to death. I think this is why COVID is the perfect vehicle to latch your political or personal views onto it. It's almost like an inkspot test...it can be viewed, correctly, in many different ways. Anyway, the longer it drags out, the harder it gets. And to think...the virus could have been wiped out, and still can be, in two weeks of real isolation, or full masking, or 90% vaxxing within a short period of time. Because we as a society haven't been willing to do this...the virus lives on! :(
I really don't think it's realistic to "wipe out" this virus, unless you could somehow impose all of those requirements worldwide at the same time. It wouldn't be enough to just do it in the US, because as we've seen, other variants have emerged and spread overseas and later made it to our shores.
Getting it down to a low-level endemic thing, maybe that's possible.
I agree with you. Other diseases have actually been pretty much wiped out with pretty much full vaccination of the entire planet, e.g., polio, measles, smallpox, etc. I saw a documentary about one of those efforts, can't remember which one, but WHO tracked down every last individual and convinced/coerced them to get the vaccine. But with COVID being so mutative, like the flu, and because it's not clearly the ever present danger to everyone that gets infected, a high rate of vax doesn't seem likely. Some countries, like China, New Zealand, Taiwan tried but weren't able to stay at zero. But still, I think the best chance in this global environment and for this country, is to vax the highest percentage possible. And timing does matter...so we don't keep getting new versions starting more waves.
Yeah, 100% in favor of vaxxing as many as possible.
I think the big difference with polio, measles, smallpox, is that they don't mutate so once you vaccinate enough people, that's it. COVID-19, being like a cold/flu virus, is always going to be present in some form, so we just need to keep the impacts manageable.
Depends on what their process was for players demonstrating they'd been vaccinated. If a player has been vaccinated while home and produces a vax card, does the school take that at face value? I'm in Hawaii right now and it's the first time I've had to *actually* prove I've been vaccinated -- everywhere else, a fake vax card would have worked.
I work at a school in SoCal. We were required to upload our vax documentation and the school verified it. Mine was a digital record from the state dept of health.
Yes -- that's the kind of proof I mean. They could contract with CLEAR or another provider who does the back-end work of verification if they wanted/needed to.
Some public health student is going to have one hell of a project. It's pretty rare to have a population tested like this so they should be able to get some solid data on the virus. Just...wow.
The vaccines did their job by keeping cases either mild or asymptomatic (we're at the "living with COVID" phase. "zero covid" has gone). But this is either this is some powerful new variant (unlikely) or other teams around the country have missed countless outbreaks (likely). With these numbers I'm now really curious to see if I have antibodies to the virus (as opposed to the vaccine).
Hopefully this is the end of extra cautiousness with covid, and next year we just live with it and no more Covid policies for NCAA. It sounds like at Cal, and at other universities there may have been many healthy students who tested positive or never knew they were positive because they never tested it, and everyone seems to be doing fine. There may be some sick guys who show symptoms, but they just stay home until they get better.
That's my hope as well. I already think the current policy is a little too stringent for the current reality in Berkeley, but I understand that it's the policy that was set out at the beginning of the season and was not likely to be changed.
Hard to predict since pandemics rarely end; they fade into the background. We SHOULD have enough tools available worldwide (vaccines, testing, therapeutics) to make it happen but there are so many wildcards. The only thing we can't do is declare "pandemic over" prematurely.
"Everyone who didn’t make the trip was a positive. It wasn’t because of contact tracing.”
So Knowlton confirmed that all of the guys were actually positive. He didn't say if there were any negative results afterwards. Either way, the players who tested positive would not be allowed to participate for 10 days, so those players that did not travel last week should not be complaining. Am I correct?
In the press conference, Director Knowlton confirmed there is no "test out" so any subsequent negative tests are a moot point. He also confirmed he would not have let players who had tested positive for COVID-19o travel or play.
The players have every right to complain if they tested positive, but then had multiple negative tests. Its also a shame that their private medical history is now public knowledge, but HIPAA has long not been applicable to athletes for some unknown reason.
