Week 15 Covid List Discussion

[MikeT14]

2 minutes ago, MKnight82 said:

You left out how we're on our 3rd kicker but otherwise great recap. 

I think 4th. Brian Johnson hasn't been practicing... (or wasn't as of yesterday)

[MKnight82]

1 minute ago, MikeT14 said:

I think 4th. Brian Johnson hasn't been practicing... (or wasn't as of yesterday)

 

[e16bball]

1 minute ago, MKnight82 said:

You left out how we're on our 3rd kicker but otherwise great recap. 

Sadly, even that is underselling it, as young Mr. Johnson is our 4th kicker this year. 

[MikeT14]

Just now, e16bball said:

Sadly, even that is underselling it, as young Mr. Johnson is our 4th kicker this year. 

Oops. That's right. So maybe we're on to 5th. Googling about updates to BJ now though. We did sign that one kicker to the PS. 

[NudeTayne]

4 hours ago, MWil23 said:

P.S.

This is exactly why I've advocated for a 2nd bye week, aside from the sham that is Thursday Night Football...AND I've advocated for a "week in between bye week" for the regular season and postseason.

You can move a game to that 2nd bye week, or if it's super late in the season, you move it to that "in between week" to be played the week before the playoffs.

You're going to have the AFC North decided this Saturday by an entire backup OL, a backup QB, practice squad receivers, multiple backup defensive backs, a backup tight end, and multiple backup defensive linemen.

We are talking about quite literally 10+ starters out, all of whom are completely vaccinated. 

Riddle me this NFL: How did you see this ending 16 months ago...and then instead of adjusting for 2021, you just added an extra game for that shameless short term cash grab, when you could have actually extended the season and added an extra week of TV revenue with a 2nd bye?

This is another one of those "screaming at Madden to fix their game, but every year the same stupid ghosting defenders, absolutely obliterating the CPU in trades nonsense" kind of deals; everyone agrees with you here and it's such an obvious simple solution that even adds an extra week--more revenue--but won't be implemented. In 2029 it will all of a sudden be announced like no one thought of it before and then implemented after several more seasons like this one.

read: Madden 30 will fix the broken trade system

Edited December 16, 2021 by NudeTayne

[dll2000]

 

I think we are wasting this excellent large control group that NFL has served up to us with their rules. 

We have same group of people.  We have tested them every day for two years.   We know if they had it, when they had it and when they stopped having it. 

They were being tested pre-vaccine and post vaccine.   

We can find out the severity of symptoms and length of illness for the players pre-vax and post-vax.   For the unvaccinated versus the vaccinated.  

We have a lot of good data and information, but nobody is doing the work to publish it for the masses.  You don't have to use names.

We could study a variety of factors and hypothesis with verifiable data.  

Instead we have to read between lines of media reporting

At least the publicly reported positive cases has given us some undisputable public information.      

People got sick last year and they are getting sick this year in far greater numbers.    

Theoretically, one would expect greater sickness numbers with much more human contact than the year prior.  More people = greater chance of encountering a sick person.  So more people being infected wouldn't be a shock.  

However, with the vast majority of coaches and players vaccinated the stated expectation and hypothesis was that the number of people infected would be much lower than the year prior with some rare break through cases.   Which definitively did not happen.   

However, while virus is still spreading there is some evidence that the vaccine makes contracting the virus far more mild. 

But it is hard to prove one would have had a sickness much worse but for the vaccine.       

But with NFL data we can do a side by side comparison of people in same groups who share a number of same characteristics who got it and vaccinated people who got it unvaccinated.    We even compare same time frames which should mean same variants.  

Theoretically the vaccinated cohort should be far more asymptomatic and have a shorter duration - definitively less time between positive and negative test.   

 - the NFL data could go a long way to proving or disproving that assertion with their data.   At least for this demographic.   You even have a smaller subset for coaches to compare with each other.  

We could also do heart exams and various tests of vaccinated versus unvaccinated players since there are claims being made on that front.  

I would like to see the data and the work done.

 

 

 

 

 

[kingseanjohn]

1 hour ago, Broncofan said:

So that part about changing the timeframe and criteria for return to play after testing positive?   I’d expect this to be enacted next week, assuming public health authorities sign off (which I don’t think will be an issue).   I don’t think it helps teams out this week, however. 
 

 

Because being symptom free means they won’t pass it on??

