A noted University of Illinois computer science professor has some troubling data to consider regarding widespread infection and even death.
Dr. Sheldon Jacobson told CBS Sports he expects a 30%-50% infection rate of the approximately 13,000 players competing in FBS this season. Based on his research, he also projects 3-7 deaths among those players due to COVID-19.
“A few of them could end up in the hospital, and you’ll have a small number who could die,” Jacobson told CBS Sports. “I don’t want to sugar coat it for you. I just want to give you the facts. … If everybody comes together under normal circumstances, we’ll probably see that kind of outcome.”
Jacobson made his projections from CDC data that estimates one death per 1,000 people who have symptoms in the college age group (18-22). Taking into account that range and medical care provided for football players, the death rate would be lower than the general population, Jacobson said.
He stressed those numbers could change. Based on available statistics, less than 1% of the U.S. population has been diagnosed with the coronavirus. Approximately 5% of the 2.6 million cases in the U.S. have resulted in death.
Obviously, not everyone has been tested. However, with students assembling in large numbers on campuses in the fall, that ramps up the overall risk and likelihood of infection at universities.
“I guarantee someone is going to die,” Jacobson said.
… Jacobson’s estimates were backed up by Dr. Michael Saag, professor of medicine and infectious diseases at UAB.
“That’s not a hard projection to make now that I’m sitting here thinking about it,” Saag said. “Any death would be horrible. More than a couple would be a shame, actually.”
“More than a couple would be a shame” makes for a hell of an epitaph for the 2020 college football season, actually.
Get The Picture 
How many of the same group would die if the football season were completely cancelled? To put it another way, how many more or less deaths could be correlated with or caused by playing football? Assuming that football players get generally better medical care than most 18-22 year olds, it’s not sarcastic to theorize that playing football may save a few lives. It would be sarcastic to push the point by saying “if it saves only one life it’s worth it”.
Having asked those questions, I realize that any deaths that can be related to “having football” will be blamed on football. Further, it’s fairly obvious that money is the biggest factor driving the question whether football gets played. So if there’s a death, “they” deserve all the blame they get.
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Going by the numbers CDC put out for 1997-2007, 15-24 yr old range has 79.9 deaths per 100,000.
Click to access MortFinal2007_Worktable23r.pdf
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I love how we’ve come to a point where his “facts” are actually his “projections”. There is no probably in facts. How many infections would there be if they just stayed home and didn’t go on campus or play? Deaths? Let’s guess and publish an article. People have lost their minds.
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It’s a fact that there’s a 50% chance a coin toss will result in heads, right? Probability statistics are facts; with a population size of 13,000 he’s not plucking guesses from the sky. There’s a 19 yr old Covid patient with no co-morbidities on a ventilator here, it happens.
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Did the 19 yo vape?
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Not that’s been released. Circling back the the population sample in question though, how many players vape? How many big boys have blood sugar issues? Sickle cell? Asthma? With a population size of 13k, there are going to be some very vulnerable individuals. If the projection is 30-50% of the population gets infected, a few deaths are to be expected.
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There’s also a difference in probability and probably. His projections are from estimates. These are not facts. WHO and CDC have filpped-flopped so much the past 4 months how could anything they say possibly be taken as fact?
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Fauci projected 100,000 to 200,000 deaths back in March. Where we at today? It’s a NEW virus, casting aspersions against the scientific community now is not well-timed, save that for when it’s all over. If you want any chance at football in the fall and an economic recovery, follow current CDC guidelines.
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/29/823517467/fauci-estimates-that-100-000-to-200-000-americans-could-die-from-the-coronavirus
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A lot of people make a lot of money using models and projections. See Vegas and the stockmarket. Don’t be a fool.
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Here’s problem #1. No f ing clue. Read this clowns language.
“We’ve got to get the message out that we are all in this together,” by wearing masks in public and keeping out of crowds, said Fauci, infectious disease chief at the National Institutes of Health.
“I feel very strongly we need to do whatever we can to get the children back to school,” he said.