Unfortunately Knowlton had no data on the alleged negative tests, which begs the question why didn't he come to the meeting with the data or bring someone who had the data. His staff had to know that this would be a question asked. Totally incompetent that Knowlton.
Once again, I’m calling bullshit on the 99% vaccination rate at this point.
If I’m understanding Knowltons comments correctly, we had 24 positive players last week and another 30 positive players this week for a total of 54 players testing positive over two weeks. Or do we have some overlap between these two groups?
Something just doesn’t seem right that a football team can go through 8 regular season games with no breakthrough cases and then in a span of two weeks have 54 cases. Was Cal not testing any players at all through the season?
For Rugs and GOAT, this is not me being critical of Wilcox or Garbers or Cal football. This is me just asking questions of how we can go from 0 positive cases in weeks 1-8 to 54 in weeks 9-10.
Thanks fully this season and year are almost over and I believe Covid protocols and testing will be a thing of the past once the 23 season starts.
Yeah, I think you may have heard him wrong. He said, this week they had a few additional + tests, however, those few additional impacted 1 position group thereby making it unsafe to play the game. So, the aggregate total of players is 30. Additionally, Knowlton said that at the beginning of the season they tested daily and as the season wore on they ONLY tested players displaying symptoms (this seems incredibly stupid). And unfortunately no one asked if the "source" of this outbreak has been found (person or persons)?
Given the incredible statistics of this cohort, I'm surprised the CDC hasn't flown in to gather case information ~ or maybe they have. Also, it is clear Cal is running a clean and honest program cuz there is no way in hell that Cal is an outlier in CFB. Other teams are just not reporting it and if they do they aren't required to test the entire cohort (e.g. Florida State's entire team). So, I will give credit where credit is due that Cal is doing the right thing for public safety.
Go Bears!!
p.s. ty, for referring to me as G.O.A.T. but I prefer G(r)EAT.
"Also, it is clear Cal is running a clean and honest program cuz there is no way in hell that Cal is an outlier in CFB. Other teams are just not reporting it "
OH you mean like the "flu" outbreak that one big school had? Lol.
I agree that only testing those with systems seems foolish after it was shown that immunity wanes and once it was confirmed that delta was able to successfully breakthrough people vaccinated. I would have thought we would have implemented some sort of random testing.
I am surprised the SEC schools and fanbases haven’t had huge spikes and outbreaks after games.
They probably have, just like it is probable that 25% of students (non-athletes) at Cal have COVID but are mostly asymptomatic. Its probable that a nice percentage of folks walking down the street who are vaxxed have COVID. But most are asymptomatic. That is what this case study is telling us. Shouldn't be a surprise and why we need booster shots.
Yeah, I wonder about that vaccination rate a little bit too. I think this outbreak may just show that if you are hanging out in close proximity to the same hundred people for multiple hours every day without the precaution of masking, even a large percentage of vaxxed people can get it. The Delta variant is extra contagious. Precautions should be maintained.
It also probably shows that vaccine protection against infection wanes a lot over time. Though the good news is that it still seems to hold up well against serious illness or death.
EXACLY .... I smell a rat too. And it's either city of Berkeley or our university health dept. I find it hard to believe a team that's basically fully vaccinated all of a sudden, out of nowhere, has 54 breakthrough cases. We're clearly being subject to harsher and more stringent covid protocols than other teams. It's hard enough to compete in this league in the best of times ... but near impossible when our own university ties one hand behind our back. I guarantee you SC won't be missing any players in 'protocol' when we get around to playing them.
Ah, but we don't know that 0 cases in weeks 1-8 is true, do we? Why?... because they weren't testing regularly. What I suspect is the case is that there's been a lot of positive cases, mostly asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic that they could ignore it and as soon as a case popped up that couldn't be ignored, it triggered a re-test and exposed what had been there all along.
Wilner is claiming there's more Cal isn't saying about City of Berkeley's role in this mess, even after CoB released clear claims that the football program is at fault.