[BigTrav]

Sports are being cancelled this week over in Europe. It’s going down that path again. 

[Broncofan]

31 minutes ago, kingseanjohn said:

Because being symptom free means they won’t pass it on??

Because positive tests don't actually correlate with infectivity - as the new PCR assays don't distinguish between live & dead virus.  As background - in health care, workers who test positive (or patients) aren't re-tested before being cleared on return to work.  It's a set timeframe, combined with resolution of symptoms.  The same applies for when patients are taken off enhanced precautions.   There's good data to indicate that resolution of symptoms is a good indicator - but 10 days (and symptom-free) was chosen early on to provide extreme safety (as that's always the priority everywhere, but in healthcare, it's 1000x the stakes if you're wrong).   Because workplace transmission rates were low to nil using this practice, this became the de facto standard - but it's using the precautionary principle, and not based on actual confirmed data confirming timeframes for when positive patients stop being a transmission risk.   

With vaxxed and asymptomatic patients, the risk of transmission was incredibly low - but that was also Delta (and other variants).   It's fair to say Omicron isn't known yet (but all data suggests that Omicron's severity of illness in healthy vaxxed pts is signficantly lower, why there isn't a massive hospitalization/ICU spike in heavily vaxxed areas like UK & Canada even though the number of actual positive cases is spiking, for example - which again reinforces the need to just get vaxxed).   The other factor is that because the patient population (healthy athletes) are not subject to severe disease risk that's as high - this may also influence the league's decision (and why public health authorities may approve the NFL's petition).   The X factor, of course, is the player's own circle (IE are at-risk patients in their circle).  

That's likely the foundation behind the league's thinking - but to be clear, it's also with another transparent goal in mind - to enable the games to be played, and on-time, on-schedule for TV.   Let's not kid ourselves.  It's just that the practice of using tests to determine when players could return doesn't even mirror what is done in healthcare, where the stakes are far higher.   So decreasing or even dropping the re-test requirement actually can be defended, and why the NFLPA would likely agree (although a smart union would still use it for concessions - but since it's the NFLPA, who knows).  

Hope that helps,

Edited December 16, 2021 by Broncofan

[incognito_man]

2 hours ago, e16bball said:

That’s just about right. 

It’s worst on the DL, where we’ve been decimated.

We look to be without DE1 Chase Young (torn ACL), DE2 Montez Sweat (broken jaw/COVID), DE3 James Smith-Williams (COVID), DE4 Casey Toohill (COVID), and DE6 William Bradley-King (COVID). That leaves two rookies in DE5 Shaka Toney and DE7 Bunmi Rotimi as the only men standing, though they did go out and poach DE Nate “Angry” Orchard from the Packers’ PS.

We also look to be without DT1 Jonathan Allen (COVID), DT3 Matt Ioannidis (COVID), and DT4 Tim Settle (COVID). That leaves DT2 Daron Payne and DT5 Daniel Wise as the only men standing, though they did go out and add the well-traveled Akeem Spence off the street today. 

QB isn’t great. They’ve been without QB1 Ryan Fitzpatrick basically all year (hip) and now they’re looking to be missing QB3 Kyle Allen (COVID) as well. And QB2 Taylor Heinicke left last week’s game with a knee injury, so if he can’t go due to that or a positive test, it looks to be former Ole Miss standout Jordan Ta’amu getting the call at QB. [Interesting side note: Heinicke was actually Ta’amu’s backup for the XFL St. Louis Battlehawks]

Center has been devastated as well. They will be without OC1 Chase Roullier (broken leg), OC2 Wes Schweitzer (ankle), OC3 Tyler Larsen (Achilles/COVID), and OC4 Keith Ismael (COVID). It appears that former male model and OC5 Jon Toth will be manning the pivot.

Elsewhere, RT1 Sam Cosmi has been out for some time with an ankle injury, and now RT2 Cornelius Lucas is on the COVID list, leaving Charles Leno and Saahdiq Charles as the only healthy OTs on the roster.

Half of the starting secondary is now on the COVID list, with CB2 Kendall Fuller and SS1 Kam Curl just added in the last day. CB3 Benjamin St.-Juste was already on IR (concussions), so it’s only William Jackson and Danny Johnson standing between the world and a Corn Elder sighting at the moment.

