At FEE, Jon Miltimore explains what the league’s officials are thinking based on the announcement earlier this week:
Football fans around the world have been anxiously waiting for signs as to whether the NFL season will kick off in September despite concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic.
This week, they got the “burning bush” of signs.
The NFL on Tuesday had a soft opening of sorts, opening a number of facilities around the country to personnel, owners, and players rehabilitating from injuries. But it was in a post-meeting conference call with media that NFL officials delivered a bombshell of sorts.
According to multiple reports, NFL executive vice president Jeff Miller and Allen Sills, the NFL’s chief medical officer, told reporters the NFL fully expects to have COVID-19 cases during the NFL season, and are planning accordingly.
“We have a task force working very diligently on that,” Sills told reporters. “We fully well expect that we will have positive cases that arise because we think that this disease will remain endemic in society. And so it shouldn’t be a surprise if new positive cases arise. Our challenge is to identify them as quickly as possible and to prevent spread to any other participants. So we’re working very diligently on that, and we’ll have some detailed plans to share about that at a later time.”
It did not take long for reporters to process and interpret what the NFL was saying.
“You didn’t even have to read deeply between the lines,” said Charles Robinson, Yahoo’s senior NFL reporter. “What I just heard from the NFL was, ‘Hey, guess what? We are going to open. There is going to be a season. And we are going to have some people test positive for coronavirus once that season begins. And we’re working on a plan to not stop anything. We’re going to work through it.'”
Terez Paylor, a senior writer who also covers the NFL for Yahoo, concurred.
“He’s saying they’re going to play,” Paylor said in a podcast with Robinson. “Basically [they’re saying], ‘People are gonna get it. We’ll try to deal with it the best we can.'”
To be clear, the NFL has made no official decision yet. That being said, it looks like they are heading in that direction.
While some will say it would be reckless to hold the NFL season during a pandemic, it appears the NFL is making its decision based on some of the same assumptions Sweden used in its unique approach to COVID-19.
Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s top infectious disease expert and the architect of its “soft-approach” strategy, said one of the reasons he rejected sweeping lockdowns is because the measures simply are not sustainable, considering COVID-19 is going to be with us for years.
All the hysteria started by pandemic theatre in China. I would ask all these organizations what they do during flu season. And I know the answer, next to nothing. I know, “it’s not the flu” ya, it isn’t, but we should always start with what we know and go from there. It is a respiratory virus. After almost 5 months we can see that it kills old people, and fat diabetic people, but not young people. The media will never say they are sorry for getting this really wrong, nor will the politicians, so it is up to the general public to start ignoring the garbage they both spew and just get on with life.
Comment by Dwayne — May 22, 2020 @ 19:16