He's gonna have to provide something more concrete than "City of Berkeley is bad" to look like anything more than just a rabble rouser to me at this point.
Yeah, at this point it's weird that he hasn't provided anything other than that. Could be he's doing that because his sources don't want him to say anything. Could also be that he's just opining and has no special knowledge.
Coming is a bit late, but I'm with Rugger...something really does not add up here. If in fact we had that many cases with 99% vaccination in that timeframe, this story should be leading the NYT. What am I missing.
Some caveats aside, I'm with you guys too. This outbreak is completely counter to the generally prevalent view that the vaccine significantly reduces transmission. 10 or 15 people? Maybe. 45 out of ~150. That's *way* outside what one would normally expect. That's worse than the prison outbreaks before the vaccine. And I'm not saying this to bash on the vaccine. All indications are that it is really working to reduce hospitalization and death. Me and my kids got it and I'll be getting a booster soon.
Nevertheless, there's some important data here that needs to be analyzed, not just for Cal football but for helping us manage this pandemic. Was the team too cavalier about good practices (masking, sanitizing, distancing, etc.)? Is the vaccine efficacy waning? Is the vaccine not as good at preventing transmission as we previously thought? Were some faking their vaccination cards? Or is this some new strain? Or is Delta even worse than we thought, perhaps specifically in regards to asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic cases?
I have no idea what the answer to these questions are. All I know is based on the data we have so far about likelihood of transmission, this situation causes one to raise their eyebrow.
Thanks Rick for asking the questions you did. I may be misunderstanding, but Knowlton keeps talking about "guidance." The COB's protocols make a distinction between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. The players who tested positive were vaccinated. Is it not the case that some tested negative a couple of times after the initial testing positive? Did Berkeley health say that this didn't matter, or was that a rumor?
So let me get this straight: with a 99.5% vaccine rate roughly 25% of the team had breakthrough cases of Covid? Hmmm, that does not give me confidence that my Pfizer vaccine will protect me. This seems way out of whack.
I will concur with that. I spent 1.5 years contact tracing for the state. Near the end of my tenure in Sept., at least 50% of my calls (Delta variant?) were to COVID + cases who had the vaccine. Only a handful were truly sick, however. So, I'm going to say yes - it doesn't stop transmission but helps mitigate symptoms. Like many of the households I called in LA County, these players were probably in very close quarters. But, what do I know - just my non-statistical conclusion based on first-person observation. Go Bears!
Very true, but it still seems crazy that 25% of our team was hit by the outbreak and nowhere else in the country has any team suffered the same situation. It just seems highly improbable.
Unfortunately, because not everyone got the vaccine to stop the spread of the disease, COVID has got a lot of opportunities to adapt and possibly cause a massive spike in breakthrough cases at some point (thus also the need for boosters). It could be just a bad coincidence that this is discovered first via Cal Football. If I am the UHS, I would want to test more people on campus to figure out the extent of the outbreak. I don't know if they got the authority to do so.
Hopefully, for the health of everyone, even if this is some more infectious variant, it is decreasing in its deadliness (even to the unvaccinated).
Of course, there may be other plausible explanations from some bad batches of COVID tests used by UHS that caused a lot more "false positives". A lot about the numbers don't add up, but the COVID virus is also constantly changing.
Could be that other schools just aren't being honest about it. Cal (Knowlton) has some culpability here by making a choice to not test on a regular basis. Perhaps not daily but bi-weekly, that's on Knowlton.
It didn't help that Knowlton did not have the stats on those who tested + but were asymptomatic versus symptomatic. Last week, Wilcox cited "several" players were symptomatic. This could explain why some players were miffed that they tested +, felt great but couldn't play. Dunno and Knowlton didn't come prepared with useful stats.
I think it is also very unfortunate that Knowlton waited this long to address the issue and just left alums and fans in the dark. Not very Fiat Lux of him.
