We we football or even basketball!

[Basketball Junkie]

Dr. Fauci is targeting the sports world and the billions of dollars generated by sporting events. Fauci says letting a sports leagues reopen will probably mean isolating the players in their off time. Fauci added, “I know it’s going to be difficult for them not to be out in society, but that may be the price you pay if you want to play ball,”

Will we have football this fall or even basketball?

[UteThunder]

I’m starting to think this guy is either a bit of a quack or he’s losing his marbles. This “pandemic” hasn’t been anywhere close to the levels he and other “experts” predicted it would be. If we’re still listening to his overzealous precautions more than a month or two from now, then we are officially the dumbest country in the world.

[GibUtes]

That’s the worst paradoxical argument. “The pandemic only has been minimal, why did we shut everything down?” BECAUSE the shutdown happened, the effects are minimal. And by minimal, I mean that 60,000 still died when it should not be able to spread easily. If everyone had just kept going without a forced shutdown, that number would be much higher. That’s the big problem. You have to compare the hard numbers we get with an imaginary scenario without a shutdown, and we don’t really comprehend how much worse it should have been.

They call it a self defeating prophecy. Health experts say it will be bad, so we change. Our change occurs, it is not as bad. Were the health experts wrong?

Yeah, it sucks to be stuck at home. It sucks that spring sports were canceled and football is probably going to be too. It really sucks that there’s a ton of people who are losing their jobs. It should have been a lot worse.

[GameForAnyFuss]

Yeah there’s no such thing as a pandemic response that will make the public happy. As a society, you have two choices:

1. You can react early and strongly, in which case the pandemic does very little harm and people say “why did we overreact?”
2. You can do too little or too late, in which case the pandemic devastates and people say “why didn’t we do more?”

I’d hate to be a politician or civic leader right now. It’s a no-win time.

[EagleMountainUte]

You mean like the governor of Michigan? Who said protests will lead to a spike? Or Salt Lake City Mayor calling for arrests after protests??? Or how about the New York baffoon threatening the Jewish communities once again to be arrested for being Jewish?

Bill of Rights always has been a protection from government on individual rights. 

Let’s keep the antibody studies going please and resume our normal lives. As regular ole flu deaths continue to decline and be supplemented by Corona deaths it really doesn’t matter. Except funding and money which is what this is really about. 

[Johnny80]

“It really doesn’t matter “. Sit the f—k down. You want to tell that to my wife family who lost someone to this? Or my dad who was unable to sit with my mom while she has her chemo? I have to wonder if those situations happened to you if you would sing a different tune. Doctors all over the world are saying the same thing. This is dangerous.

[EagleMountainUte]

or the two people I know who committed suicide because they are ruined financially and got a 1000 bucks that did nothing.
Edit: My point is trading mortality statistics is pointless.

[User Suspended]

The strange things about you “patriots” is that you’ll defend pro life measures at all costs.  Yet when it comes to this virus its “let’s thin the herd.  I need/demand the freedom to go to Olive Garden – and screw the facemasks!”  I guess it will take someone close to you die from this virus to change your selfishness… but probably not. 

[UteThunder]

Funny thing is, the exact opposite is true about you libs. Kill hundreds of thousands of innocent unborn babies each year and that’s just fine cause “My body, my convenience!” – but sentence a serial killer to death? Not on your watch!

The 60,000 deaths from this thing are tragic, but no more tragic then the tens of thousands of deaths we have each year from the flu. Should we shutdown the economy every flu season? Of course not. And to continue this shutdown when the actual data doesn’t even come close to the so called “experts” projections, is just asinine.

[BulgieUte]

I’ll honor your position on abortion and ask you to use the same pro life philosophies in respect to disease. Why is a fetus so vulnerable and deserving of protections even at the cost of government restricting people but that same government taking restrictive measures to protect vulnerable people from covid 19 so objectionable to a pro life person?

[UteThunder]

The same pro life philosophies in respect to disease?

Okay, I promise not to intentionally kill anyone with covid 19. Deal?

