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.
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."
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).
"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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
https://youtu.be/LPtewaW4y54
Time for someone to actually verify the authenticity of all of those vax cards.
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).
"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?
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.
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.
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.
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.