Testing positive is ONE POINT in TIME. And the infection really only lasts maybe 5 days. So given the facts, it sounds like there weren't many symptomatic players through the season until last week. Then they tested and found many infected. They weren't infected all season long; just last week. The likely scenario seems to be that because of colder weather and maybe indoor gatherings for Halloween or something else, one or more got infected a couple of weeks ago and spread it to the larger group before last week.
Vaccines do NOT prevent infection; they lesson the viral load so transmission is much lower from a vaxxed person. Vaccines DO greatly protect people from serious symptoms and death, however. A much higher proportion of break-through people hospitalized or dying are those most vulnerable, e.g., underlying health conditions. So healthy people that are vaxxed have a much lower chance of both symptoms or death vs unvaxxed.
Some tests are less reliable, kicking out relatively high numbers of false positives. That could account for reports of players who were supposedly positive and retested negative. They tend to use the higher quality tests for retesting.
Hi all, I updated the story. The city of Berkeley's public health division confirmed there have been 44 "lab-confirmed" cases of COVID-19 from Cal's football team.
Good lord. Did they have a contest of who can cough into someone's face the most?
How many times did these 44 test positive? And how many times have they tested negative since? Is there an equipment calibration issue?
If this were an equipment issue with the tests, then I'm guessing there would be more false positives across all groups who get their tests done here. Unless the testing is done by a group exclusively for the Cal Football team, this would potentially affect the Cal student-athletes of all sports, the UC Berkeley broader student population, and maybe even people in the city of Berkeley. If we aren't seeing outbreaks in those groups, then it seems unlikely to be false positives only affecting the football team.
Plus, there's the statement from Berkeley Health Department that cites people in the football program did not (1) get tested when sick, (2) stay at home when sick, or (3) wear masks indoors. That implies people were symptomatic and still showed up to indoor events unmasked--a recipe for spreading.
Is it reasonable to assume that 30 are players and the others are coaches and staff? This would be based on what the idiot...sorry Knowlton said today about 30 players.
Great question! Of the 44 confirmed COVID-19 cases: 39 are players and five are coaches.
Last week, 24 players and five coaches tested positive. This implies an additional 15 players tested positive this week, as Director Knowlton noted no coaches tested positive since last week.
39 holy bagels!! It would have been prudent to ask the knucklehead how many players that tested + were symptomatic. As I recall, during CG's presser last week he appeared healthy. His tweet would suggest that he was asymptomatic and, in his mind, cleared to play.
Director Knowlton was asked how many players were symptomatic. He could not answer, as he did not know or was unaware players and staff had symptoms.
Most unprepared CEO I've ever seen. He was just going through the motions and it revealed how utterly incompetent he is. No wonder he needed a search firm to find the unwanted retread Fox.
Sounds like they all got the J&J with all these cases lmao. Dropping like flies like the Yankees did during the MLB season.
He communicates like most administrators I know. He tells you what he wants to tell you. And he's covering for whatever it is he doesn't want you to know.
LOL. Great answer from Knowlton.
I was a little surprised to see Justbear write "Hopefully this is the end of extra cautiousness with covid." To start off with, Stanley McKenzie's dad just died from Covid. I think we could just stop right there. It's an ongoing, lethal threat. It's never magically disappearing like someone infamously said it would. We are a long way from it being a minor issue with over a thousand people still dying daily (November 8th 1,307 deaths). Even if no player dies or becomes seriously ill, a high percentage of people who have had Covid have long-term symptoms. If nothing else, they can hamper your athletic performance. Anyone remember that Clemson's football team had a HUGE outbreak last year. Hmm... how are they looking this year? Coincidence? At least one of them had serious long-hauler symptoms: https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/32127148/clemson-defensive-end-justin-foster-my-struggle-long-haul-covid. Even if nothing happens to them, they can spread it to members of the community. People like Tony McKenzie. There is a GoFundMe for him.
