How can we do tournaments in 2020?

[darinmontgomery]

@Horton curious how many in the waterski community know anyone that has tested positive for COVID-19. I’d like to see a poll. I’ve personally only heard of 3 people and all third hand.

 

I am not doubting how contagious the virus is or how dangerous it is to those who have underlying health issues.

 

I am highly skeptical of the media and our government as the numbers don’t support the response. It’s very similar to how the media treats hurricanes now versus 10-15 yrs ago. Most of us here in FL have learned not to buy into the mass hysteria created by the media.

 

We should take precautions, we should take it seriously, and we should be allowed live in a manner that we are comfortable.

 

USAW will establish guidelines, those of us that are comfortable can participate those of who are not comfortable won’t.

[dave2ball]

@darinmontgomery I know of 7 who tested positive and were very ill. I also know of 100 people who were under quarantine for 2 weeks waiting for results from either family or for themselves. They were not all job related. The media does not help anything and will only tell you what they want you to hear. It is up to the individual to inform themselves to where they feel comfortable.

[ALPJr]

There’s almost nothing I’d rather be able to do this weekend than wake up from this nightmare and get the first ski ride of the year in. However the reality here is... on the campus where I work 20 people have lost their battle with the virus. 144 have been treated. Coworker’s families have lost loved ones. The daily numbers of infections, hospitalizations and deaths are still increasing. I suggest allowing the medical and scientific communities to work with public and private partners to come to a consensus on when particular areas can resume social activities. Meantime no harm in starting to think of how we may make it work for our sport.

[lpskier]

The hospitalization rates for folks with COVID-19 who are under 50 are practically nonexistent and the vast majority are over 65. Hold tournaments and limit them to M5/W5 and below and things should be fine. Except the part about not having many officials left to run the thing.

 

I tried attaching the link to the CDC with the statistics by age group, but couldn’t. Just google it.

[Horton]

@dave2ball I love you man but at some point we have to decide the risk is acceptable and go ski

[jayski]

@horton AMEN!!

[dbutcher]

@lpskier As a M9 (older than dirt) skier, I feel discriminated against. Just kidding.

[disland]

@dbutcher , Don dont worry we will get you a body condom

[elr]

Who exactly is in the position to "accept the risk" for the ER/ICU staff?

[skispray]

@BraceMaker @mmosley899 thanks for the info. Good to see there is some research that suggests good news in that regard. Hopefully the results hold up and it is significant enough to matter for the situation.

[skispray]

Skiing is a relatively low risk activity for spread, but that is in no way the most important factor. To illustrate let me ask, would any of you feel comfortable going to a ski tournament in New York City right now? How about if it were held in Utah? Those are very, very different circumstances. We all live across the country (and world). It will be safe to hold tournaments in some places and not others. Why wouldn’t USA water ski just say: We will follow the guidance of local governments? If the governor in your state deems that it’s safe to open gyms and so forth, then why shouldn’t ski tournaments be held? But if your state has to shut down again because they opened up prematurely, then stop ski tournaments too. Be adaptable to the situation as it evolves, because the only thing I can say for certain about it is that conditions will evolve.

[Rednucleus]

Just because a tournament is held in a "low virus region" keep in mind that people travel from all over the country, even the world for tournaments, so appropriate precautions need to be taken, always assuming everyone in attendance is a silent virus spreader.

[dave2ball]

@Horton i agree there is an acceptable risk. Everyone has to find there comfortable risk level.

 

 

 

[BraceMaker]

@dave2ball risk comes when someone like myself who goes into the emergency department about daily but has never had symptoms shows up at an even. I've never spiked a fever and atleast so far testing has not been made available to me due to my role/geography. But I've knowingly met with/interacted with covid positive people.

 

If I have an antibody positive test does that mean my attendance at a tournament is hazardous / is it beneficial / neutral? In my work now which is reduced by about a third of my normal hours I treat ever encounter as if I'm a carrier - which is what most medical persons are doing. Full PPE/Measures and avoid contact that isn't necessary - but if I want to ski your tournament???

[lpskier]

@dbutcher i hear you. I’m M6, so I’m out too...

[mbabiash]

Sweden versus Norway

No difference in cases or deaths

Ones on lockdown other is completely open.

Have tournaments and be careful.

 

[dave2ball]

@BraceMaker your post is my point. You knowingly have been in contact with positive covid personal means you have been exposed. Even though you have not showed symptoms. If you wanted to ski a tournament and it was asked have you been exposed in the last 14 days what would you say or do? Would you back out or just ski and possibly expose many others? Just because you are not showing signs/symptoms does not mean your not a carries as you stated. I’m not saying there should not be tournaments. But to say this is over blown or do tournaments as usual is foolish.

[Rednucleus]

Data I read shows Sweden with a much higher level of infection and 10x the deaths vs it's neighbors. Business as usual maybe not so good?

[lpskier]

@Rednucleus I disagree with you. I’d say at the vast majority of tournaments all the skiers come from within a four hour driving radius. Very few people fly to tournaments regularly and those are only for big tournaments or fall records across the southern part of the US.

 

The average skier, I bet, flys to no tournaments, and most skiers that fly to one or more tournaments are flying only to Nationals and/or in some cases to Regionals (particularly but not exclusively Western Regionals and Florida skiers when Regionals are in Kentucky).I can’t think of anyone that flys to class C tournaments. For those skiers that fly to the fall records, whether they should travel or not remains to be seen.