WTF? Keep out of crowds but then send kids back into schools? Which is it you moron?
How about discussing the death rate (CDC saying upwards of 25 million likley have had it) and the fact they have gone down for 9 straight weeks!
Yesterday was the final nail in the coffin.
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Interesting choice of words there.
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I can rephrase if you like. What would you prefer that would be more appropriate?
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So it’s ok for a jackass like you to call someone a clown and a moron but I can’t call you a fucking idiot?
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He is talking about Fauci who is not posting on this board. You see the distinction?
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I don’t give a shit.
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As a dawg and someone who grew up an Illini fan you are a double embarrassment.
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You are interpreting his statement incorrectly. Getting kids back to school IS the priority; if people don’t change their behaviors, if community spread doesn’t get under control, kids “in” school will not happen. Kids having to stay home means parents having to stay home, the economy will be f*cked for the foreseeable future.
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Kids in school issue is much more than the economy, which is important. It will start to effect kids social interactions, learning and any kid in an abusive home will be further extended in that situation. The long term problems will never go away if kids aren’t allowed to return to normalcy soon. Do it for the kids 😉
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You are taking his response out of context. He was trying to respectfully answer Rand Paul, who spent 4+ minutes accusing him of not making school for kids a priority. Fauci said it was indeed a top priority, but then went on to explain the mitigating factors. There can be nuance to these things.
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I have intentionally stayed out of the COVID discussions for a number of reasons. But I do want to take issue with the author’s assertion (of his available statistics) that only 1% of the population has been diagnosed with the virus. That may be technically true, but the CDC (last week) estimated that the actual number is nearly 10% of Americans, with estimates of 10X spread based upon their research modeling.
Link here: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/commercial-lab-surveys.html?referringSource=articleShare
I will say this one piece: IF the CDC report is true and we have 10% spread even with mask usage (inconsistent as it is), then I believe, that actual containment is a pipe dream. I also do not believe we will see a viable vaccine for this in the next 2 years (due to mutations), so the question is: what would do to manage this without resulting economic devastation?
I am not trying to start a nasty thread on this. Seriously.
ED
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I have seen that COVID-19 does not seem to be mutating, do you have reliable info to indicate otherwise?
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You read Wolken’s article this morning? Wolken comes across as an alarmist sometimes, but he’s also very well connected. If he says schools are trying to set up lines of credit right now because they’re worried the season won’t happen (at least not in the fall), I believe him. You know what they always say, follow the money, and even the money is starting to say we may not have football this fall.
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I did and thought the same thing. Also thought that comment from the basketball coach saying he wouldn’t let his kids step on the court against a team without the resources to test regularly was telling.
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I’m inclined to agree, Rev, and I’m getting to the point that I don’t care.
What I am concerned about is getting children back in school. Are we going to cancel the school year? Yeah, I know they can “learn” online, which is total horseshit. Children need classroom instruction and structure. What about the taxes we pay towards education? We getting a refund?
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Wife is an educator and online learning for many kids is an absolute shit show. She teaches in a rougher district and her kid’s parents just dont care that much what the kids are supposed to be doing. sometimes they show up online and sometimes they don’t. By the end of the year the administration was telling them to do less with the kids. It got to the point that just over half the class was showing up daily and their is nothing anyone can do about that. They just get moved on down the line. The pandemic is going to have serious negative consequence especially in the lower grades where they are just starting to learn to read and write and learning basic math skills. I am sure studies will be done in the future that shows how this will be detrimental to a huge portion of them over their lifetimes.
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I work in education as well, on the facilities side. Our buildings are still full of teachers and coaches, and the only ones actually trying to maintain distancing are the football coaches. Our baseball fields are hosting travel baseball tournaments every weekend and hardly a soul is wearing a mask. This whole thing is a shitshow and far too few are taking it seriously. At this rate it will never go away, might as well open school for session and get it over with. Those who choose not to can opt for an online option.