This episode should reinforce that people and organizations need to continue to be vigilant. Multiple measures need to be taken. The Cal football team, from the information that is coming out, seems to have taken the approach of "Okay, we got the shots, we're all good now." At a minimum, they should have maintained masking while indoors, for prevention, and random testing, for detection. They should have told the guys to continue to be careful: "If you do go to the frat party, chug the beer OUTDOORS."
Well, just to defend myself, I am one of those people that have been extra careful. I counted and I've only hung out with a friend 5 times since the pandemic started and take it seriously.
And I am sorry to hear the loss of Stanley's father. But we have another 10 months until next year's fall season, and what is wrong to hope that things will be better by then? Don't we all wish things get back to normal sooner than later?
THIS! I completely agree napabear. What most people don't understand is that getting vaxxed and taking precautions is not only for yourself, but for others and the community. Unlike say measles or God forbid ebola, COVID is a very difficult one for all of us to deal with rationally because it's more like the common flu. Measles and ebola are more clear cut and the consequences are dramatic so that very few people will doubt it or become lax. With COVID, it's getting harder and harder to maintain the same level of vigilance and caution because the consequences on each individual varies greatly! From nothing all the way to death. I think this is why COVID is the perfect vehicle to latch your political or personal views onto it. It's almost like an inkspot test...it can be viewed, correctly, in many different ways. Anyway, the longer it drags out, the harder it gets. And to think...the virus could have been wiped out, and still can be, in two weeks of real isolation, or full masking, or 90% vaxxing within a short period of time. Because we as a society haven't been willing to do this...the virus lives on! :(
I really don't think it's realistic to "wipe out" this virus, unless you could somehow impose all of those requirements worldwide at the same time. It wouldn't be enough to just do it in the US, because as we've seen, other variants have emerged and spread overseas and later made it to our shores.
Getting it down to a low-level endemic thing, maybe that's possible.
I agree with you. Other diseases have actually been pretty much wiped out with pretty much full vaccination of the entire planet, e.g., polio, measles, smallpox, etc. I saw a documentary about one of those efforts, can't remember which one, but WHO tracked down every last individual and convinced/coerced them to get the vaccine. But with COVID being so mutative, like the flu, and because it's not clearly the ever present danger to everyone that gets infected, a high rate of vax doesn't seem likely. Some countries, like China, New Zealand, Taiwan tried but weren't able to stay at zero. But still, I think the best chance in this global environment and for this country, is to vax the highest percentage possible. And timing does matter...so we don't keep getting new versions starting more waves.
Yeah, 100% in favor of vaxxing as many as possible.
I think the big difference with polio, measles, smallpox, is that they don't mutate so once you vaccinate enough people, that's it. COVID-19, being like a cold/flu virus, is always going to be present in some form, so we just need to keep the impacts manageable.
https://youtu.be/LPtewaW4y54
For those curious: This is the video recording of tonight's press conference with Director Jim Knowlton
Time for someone to actually verify the authenticity of all of those vax cards.
I don't think this is a "vax card" situation. Wouldn't the school be able to verify all of it?
Depends on what their process was for players demonstrating they'd been vaccinated. If a player has been vaccinated while home and produces a vax card, does the school take that at face value? I'm in Hawaii right now and it's the first time I've had to *actually* prove I've been vaccinated -- everywhere else, a fake vax card would have worked.
How do you prove it?
I work at a school in SoCal. We were required to upload our vax documentation and the school verified it. Mine was a digital record from the state dept of health.
I have the digital vaccine record QR code. That can work as a proof of vaccination?
Yes!
Yes -- that's the kind of proof I mean. They could contract with CLEAR or another provider who does the back-end work of verification if they wanted/needed to.
Some public health student is going to have one hell of a project. It's pretty rare to have a population tested like this so they should be able to get some solid data on the virus. Just...wow.
The vaccines did their job by keeping cases either mild or asymptomatic (we're at the "living with COVID" phase. "zero covid" has gone). But this is either this is some powerful new variant (unlikely) or other teams around the country have missed countless outbreaks (likely). With these numbers I'm now really curious to see if I have antibodies to the virus (as opposed to the vaccine).
