College football’s dilemma: pandemic, or endemic?

Ross Dellenger has a good piece about how college sports are struggling to deal with the real, but very different, issues presented by the omicron variant of COVID.

While some suggest the latest surge may trigger the return of such protocols, the college athletics world—including some medical experts—believes the opposite: Protocols should be further relaxed in response to a strain that, while more contagious, has shown far less severity of illness than its troubling predecessor, delta.

In fact, NCAA leaders have been in conversation with officials from the CDC about adjusting the mandatory 10-day quarantine for young people who test positive, multiple physicians and college administrators tell Sports Illustrated. Their argument? Vaccinated young people are showing either no symptoms or very mild symptoms, and their symptoms are subsiding within two to three days.

“The question that needs to be asked is, if the risk of severe illness—hospitalization, death, dying—is not there, if we’re not seeing that, how is this different than the common cold?” asks Jeff Dugas, Troy’s team doctor and an orthopedic surgeon in Birmingham who chairs the Sun Belt’s COVID-19 advisory panel. “Do we need to be freaking out just because it is a variant of COVID-19? Do we need to apply the same rules or change the rules?”

It is a debate that’s poised to further divide college sports along regionalized lines, indicative of the ongoing, 22-month fight in a fractured country.

“With omicron, the concern is not filling the hospitals with the sick, but one-third of the workplace not being able to go to work,” says Geoffrey Baird, chair of the department of laboratory medicine and pathology at the University of Washington.

Omicron’s nature is such that it may render contact tracing ineffective.  Then, there’s this:

In a dash of positive news, omicron is so contagious and produces such mild symptoms that it may pass through the U.S. quickly, according to data from overseas. The strain is already subsiding in the population of South Africa, where it originated just a month ago.

Given that, does it make sense to quarantine for ten days?  Maybe not, maybe so, but vaccination would seem to make that a much easier question to deal with.

Schools are encouraging their athletes to get a third shot, the booster. Some are well ahead of others. Alabama, for instance, has had more than 90% of its players boosted, coach Nick Saban revealed earlier this week.

At Purdue, 80 of the 111 football players are scheduled to get their booster at an on-campus event Wednesday, says Doug Boersma, the director of sports medicine for the Boilermakers.

“They see the importance of getting vaccinated and not getting quarantined for contact tracing,” Boersma says. “I didn’t have to twist any arms.”

In the here and now, though, the current protocols are the protocols schools have to live with, which makes this my biggest selfish short-term concern:

They are also preparing for what may be a spike from the holiday ahead. Athletes on teams participating in bowl games are normally allowed to travel home for Christmas break to spend the holiday with their family. Administrators fear that players will return having contracted COVID-19 with a bowl or playoff game days away.

Fingers crossed that we don’t see any more situations like this one.

[Ed. note:  If you feel a burning desire to contribute something COVID-related in the comments that isn’t on point with the post subject, you’d best make it good, because it will be your last comment at GTP.  Just sayin’.]

Advertisement