They’ve lost TE1 Logan Thomas for the season (knee), and now two of his backups in TE4 Sammis Reyes and TE5 Temarrick Hemingway are on the COVID list. But frankly, we still have TE2 John Bates and TE3 Ricky Seals-Jones, so what am I even complaining about there? WR3 Cam Sims also found his way into the COVID list, and on the non-virus front, WR1 Terry McLaurin and RB2 JD McKissic are both dealing with concussions and are questionable at best. So the offense looks stacked. 

And just to add insult to infection, 5 of their top 6 ST players (David Mayo, Troy Apke, Khaleke Hudson, Toohill, and Smith-Williams) — and 8 of their top 12 (Cam Sims, Darrick Forrest, and Reyes) — are now on the COVID list as well. So all three phases look to be in fighting trim for the big game against Philly this weekend.

must-watch tv

[MKnight82]

14 minutes ago, Broncofan said:

With vaxxed and asymptomatic patients, the risk of transmission was incredibly low

Then why is it spreading like wildfire amongst rosters that are 90% vaccinated?  Sorry I'm not buying that.  If these guys are testing positive they need to quarantine to prevent the spread of the disease to other people. 

[incognito_man]

1 minute ago, MKnight82 said:

Then why is it spreading like wildfire amongst rosters that are 90% vaccinated?  Sorry I'm not buying that.  If these guys are testing positive they need to quarantine to prevent the spread of the disease to other people. 

NFL players interact and touch things that other humans not on their team also touch.

In fact, the team facilities, strict protocol, and prevalence of vaccinated individuals there indicate that these players are very plausibly contracting the virus during the parts of their day they are not there (which constitutes the bulk of their time and takes place in fully uncontrolled environments).

[Broncofan]

8 minutes ago, MKnight82 said:

Then why is it spreading like wildfire amongst rosters that are 90% vaccinated?  Sorry I'm not buying that.  If these guys are testing positive they need to quarantine to prevent the spread of the disease to other people. 

You missed the rest of my sentence - that was with Delta.     What we know about Omicron is being vaxxed doesn't protect against infection - but it still protects against serious illness, especially in otherwise healthy and vaxxed individuals.   

We're about to go off-track, but IMO the focus shouldn't be on # cases anymore, it should be on # hospitalizations / ICU / deaths.    Covid is endemic, so talking about case #'s is meaningless, from a general population perspective.   

Now, from a NFL perspective - because a positive = can't play, # cases obviously very meaningful for the NFL, but overall, the goal with an endemic isn't to prevent disease, it's to limit its impact.   That's where we're at now.   The window to not be in endemic phase passed a long time ago, so it is what is what it is now.    So now we're talking about how many days does it take before a positive player isn't a risk for spread - and again, I have to repeat - positive tests aren't predictive, and aren't used to decide when patients and health care workers are no longer considered at-risk for spread (because PCR tests don't distinguish between dead & live virus).   It's just resolution of symptoms and a set time frame.    

To be clear, I get your point - the NFL deciding to shorten the window certainly poses a theoretical risk.   There's no way around it.   They're making the decision business-wise because the risk of infection causing serious illness is so dramatically decreased in players (the key X factor is whether their circle has more at-risk ppl, though), and because the actual timeframe once a player symptoms resolve (or if they were asymptomatic), to when their transmission risk, isn't known, but 10 days is literally just an arbitrary number chosen initially that's stuck.  It could certainly be shorter, and data suggests this is the case - but it's still a calculated risk.   That's where the NFL is going to have a problem selling it - it's meant to make it more feasible to finish the NFL season safely, but it's certainly not solely to increase safety, it's a tradeoff of perceived minimal safety risk (given severity appears much lower) vs. feasibility.

Edited December 16, 2021 by Broncofan

[MKnight82]

2 minutes ago, incognito_man said:

NFL players interact and touch things that other humans not on their team also touch.

In fact, the team facilities, strict protocol, and prevalence of vaccinated individuals there indicate that these players are very plausibly contracting the virus during the parts of their day they are not there (which constitutes the bulk of their time and takes place in fully uncontrolled environments).

Duh. 

I was stating that the NFL trying to allow players to play with no symptoms is moronic.  Its just going to spread the virus to a ton of additional people. 

[childofpudding]

This list is being updated regularly: https://sports.yahoo.com/nfl-covid-19-reserve-list-every-player-currently-on-it-185459531.html