Hopefully this is the end of extra cautiousness with covid, and next year we just live with it and no more Covid policies for NCAA. It sounds like at Cal, and at other universities there may have been many healthy students who tested positive or never knew they were positive because they never tested it, and everyone seems to be doing fine. There may be some sick guys who show symptoms, but they just stay home until they get better.
That's my hope as well. I already think the current policy is a little too stringent for the current reality in Berkeley, but I understand that it's the policy that was set out at the beginning of the season and was not likely to be changed.
Hard to predict since pandemics rarely end; they fade into the background. We SHOULD have enough tools available worldwide (vaccines, testing, therapeutics) to make it happen but there are so many wildcards. The only thing we can't do is declare "pandemic over" prematurely.
Yeah I absolutely agree with that. That's why I said "hopefully." That's what I hope to happen a year from now.
"Everyone who didn’t make the trip was a positive. It wasn’t because of contact tracing.”
So Knowlton confirmed that all of the guys were actually positive. He didn't say if there were any negative results afterwards. Either way, the players who tested positive would not be allowed to participate for 10 days, so those players that did not travel last week should not be complaining. Am I correct?
In the press conference, Director Knowlton confirmed there is no "test out" so any subsequent negative tests are a moot point. He also confirmed he would not have let players who had tested positive for COVID-19o travel or play.
The players have every right to complain if they tested positive, but then had multiple negative tests. Its also a shame that their private medical history is now public knowledge, but HIPAA has long not been applicable to athletes for some unknown reason.
Unfortunately Knowlton had no data on the alleged negative tests, which begs the question why didn't he come to the meeting with the data or bring someone who had the data. His staff had to know that this would be a question asked. Totally incompetent that Knowlton.
But the Pac12 policy is 10 days isolation if you test positive. It doesn't say that you can end isolation with two negative results.
They negotiated it and got it approved?
this is gonna be a hell of a case report
Once again, I’m calling bullshit on the 99% vaccination rate at this point.
If I’m understanding Knowltons comments correctly, we had 24 positive players last week and another 30 positive players this week for a total of 54 players testing positive over two weeks. Or do we have some overlap between these two groups?
Something just doesn’t seem right that a football team can go through 8 regular season games with no breakthrough cases and then in a span of two weeks have 54 cases. Was Cal not testing any players at all through the season?
For Rugs and GOAT, this is not me being critical of Wilcox or Garbers or Cal football. This is me just asking questions of how we can go from 0 positive cases in weeks 1-8 to 54 in weeks 9-10.
Thanks fully this season and year are almost over and I believe Covid protocols and testing will be a thing of the past once the 23 season starts.
Aggregate of 30 or more players and coaches, not a new 30 today
Thanks for the clarification. That makes more sense.
Yeah, I think you may have heard him wrong. He said, this week they had a few additional + tests, however, those few additional impacted 1 position group thereby making it unsafe to play the game. So, the aggregate total of players is 30. Additionally, Knowlton said that at the beginning of the season they tested daily and as the season wore on they ONLY tested players displaying symptoms (this seems incredibly stupid). And unfortunately no one asked if the "source" of this outbreak has been found (person or persons)?
Given the incredible statistics of this cohort, I'm surprised the CDC hasn't flown in to gather case information ~ or maybe they have. Also, it is clear Cal is running a clean and honest program cuz there is no way in hell that Cal is an outlier in CFB. Other teams are just not reporting it and if they do they aren't required to test the entire cohort (e.g. Florida State's entire team). So, I will give credit where credit is due that Cal is doing the right thing for public safety.
Go Bears!!
p.s. ty, for referring to me as G.O.A.T. but I prefer G(r)EAT.
"Also, it is clear Cal is running a clean and honest program cuz there is no way in hell that Cal is an outlier in CFB. Other teams are just not reporting it "
OH you mean like the "flu" outbreak that one big school had? Lol.