Here’s the difference between the two:

In an abortion, the government allows the mother to make an intentional choice that allows her to live her life as she sees fit but will also result in the intentional death of a defenseless person who was never given a choice to protect themselves.

In this pandemic, the government is preventing healthy people from living their lives the way they see fit in order to protect other people who, while at risk, are NOT necessarily going to die, are NOT defenseless, and CAN make choices to protect themselves.

In other words, people can choose to stay home if they’re afraid of the virus; the aborted baby can’t choose another womb to be born from.

p.s. my position on abortion might surprise you, so don’t be so quick to make assumptions.

[BulgieUte]

You make good points and I respect them. Still, aren’t we quite the fools, bringing the topic of abortion into a subject that was already convoluted enough. Thanks Pace

[UteThunder]

Agreed.

[Central Coast Ute]

I’m personally not averse to the government’s position in protecting human life. But when I see and hear my governor bitch about people going to the beach while at the same time saying it’s ok to vacuum the brain out of the back of a babies skull or even cutting the baby apart or letting the baby die if it’s born alive, I have to raise the bull s**t flag. He doesnt care about our lives. He has other motives.

[Central Coast Ute]

The problem is we didnt shut everything down early. We didnt stop working and going out until March. Here in California, I was contacting Chinese nationals daily even a couple weeks after the travel ban came into effect back in January. More people have had it than the numbers show.

[Anonymous]

Exactly. I was in Taiwan from late Jan to early Feb and the government took immediate action. 99% of the people on subway and in public places wore mask.

Here, we have imcompetent federal leadership, incompetent-to-good local leadership, and inconsiderate masses. People only think about themselves. Although masks do somewhat help to protect the wearers, most of the benefit is to others around them. Here, we are focused on individual “liberty” or “freedom” — clearly lack the ability of critical thinking.

Had we actually learned something from Taiwan/Korea/etc, I’d speculate that the country would be open by now. Instead, #45 had a grand time back in February predicting the virus would just dissipate because we had only 15 cases; now, he’s falsely touting the number of testings and basically trying to spin to make himself look good — not surprised. Our options now are limited because the incompent POS in SLC and DC, all supported by selfish jerks and sanctimonious zealots.

[User Suspended]

I agree with you… it’s a no win situation. What we are doing is simply buying time.  Time to learn more about the virus and time to develop ways to save lives until (or if) a vaccine comes along.

As it stands now it appears the virus will spread until we reach a heard immunity level.(60-70%).  That means most of us will need to personally go thru this within the next 2 years.

 

 

[EagleMountainUte]

They were still wrong like way wrong. If you actually followed what they said week to week. Also did we actually quarantine like they said?  Not even close. This is a manufactured crisis and it was a ridiculous overreach in government authority. 

Now we are going to require ridiculous mask wearing. PPE that isn’t even effective. 

 

[Utesbyfive]

Public health laws grant the health authorities broad powers. Perhaps people should have protested the passing of those laws before they got p**sed off about the powers being exercised.

[UteThunder]

That’s just it, WE DIDN’T SHUT EVERYTHING DOWN!

Grocery stores have been just as packed and busy with people as before this “pandemic” started.

We are being encouraged to eat at restaurants 3+ times per week! 

“Essential” businesses are still having employees go to work.

There is not one iota of evidence that anyone can point to, to definitively say “See? The shutdowns have worked.”

Maybe, MAYBE, we have slowed the spread of the virus and saved lives. But we’ll never know. However, how many more lives are being lost due to suicides over the economy? How many people who couldn’t get medical treatment over the last 6 weeks for what might’ve been life-saving early interventions on things like cancer are now going to die because they weren’t caught in time? I guess we’ll never know those things either.

To answer your question: “Were the health experts wrong?” YES!

You do realize the early projections for hundreds of thousands of deaths from this virus included us taking these ridiculous shutdown measures, right? 

[BulgieUte]

I’ve heard a lot of people say things like’ ” the virus death count is inflated because people died from other causes but they tested positive so they attributed it to covid 19. By this logic would you say those commiting suicide had previous emotional problems leading to their suicide so it’s inaccurate to attribute them to economic problems? 