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See today’s AJC.com about travel basketball all over Atlanta. People understand the risk, and are taking it. They know that locking in won’t eliminate the virus.
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I don’t think people understand the risk – that is why we are seeing cases spike in Georgia.
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I spent a decade building online college level courses. We had 4 professors in the content area, a tech person and myself and got a year to build the course. You do not just magically switch from f2f to online at the drop of a hat and expect effective instruction. Pile connectivity, hardware and, yes, parental involvement issues and it’s a tough egg to crack. I don’t fault anyone because they had no choice but it’s a very difficult situation to say the least.
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We here are in our 2nd year with no school. It is absolutely turned horrible for the kids. A 3rd year is gonna fundamentally change my future step daughters life. We’re already dealing with the problems this summer of lack of structure, Lack of normal socialization, Lack of activities group sports.
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The question is are they going to get it playing foootball? If they are walking around campus with 36,000 students the majority of which are not social distancing, they are still partying and hanging out with dozens of different people, I can’t see how that environment is as dangerous or more dangerous than football with the amount of testing our program is going to be doing. This is coming from someone who has a College Junior and a college freshman as kids. I think the players are under considerably better care than the avereage student at our University. Honestly if I am an AD then I am making sure that every team in every conference is taking the necessary precautions to protect my athletes from some other programs incompetent administration. All players need to be tested the morning of the competition. No exceptions. The other schools can agree or disagree. Since the NCAA is running from it’s responsibility to put in place serious guidleines for competition then the conference needs to step up and put out it’s own guidelines. For P5 expense should not be an impediment
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Many teachers are in the at risk population. Parents of kids are n the age group not taking it seriously. My daughter is a teacher who is young but has asthma. She wants to be at school with her kids. She teaches special ed and has some medically fragile kids. If people don’t start taking it seriously she does no think it will happen when school begins. As someone who had a teacher die while I was their student I think we also need to think of how that will affect them. There are no easy answers but I do not understand the resistance to masks. If they don’t do anything which studies have shown they do wearing jeans is an inconvenience that not a sacrifice.
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This poses in the wrong place it was supposed to be a reply to practical Dawgs post about the ace American Academy of Pediatrics
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I agree on the masks. I don’t feel the least bit threatened by COVID but out of courtesy to others I wear one when I’m around people. It’s really no big deal.
I also agree that thee are no easy answers. Our district leadership is working up best practice plans to get the kids back in the buildings as safely as possible but trying to keep masks on elementary age kids? Looks like a fiasco to us. (My daughter is a SPED teacher as well. That’s a precious breed of folks.)
It’s not going to be easy and there will be some risk. There will be medically fragile kids and staff that won’t be safe around the general school population but it needs to be done.
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I really don’t see how you can have school, where people are packed on top of each other, just think of the busses, but then can’t do sports, where they get more control, guidelines, and health care. And I’m not saying we should have sports, I’m saying that classes should be the priority and they are clearly much more dangerous.
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More people should read the American Academy of Pediatricians recommendation to open schools this fall. While it’s aimed at grade school kids, the same logic can extend to college age kids. They’re the lowest risk cohort in the population and face far greater risks than covid. Zero mortality is an impossible standard for any sufficiently large age group in any year.
https://services.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19-infections/clinical-guidance/covid-19-planning-considerations-return-to-in-person-education-in-schools/
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College Leaders Have the Wrong Incentives
If we want university presidents to safeguard the well-being of their communities, we need to change the way they’re evaluated.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/leadership-crisis-campus/613678/?fbclid=IwAR1fXN-gSMl6NiuBE8_tib6w5CcJdw6UKcJaGPwb7FFnhXKhe1uz_5_pE7w
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Don’t listen to them. Just continue the nonsensical bs that Covid-19 has no effects. None, zip, nada. If we just ignore it, it will fade away.
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To play ball or not the stats remain the same….
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I said this elsewhere , but this thing is spreading so fast, to so many people, and i already believe there’s a huge number of people that have had it already without knowing, that I wonder if this thing is going to rip through the population then it burns out
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