I agree that only testing those with systems seems foolish after it was shown that immunity wanes and once it was confirmed that delta was able to successfully breakthrough people vaccinated. I would have thought we would have implemented some sort of random testing.
I am surprised the SEC schools and fanbases haven’t had huge spikes and outbreaks after games.
IIRC, there was a huge spike at the beginning of the season at Georgia. They just don't follow CDC rules...all very simple really.
Florida had ~30 players out this past week due to a "flu" outbreak.
They probably have, just like it is probable that 25% of students (non-athletes) at Cal have COVID but are mostly asymptomatic. Its probable that a nice percentage of folks walking down the street who are vaxxed have COVID. But most are asymptomatic. That is what this case study is telling us. Shouldn't be a surprise and why we need booster shots.
Haha, you’re the GOAT of G(r)EAT.
Yes, yes I am!!
Factual statement. And your point is valid....didn’t Fla St. just have a “flu” outbreak...did they simply not test for COVID?
The old 45 strategy: can't have covid if you don't tedt for it!
*test
Yeah, I wonder about that vaccination rate a little bit too. I think this outbreak may just show that if you are hanging out in close proximity to the same hundred people for multiple hours every day without the precaution of masking, even a large percentage of vaxxed people can get it. The Delta variant is extra contagious. Precautions should be maintained.
It also probably shows that vaccine protection against infection wanes a lot over time. Though the good news is that it still seems to hold up well against serious illness or death.
EXACLY .... I smell a rat too. And it's either city of Berkeley or our university health dept. I find it hard to believe a team that's basically fully vaccinated all of a sudden, out of nowhere, has 54 breakthrough cases. We're clearly being subject to harsher and more stringent covid protocols than other teams. It's hard enough to compete in this league in the best of times ... but near impossible when our own university ties one hand behind our back. I guarantee you SC won't be missing any players in 'protocol' when we get around to playing them.
Ah, but we don't know that 0 cases in weeks 1-8 is true, do we? Why?... because they weren't testing regularly. What I suspect is the case is that there's been a lot of positive cases, mostly asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic that they could ignore it and as soon as a case popped up that couldn't be ignored, it triggered a re-test and exposed what had been there all along.
Wilner is claiming there's more Cal isn't saying about City of Berkeley's role in this mess, even after CoB released clear claims that the football program is at fault.
https://twitter.com/wilnerhotline/status/1458470389542109188
Still no specifics, though.
He's gonna have to provide something more concrete than "City of Berkeley is bad" to look like anything more than just a rabble rouser to me at this point.
Yeah, at this point it's weird that he hasn't provided anything other than that. Could be he's doing that because his sources don't want him to say anything. Could also be that he's just opining and has no special knowledge.
So is it 30 players or 39 players?
Coming is a bit late, but I'm with Rugger...something really does not add up here. If in fact we had that many cases with 99% vaccination in that timeframe, this story should be leading the NYT. What am I missing.
Some caveats aside, I'm with you guys too. This outbreak is completely counter to the generally prevalent view that the vaccine significantly reduces transmission. 10 or 15 people? Maybe. 45 out of ~150. That's *way* outside what one would normally expect. That's worse than the prison outbreaks before the vaccine. And I'm not saying this to bash on the vaccine. All indications are that it is really working to reduce hospitalization and death. Me and my kids got it and I'll be getting a booster soon.
Nevertheless, there's some important data here that needs to be analyzed, not just for Cal football but for helping us manage this pandemic. Was the team too cavalier about good practices (masking, sanitizing, distancing, etc.)? Is the vaccine efficacy waning? Is the vaccine not as good at preventing transmission as we previously thought? Were some faking their vaccination cards? Or is this some new strain? Or is Delta even worse than we thought, perhaps specifically in regards to asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic cases?
I have no idea what the answer to these questions are. All I know is based on the data we have so far about likelihood of transmission, this situation causes one to raise their eyebrow.