Also they projected 100’s of thousands of deaths and in the US we are at 65k already with likely another wave of infections and maybe more following that. How can you say they’re wrong about their projections when the total is still unknown?

[UteThunder]

No, I would not say that because it is an awful comparison. The deaths being attributed to covid 19 when the individual died from something else, like a heart attack, are totally bogus. They died of a heart attack, not covid 19. They just happened to have covid 19 at the time of their death. 

If someone loses their job due to this economic shutdown and then kills themselves as a result, it’s pretty reasonable to attribute their suicide to economic problems.

A better comparison would be the fact that the overwhelming majority of covid 19 deaths happen to people with pre-existing comorbidities, such as heart disease, obesity, diabetes, etc. These people still died as a direct result of covid 19, but there were other factors that contributed to their death. So, maybe the people committing suicide after losing their jobs had a pre-existing mental health condition like depression, and losing their job was the final straw. But, just like the people who died from covid 19 while having comorbidities, the suicides are a direct result of the economic crisis caused by the shutdown.

I can say their projections are wrong because with the daily numbers of deaths leveling off and beginning to fall, it is highly unlikely that we will reach the hundreds of thousands of deaths they predicted. Also, keep in mind the many accounts of non-covid caused deaths that are being attributed to covid 19. Our current death totals are inflated.

[BulgieUte]

So if an HIV patient developed AIDS and than died from covid 19 due to their weakened immune system, would you say they died from AIDS or Covid 19? 

The point of the lockdowns is to prevent those “final straws” from happening. Because we can treat many of the pre existing conditions without them causing death in the near future. Problem is, the treatment is compromised by a Covid 19 infection and that causes death in a person that otherwise had a decent chance of a substantial amount of life still to come.

The heart attack patient did die from Covid 19 in the same way the suicide patient died due to economic causes.

[UteThunder]

I don’t think you are following. The heart attack patient didn’t die from covid 19 if they had a heart attack and died anymore than someone who had covid 19 and was shot to death could be attributed to covid 19. In both cases, the victim just happened to have covid 19 before something much more fatal hit them.

In your AIDS example, that gets a bit grey as to which way to go with it but I think I would ultimately attribute that to covid. For the other people with comorbidities like obesity or diabetes, of course their deaths would be attributed to covid because like you said, there are treatments to sustain their lives for many months, if not years.

[BulgieUte]

But covid 19 doesn’t increase the chance of suffering a gun shot like it does heart attack.

I can think of a way a gun shot victim could die from covid 19 though. It’s a stretch but it is possible. Say you take an otherwise non lethal shot to the leg but your body, weakened by disease, can’t fight the infection caused by tiny bullet fragments that remain in your body. Two days later you die from an infection that you would normally fight off but couldn’t due to your weakened state. 

People do survive heart attacks so the question that has to be answered is, would the heart attack have killed them if not for their weakened state? It’s a difficult question and you can’t say for certain but I think if it is a question than it’s fair to report it as a covid 19 caused death.

[UteThunder]

Reasonable people can disagree. I think we’re splitting hairs at this point.

Bottomline for me: This virus is bad, but not anywhere near as bad as our leaders would have us believe. And certainly not bad enough to justify crippling our economy. I believe the final fatality numbers will be somewhat inflated, maybe 10-20% or thereabouts, due to hospitals receiving extra funding for covid treatments/deaths. 

In the fall, if/when there is a second wave, and the government tries to shut us down again, I think the majority of the country will give them a great big middle finger and go about their lives as close to normal as possible. Could get real interesting.  

[BulgieUte]

It’s going to suck for at least another year probably longer. If anything what we’re going through now is a good fire drill. It’s just to bad it seems like that fire drill is being lead by Fire Marshal Bill.

[EagleMountainUte]

Government only cares about power and we are a bunch of complacent ninnies. 

I was shocked we have gone this far and people are still on board with shutting down longer.  Looking at pneumonia deaths and flu deaths we might as well all starve to death to prevent those to. 

[PlainsUte]

Actually there were models that were showing, even with a shutdown, the exponential growth would continue much more than it actually did.   At least for my state they had to keep revising down the numbers and pushing back the peak growth date, until the peak growth date was in the past.

