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Sports and Schools.

Torus34

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Both sports and schools are coming to grips with the importance of well-designed protocols for Covid testing and, equally important, action plans covering the results of the testing. The various levels can be seen as including people with varying degrees of maturity. This is reflected in their degree of adherence to the personal standards required of them.

Pro sports probably tops the list of those who know what's at stake and who are willing to follow the protocol requirements. Grade school children may well be at the other end of the spectrum, though a case can be made for college freshmen, too. College sports probably fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.

Comments?

Regards, stay safe 'n well. Remember the Big 3: masks, hand washing and physical distancing.
 
Both sports and schools are coming to grips with the importance of well-designed protocols for Covid testing and, equally important, action plans covering the results of the testing. The various levels can be seen as including people with varying degrees of maturity. This is reflected in their degree of adherence to the personal standards required of them.

Pro sports probably tops the list of those who know what's at stake and who are willing to follow the protocol requirements. Grade school children may well be at the other end of the spectrum, though a case can be made for college freshmen, too. College sports probably fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.

Comments?

Regards, stay safe 'n well. Remember the Big 3: masks, hand washing and physical distancing.


Relevant article in this morning’s paper:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/spor...andemic-their-true-sickness-will-be-revealed/


Money is going to win until the outcry gets too loud, imo.
 
Both sports and schools are coming to grips with the importance of well-designed protocols for Covid testing and, equally important, action plans covering the results of the testing. The various levels can be seen as including people with varying degrees of maturity. This is reflected in their degree of adherence to the personal standards required of them.

Pro sports probably tops the list of those who know what's at stake and who are willing to follow the protocol requirements. Grade school children may well be at the other end of the spectrum, though a case can be made for college freshmen, too. College sports probably fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.

Comments?

Regards, stay safe 'n well. Remember the Big 3: masks, hand washing and physical distancing.

College towns depend on the revenues produced by football. Hotels and restaurants have already taken such a massive hit because of the pandemic, but I just don't see how social distancing in a stadium can work.
 
Relevant article in this morning’s paper:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/spor...andemic-their-true-sickness-will-be-revealed/

Money is going to win until the outcry gets too loud, imo.

I'm not sure what campuses the article is addressing. UT- Knoxville is a huge football campus. Stadium holds about 100,000 and it's a big deal in town. So far the plan is to have football, but the campus is open and there are online and in person classes. UT tells us that about half of classes are in person or hybrid (online and in person), the rest all online, but I suspect they're counting a 10 person lab as 1 class, and a 400 person intro lecture as one class, which is 50-50 if we're counting classes but 2.5% and 97.5% online if we're talking students. Campus is deserted in the first week, and it's usually a mass of humanity as everyone is going to class, getting books, etc.

At any rate, there's nothing special being done for football, and I've heard nothing about closing classes, or doing anything else, to make it safe for athletes. There's a lot of faculty who are pretty 'hostile' (not quite the word I'm looking for) towards football, because there is nothing spared for them, but other parts of the university are chronically underfunded, and the huge influence football donors have in other areas, but I've heard not a peep from that contingent about the football dog wagging the university tail, and I think I would. I know a lot of people who work at UT on the academic side.

The discussions for months have been how to protect 1) students, and 2) faculty and staff, and so big classes all went online, then the smaller ones depend on the instructor, the classroom, number of students, etc. It's all been big picture, campus wide stuff. The big issue, frankly, is the trustees, Gov and legislature are pushing HARD for in person instruction, which is opposite of the article's premise, which is campuses will close to in person instruction to protect football players and keep games on schedule. The pressure just is not in that direction at UTK.

So, not calling the editorial fake news, but it would be good to point to actual examples of some kind of abuse, where the university, run by academics, is planning around the football programs. I suspect if there's an issue, it's at the very top - governors, board of trustees, etc. who are appointed by the governor or legislature. I think the college administrators all want to open and have in person classes, but are planning as best they can for the pandemic...

What I do think will happen is the players with help from the athletic advisors will try to take as many online-only classes as they can, to limit exposure. But that's what a lot of students who aren't athletes will do. It's not an issue IMO. And the big problems we've seen with COVID are big off campus parties, that have nothing to do with classes. THAT's going to be where spread happens - we've seen it already.
 