Thanks Rick for asking the questions you did. I may be misunderstanding, but Knowlton keeps talking about "guidance." The COB's protocols make a distinction between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. The players who tested positive were vaccinated. Is it not the case that some tested negative a couple of times after the initial testing positive? Did Berkeley health say that this didn't matter, or was that a rumor?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPtewaW4y54 LOL. This is hilarious.
So 100% of the athletes were vaccinated or had natural immunity.
30 cases wtfff
So let me get this straight: with a 99.5% vaccine rate roughly 25% of the team had breakthrough cases of Covid? Hmmm, that does not give me confidence that my Pfizer vaccine will protect me. This seems way out of whack.
Well, we can all get covid, but with the vaccines we are not supposed to get seriously ill is my understanding.
I will concur with that. I spent 1.5 years contact tracing for the state. Near the end of my tenure in Sept., at least 50% of my calls (Delta variant?) were to COVID + cases who had the vaccine. Only a handful were truly sick, however. So, I'm going to say yes - it doesn't stop transmission but helps mitigate symptoms. Like many of the households I called in LA County, these players were probably in very close quarters. But, what do I know - just my non-statistical conclusion based on first-person observation. Go Bears!
Thanks for sharing your real-life experience and perspective!
Very true, but it still seems crazy that 25% of our team was hit by the outbreak and nowhere else in the country has any team suffered the same situation. It just seems highly improbable.
Unfortunately, because not everyone got the vaccine to stop the spread of the disease, COVID has got a lot of opportunities to adapt and possibly cause a massive spike in breakthrough cases at some point (thus also the need for boosters). It could be just a bad coincidence that this is discovered first via Cal Football. If I am the UHS, I would want to test more people on campus to figure out the extent of the outbreak. I don't know if they got the authority to do so.
Hopefully, for the health of everyone, even if this is some more infectious variant, it is decreasing in its deadliness (even to the unvaccinated).
Of course, there may be other plausible explanations from some bad batches of COVID tests used by UHS that caused a lot more "false positives". A lot about the numbers don't add up, but the COVID virus is also constantly changing.
Could be that other schools just aren't being honest about it. Cal (Knowlton) has some culpability here by making a choice to not test on a regular basis. Perhaps not daily but bi-weekly, that's on Knowlton.
It didn't help that Knowlton did not have the stats on those who tested + but were asymptomatic versus symptomatic. Last week, Wilcox cited "several" players were symptomatic. This could explain why some players were miffed that they tested +, felt great but couldn't play. Dunno and Knowlton didn't come prepared with useful stats.
I think it is also very unfortunate that Knowlton waited this long to address the issue and just left alums and fans in the dark. Not very Fiat Lux of him.
It would be best if no one asked me the standard WFC question, "who would you like to punch in the face?"
Testing positive is ONE POINT in TIME. And the infection really only lasts maybe 5 days. So given the facts, it sounds like there weren't many symptomatic players through the season until last week. Then they tested and found many infected. They weren't infected all season long; just last week. The likely scenario seems to be that because of colder weather and maybe indoor gatherings for Halloween or something else, one or more got infected a couple of weeks ago and spread it to the larger group before last week.
Bob, though there are other less common symptoms, the top 3 are: fever, coughing, and breathing issues. It's not that mysterious.
Vaccines do NOT prevent infection; they lesson the viral load so transmission is much lower from a vaxxed person. Vaccines DO greatly protect people from serious symptoms and death, however. A much higher proportion of break-through people hospitalized or dying are those most vulnerable, e.g., underlying health conditions. So healthy people that are vaxxed have a much lower chance of both symptoms or death vs unvaxxed.
Some tests are less reliable, kicking out relatively high numbers of false positives. That could account for reports of players who were supposedly positive and retested negative. They tend to use the higher quality tests for retesting.
Ruey, are you saying that people who have been vaccinated but get a breakout case can't spread the disease?
Since most pac teams aren’t testing vaxed players regularly, there are lost likely many positive vaxxed kids playing on Saturdays
true
I think its likeky more then a few players didn’t get vaccinated but had vax cards that said they did.