[Gary Sapp]

Assuming there is any herd immunity. Still seeing studies that indicate having covid doesn’t give immunity. And if that’s the case, chasing a vaccine may be futile.

We would need a blocking agent otherwise it just keeps going around and around until anyone susceptible to the serious version has died. That level of herd immunity would make Thanos’s snap look like a mercy.

[PlainsUte]

covid doesn’t give immunity?   Doesn’t make sense.  So if a patient recovers they have antibodies to COVID-19 or else they wouldn’t have recovered.    So can someone “catch it again”?   Well, yeah you can find a few cases, but I ask, did that patient have a severe, life threatening case without having other co-morbidities?   The anti-bodies should take care of it, maybe not immediately.  If not, then big deal, its just more scare tactics.

[Charlie]

What is driving down the covid19 deaths from estimate to actual? Early mortality rates of 5%+ are not holding up. The shutdown was meant to slow the spread but other than keeping hospitals from being swamped was not intended to reduce infections. Historically, flu seasons tail off and end in May. Talking heads are free to pick a reason and ignore the others. When an elderly person dying from kidney disease, heart disease, or respiratory failure also catches covid19 what is the cause of death? How important is it to listen to folks that have supported and invested in specific options to the flu response? How do we invest in steps to make incremental differences in outcomes without any idea at all of the costs of those steps? Questions are stacking up like cord wood.

It would seem to me that anyone with a desire for aggressive quarantine can simply do that without asking anything of other individuals. If a household has individuals wanting to both quarantine and not quarantine, they have a decision to make to have a common strategy or to separate in some way. What did high risk people with kids attending school or spouses working do in the flu season in the past? If that has worked before on a smaller scale can it still work? I support doing something to assist those that need to aggressively quarantining

[BulgieUte]

Do you have a plan that doesn’t marginalize huge portions of our people? If you isolate the vulnerable while everybody else goes about their business what timeline does that create for the vulnerable to come out of their bunkers? Your plan requires fewer people to isolate but it creates a much longer isolation period for those that do. Besides any of that, isolation isn’t a strategy to beat the virus. It’s just a delay tactic to slow it while we figure out how to beat it.

 

[Swoop Doggy Dogg]

Covid has killed more Americans in two months than the Vietnam War did in two decades. Think about that. And that’s with society drastically changing social engagements.

It’s unreasonable for arm chair QBs to say Ivy League educated epidemiologists were overzealous, in part, because it’s not over yet. 60K deaths will likely grow to six digits by the end of this summer. A goal is to buy time for a vaccine, without overwhelming medical systems.

Be grateful you’re in the Utah bubble, with an extremely low fatality rate. I have friends in NYC telling me, it’s the first time in their life, they wished they weren’t from New York.

[User Suspended]

We’ll hit 100k by the end of May

[KelVarnsen]

Dude, comparing this with the number of deaths in Vietnam war is a political scare tactic. Were these politicians and pundits bringing this up during the 2018 flu season? This is not war, this is a virus. 

[Swoop Doggy Dogg]

I look at numbers as math, like an accounting spreadsheet. What are the numbers and trends? Are my interpretations correct? IDK. Clunky? Perhaps.

The Vietnam comparison was simply a well known historical reference, not a political scare tactic. I’m an anonymous person on a local sports message board. I gain nothing. There is a point, to hopefully not underestimate the virus. I don’t watch or listen to news, I look at numbers.

From a medical standpoint there is a huge difference between the flu and Covid. We have flu shots and herd/ personal immunity, as flu strains have circulated since we were born. Covid, we do not have built-in immunity. It’s a novel virus, meaning new. Everyone on the planet is a potential eligible recipient.

Haven’t you noticed the changes? No sports, restaurants, bars, etc? It’s not because the flu and Covid are similar. This is world wide. Not just Utah. I’m not a scientist, but trust they know more than I do. If I broke my leg and wanted it to heal quickly, I wouldn’t trust my arm chair QBing, I’d trust highly trained medical professionals to have better insight than my freshman biology class afforded me.

