Thoughts on Covid-19 spread with the football team.

[Dwight89]

Utah was hit hard with Covid throughout November, with even a player being hospitalized. What, if any, responsibility do you all place on the players/coaches for allowing the spread to get so bad? It basically ruined their season. 

What got me thinking about it is that I’m in an essential business and I help oversee operations of over 120 employees, many of whom work in cramped working spaces just due to the nature of the business. From the beginning we enacted strict measures to protect our employees from potentially spreading Covid to one another. Over the last eight months we’ve had eight separate instances where an employee tested positive. In seven of those instances, we had zero spread to other employees because of our strict measures. One of the instances we had a team where 4 out of 5 contracted Covid, and we later found out that team had become pretty lax in following our processes. 

What I learned from all this is that strict measures work pretty dang well, and when we as a company let our people be a bit lax, it resulted in 80% of a team getting infected. If that’s true, what responsibillty does Whitt and leadership on the team have for what happened? 

[Tony (admin)]

Well, the players are college kids.  They’re going to get together one way or another.  I don’t think the coaches can control everything they do.  Plus Utah is blowing up so not sure even strict measures could prevent the spread on the team. 

[gUrthBrooks]

The team seemed to spike at the same time as the rest of the state. What can coaches do about that? Kids still need to eat, go work out, intereact with other people around the university and it only takes one person getting hit, potentiall without them knowing it to then effect the whole team 

[Dwight89]

You can be a strict enforcer of whatever rules were put in place. Set the example. That’s probably about it on the coaches side.

On player’s side…team leadership can set the example. Don’t go to parties. Wear your mask. Players can take responsibilty for their own safety as much as possible. 

My main point was that when you have strict measures you can limit spread when the inevitable positive test result comes in. When you don’t follow those measures is when you see a whole position group (Denver Bronco’s QB room as the most recent example) get decimated. It seems pretty clear to me, at a bare minimum, that not enough players took those measures (whatever they were) seriously enough, and it ended up ruining their season, but most importantly, it put people at risk (and someone in the hospital). 

[Central Coast Ute]

We don’t know exactly what went on inside the football facility or at practice. It could be, as has already been stated, these are college kids. They could have contracted it in the community. Don’t forget, the timing lines up perfectly with Halloween. Up until then, the team was supposedly doing well with covid, meaning Whitt, Harlan etc. Were doing things the right way. Just my two cents.

[Dwight89]

Yeah, i think you’re right there. Which leads me to personally believe the responsibility lies mostly with the players, themselves, for not being more careful. 

[Central Coast Ute]

I agree. Of course we don’t know everything, but from what I can see, it’s probably mostly the players fault.

[UtMtBiker]

The community, all of us living in and around the players, are to blame as much as any of the players, coaches, AD and President. No?

People know what we need to do to be safe, yet don’t do it. It’s kind of like letting your kid go to a house party and then wanting to blame everyone but yourself when the cops bring them home drunk. The other kids are a bad influence, the other parents suck, your own kid is an idiot, but you could have prevented it in spite of all the rest must like anyone else in the scenario. All have the ability to prevent it, none did, so they all share equal blame.

[belli1976]

Why are the AD, coaches or the players to blame? The whole mentality in Utah has been don’t trend on my rights. I live in Washington. Utah has more COVID cases than Washington, but less than half the population. The only reason for fewer deaths in Utah is it is the youngest state in the country, due the rabbit hutches in Provo.

[Stone]

Why do total number of cases even matter? How many of those cases actually required any real treatment other than rest at home and drink lots of fluids?

The only metrics that really matter are death and hospitalizations (to the extent hospitals may get overwhelmed). If a state has a lot of cases and very low death rates, that is fantastic! In fact, if that were the case across the US and the world, it would be a huge win. 

Also, cases are surging even where there are lockdowns.   

[Utesbyfive]

I blame the virus.

[Trailgoat]

Hard sayiing. All I know is the majority of college football programs figured it out. Utah was far from being one of them. Harlan and KW seemed to be content and confident with what was being done to prevent Covid spread before the UofA game. It is a trip watching games from other confereces with thousands of fans in the stands. What ever happened with the Notre Dame storm the field concerns? The entire situation is a s**t show.

[Utesbyfive]

You’re not taking into account the Pac-12’s COVID protocols, which are the most stringent in the country. The NCAA says that conferences must follow the CDCs recommendations. However the recommendations are somewhat of a spectrum, and the Pac-12 has chosen to follow the most hardcore interpretation. Jon Wilner had a good article about it last week.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/11/27/cancellations-mount-in-the-pac-12-this-wasnt-supposed-to-happen-what-went-wrong/

[CB]

All I know is the majority of college football programs figured it out.

You do realize how many games across the country hve been cancelled right? Let’s not pretend like Utah is the only school that has had players test positive…. Come on dude….

[Central Coast Ute]

But, the PAC 12 has canceled more games than the other conferences in relation to games scheduled, so Utesby5 is right.

[Charlie]

I believe there is a geographic thing to this flu.  Each city or state is dealing with a different risk because it is not consistent or homogeneous.  It also has its cycles up and down.  Data collection has differences.  I haven’t been convinced that countries, states, or cities have results that accuratly follow the effectivness of their methods.  There is some randomness that will come around to those that are about to brag that they have it figured out.  You can do everything right and catch it, you can do everything wrong and be uneffected.  It’s like the common cold, you can just up and get it wiithout a reason.

[Dwight89]

I’m mostly on board with this. Agree that burden should be taken off the coach’s shoulders. Though I would hope Whitt acts the part of enforcer on the protocols. The players though…I dunno. Still think they have some responsibility to bear. 

[Central Coast Ute]

You’re probably getting thumbs down, because you complain about getting thumbs down. Dont let it bother you. What some strangers on the internet think shouldn’t affect your self worth.