 

Granted, my perspective is based on what I see in the Eastern and Southern Regions. Things may be different elsewhere, again particularly in the West. I also am only talking about people that fly commercial. I’m excluding private pilots and, as in the case of @The_MS, airline folks who may ski on layovers.

[scoke]

 

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[swc5150]

I'll probably get lambasted for this, but so be it, I have more to worry about at this point. The quarantine was meant to flatten the curve, to allow needed space in hospitals for the onslaught covid patients, which did not happen. Testing by Stanford and USC is now showing millions more had covid than we thought, which increases the denominator substantially lowering the mortality rate considerably.

 

It's easy to tell others they need to forgo their livelihood for the greater good when one is still employed. I was sure I'd be back up playing concerts in May, but now there's really no timeframe when I can get back to work. And, yes I have great sympathy for lives lost from this, but I also mourn for the 85,000 lives lost due to the "regular" flu. Oh but I'm told that's totally different. Umm, ok. Maybe instead we keep those vulnerable home and safe, but let the rest of us get back out there and save this economy...or least those who feel comfortable doing so.

 

[BraceMaker]

@swc5150 "to allow needed space in hospitals for the onslaught covid patients, which did not happen"

 

I mean it did - if you look at places with any sort of population density like New York and Detroit how many days later before shutting down could you go? The reached very near capacity WITH both MI and NY shutting down when they did. What would those hospitals look like 3 5 7 days later?

 

People like to point out the mortality rate is lower if the numbers are higher - however that stat means the contagiousness is MUCH higher than the numbers.

 

Basically it is either very deadly and pretty contagious or moderately dangerous but extremely contagious.

 

I get that it feels good to say its less fatal... but that comes along with a huge caveat in that it is still killing lots of people.

 

 

 

 

 

[BraceMaker]

If this were your sales figures you'd be friggin popping champagne and making it rain in vegas... But its people who started dying of a disease they didn't have last year.

 

https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/mortality.html

 

 

[BraceMaker]

 

 

[BraceMaker]

By these post I just mean to point out this is WITH social distancing.

[scoke]

@Rednucleus

 

It appears your real-world experience, data and credentials is different from these two gentleman. Can you post your perspective and why these guys are wrong?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Short version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNTHuCOjAy8&fbclid=IwAR118hbfTFeLWx-kqIBlqGSNKonQ45HpZ9KefUePGAJlrdIjIUnxG1FkARs

 

 

Long version (first 20 minutes is the real meat and potatoes of it):

https://youtu.be/cmjYRJXKixY

 

[lpskier]

A little more Big Brother at play....

[skispray]

@scoke I got 5 minutes into this video and noticed one of the most glaringly incorrect chains of logic that I’ve ever heard in my life, so bad that it immediately makes me alarmed about these doctors. Maybe the rest isn’t as bad as this, but in the first five minutes of the video they say:

 

- We tested about 280k people so far in CA

- Of the people we tested, about 33,000 were positive

- That’s a 12% positive rate among people tested

- So 12% of the entire population has this already

- If 12% of the entire population has the thing, then the death rate is not higher than the flu

 

My jaw is on the floor. 12% positive rate among those tested. There is a good reason to believe that the people being tested are not representative of the population as a whole. If a doctor decides you need to get tested then you are already much more likely to have covid than those that don’t get a test. The idea that the prevalence in the general population is the same as in the tested population is ludicrous. The fact that this doctor makes exactly that assumption and sees nothing wrong should cause alarms bells to go off for anyone watching this. And he uses that “fact” - that the virus is already widespread in the general population - as the premise for his arguments. Since his premise is wrong, I’m not sure anything he says next can be logically correct. The idea that the death rate for those with covid is the same as the flu is also based on this generalization and so is, of course, also completely inaccurate. Again, I haven’t watched more yet. After I realized what he did in the first five minutes I was in too much disbelief to continue, and frankly I’m going to have a hard time trusting anything else in this video.

[ALPJr]

If you dig a little there’re a good number of doc’s and scientists that have discredited this assertion. Also a number of business owners who support similar recommendations. Best to have a grain of salt ready when watching TV. Glad this song was popular when i was in high school.

[skispray]

@scoke another thing. That doctor either doesn’t understand the models that predicted millions of deaths originally, or is being vague about what he means. He rejects the models because they estimated millions of deaths when in reality we haven’t seen anything close to that. But as least with the Imperial College model the scenarios ran in the models that were associated with millions of deaths were scenarios in which there was no public response to the virus, or minimal response (social distancing but all businesses stay open). Those scenarios were never supposed to predict what would happen under lockdowns, etc! The lockdown scenarios in those models predicted hundreds of thousands of deaths, and that looks to be where we’re headed. Models aren’t perfect, but to an order of magnitude that one seems pretty good so far. He may be talking about other models I’m not as familiar with but he doesn’t specify.

[BraceMaker]

@scoke their department of public health has also publicly stated that they did not agree with those assertions despite them saying they did.

 

Another thing people have to understand - these 2 doctors owning 5 outpatient urgent care facilities are probably hemorrhaging money. Probably do a lot of occupational health work, piss tests, work physicals, DOT physicals, school physicals etc. This is a business related post more than a medical post

 

Not all of their assertions are wrong - I don't think all COVID-19 deaths must be attributed to COVID - someone with a DNR in a hospice for instance does it matter if it was covid or flu or positional hypoxia?

 

But the assertion that doctors are pressured to falsely report a COVID death - I have not been hearing from physicians no one wants these things on their records at hospitals.