We are discussing if there will be a football season. If there is a season, awesome on multiple fronts. If not, that would indicate the virus is still considered a major threat. Are billionaire owners (and millionaire players) going to give up their money on a scare tactic? And then politicians are going along with it? All politicians on both sides of the aisle? In multiple countries? The whole world isn’t always a crazy conspiracy. Sometimes, it’s common sense.

[KelVarnsen]

Cool, I hope every flu season you and the fear mongers who stand to gain from a concentration of power continue to compare all disease to other unrelated historical events. 

And yes, if I broke my leg I would trust a doctor, not a blabbering politician telling me they know what’s best for me. But I guess we wouldn’t have to worry about braking legs if we’re forced to stay home the rest of our lives! 

 

[Swoop Doggy Dogg]

Dramatic now? No one is being forced to stay home. You may freely leave home for a walk in the canyon, the park, a restaurant take out, grocery shopping, supplies for landscaping your garden, etc.

And medical teams are supplying politicians with the info to make decisions. Just like an economic advisor will suggest strategy based on current trending of numbers and forecasting. Are they always right? No. Just like the weatherman on TV. But their instruments and training make them more accurate on a large scale than a random guy looking at his back window and wondering what the weekend will be like.

[BulgieUte]

The primary definition of the word war is, “a state of armed conflict between different nations or states or different groups within a nation or state.”
A secondary definition of the word war is, “a sustained effort to deal with or end a particular unpleasant or undesirable situation or condition.”

Like many words, war has multiple meanings and the war against the virus fits the secondary definition perfectly.

[KelVarnsen]

Can’t wait for next year’s War on the Seasonal Flu! 

 

[BulgieUte]

The war on flu is more of an intervention than a war but we do fight it every year. The flu would kill far less people if we gave it more effort and resources. It’s a war we could win but for some reason it’s viewed as not worth the effort. I’m glad people like you haven’t been allowed to convince us to fight Covid 19 in the same half ass way we fight the flu.

[Central Coast Ute]

You do realize that covid-19 encompasses all 330 million Americans where the Vietnam war only included a small fraction of the population correct? That comparison is apples to oranges. If every American went to Vietnam, there would have been more deaths. If only the same number of Americans that went to Vietnam had been infected with covid-19, there would have been less.

[Cesar Chavez]

UTE THUNDER! The fact that you think Dr.Fauci is overzealous about this pandemic tells me that YOU YOURSELF are one of the dumbest Americans in the world. to put this pandemic in perspective, the Spanish flu of 1918 infected 500 million people world wide killing an estimated 50 million people world wide; that is a 4% fatality rate. covid 19 in the other hand has so far infected 3 million people and killed 238k that is a 7% fatality rate. It is thanks to Dr. Fauci and state governor’s shutting NON ESSENTIAL services that has prevented a massive loss of human life in America. Don’t be a sheep and give an opinion with out doing a little research to find the facts.

[UteThunder]

Facts? How about you learn how to do math before you call someone else dumb? 

If 238k deaths out of 3 million cases is a 7% fatality rate (would actually be 7.9%), how in the world can 50 million deaths out of 500 million cases be a 4% fatality rate? 

[EagleMountainUte]

MSM math is the same thing as facts because it FEELS right. 

[User Suspended]

I was told when we had 15 cases this would all just go away in a couple of days….

[Cesar Chavez]

Oh! poor baby, did I get the math wrong? either way COVID 19 IS A MEAN MF VIRUS. Let me guess uncle Trump told you it was fake and it would all go away like magic? down to “zero” in no time? 70K dead and still going strong. Or maybe the liberals are just jacking up the numbers to cause Trump the election.

[User Suspended]

While I agree with most of what you said,  I think we can confidently say more than 3 million people have been infected. I would say at least 10 to 20 times more.  But your point stands – the world is on track to have 10’s millions of deaths.

[Central Coast Ute]

Ask Sweden how their shutdown has saved lives. Oh wait…

[Duhwayne]

Looks like the covid cow got out of the Utefans barn.

[BulgieUte]

What else is there? Your kidding yourself if you think there’s any real sports news to talk about.

[Author]

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