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College towns depend on the revenues produced by football. Hotels and restaurants have already taken such a massive hit because of the pandemic, but I just don't see how social distancing in a stadium can work.

I'll be interested as well. Right now they're planning on 25% capacity, and allowing groups of up to six to sit together. We'll see how that works. One problem is going to be people with seats in the upper decks seeing a sea of empty seats down low and moving.
 
College towns depend on the revenues produced by football. Hotels and restaurants have already taken such a massive hit because of the pandemic, but I just don't see how social distancing in a stadium can work.

Hi!

Thanks for taking time to post. With no national guidelines for college sports, each state or even each college/university has to se their own standards. Whether this will coalesce into a generally accepted code remains to be seen.

Regards, stay safe 'n well.
 
Both sports and schools are coming to grips with the importance of well-designed protocols for Covid testing and, equally important, action plans covering the results of the testing. The various levels can be seen as including people with varying degrees of maturity. This is reflected in their degree of adherence to the personal standards required of them.

Pro sports probably tops the list of those who know what's at stake and who are willing to follow the protocol requirements. Grade school children may well be at the other end of the spectrum, though a case can be made for college freshmen, too. College sports probably fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.

Comments?

Regards, stay safe 'n well. Remember the Big 3: masks, hand washing and physical distancing.

Nobody needs to watch sports or go to bars or concerts, so that can all stay shut down as far as I'm concerned (provided the owners of those businesses are fairly compensated by the government, that is).

On the other hand, kids need education and there's no substitute for in-person learning. But there's got to be a happy medium between the two extremes. For instance, there's no reason to fill up college lecture halls with hundreds of students just to listen to a professor speak and draw on the board while not really interacting. That can just as easily be done online from their dorms/apartments. But they could continue smaller group classes, and maybe hold them in the lecture halls instead of the smaller classrooms, so people can spread out and stay masked up.

Elementary and secondary schools could have mostly video-streaming classes, but perhaps have kids go in to school one day a week for a few hours (staggered) so they can get some in-person interaction with other kids and their teachers in small groups, with proper distancing and less overall risk than they'd get from cramming all the kids into the schools at once.
 
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Nobody needs to watch sports or go to bars or concerts, so that can all stay shut down as far as I'm concerned (provided the owners of those businesses are fairly compensated by the government, that is).

On the other hand, kids need education and there's no substitute for in-person learning. But there's got to be a happy medium between the two extremes. For instance, there's no reason to fill up college lecture halls with hundreds of students just to listen to a professor speak and draw on the board while not really interacting. That can just as easily be done online from their dorms/apartments. But they could continue smaller group classes, and maybe hold them in the lecture halls instead of the smaller classrooms, so people can spread out and stay masked up.

Elementary and secondary schools could have mostly video-streaming classes, but perhaps have kids go in to school one day a week for a few hours (staggered) so they can get some in-person interaction with other kids and their teachers in small groups, with proper distancing and less overall risk than they'd get from cramming all the kids into the schools at once.

Hi!

Thanks for the extensive response.

There are lots of ways that schools can mix in-person and on-line instruction. As you noted, some on-line gets the dog walked nicely. The problems are different when you consider colleges and universities. There, the problem must include consideration of students living on-campus.

And while I'm at it, one of the problems colleges must deal with is the behavior of the students themselves. Not all will follow the requirements for personal conduct. That can lead to rapid development of multiple cases of Covid infection.

Regards, stay safe 'n well. Remember the Big 3: masks, hand washing and physical distancing.
 
Young kids are immature but they will respect authority. Once they get used to the safety measures they'll be alright.

Pro athletes will be in a much more controlled environment. They know that if they screw up it could be catastrophic for themselves and the whole team. That being said, there will be a handful of idiots doing dumb things as we have already seen. They will be tested significantly more than the average person. Their health will be monitored on a daily basis. There will be cases throughout the year, but I don't necessarily think there will be team breakouts. We may see some clusters amongst teams.

College age students have been and will be the biggest problem. They lack maturity. They know they are not at a high risk of serious illness. They easily succumb to peer pressure. They easily succumb to herd mentality. All it takes is for them to see a few kids without masks and figure they don't need one either.
 
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