As a sports fan, I read almost every day about athletes and coaches who test positive for Wuhan’s coronavirus. Yesterday, for example, I learned that legendary Alabama football coach Nick Saban had tested positive. the University of Florida football team would also have one.
From Italy, we are informed that the Naples football team has been forced through local government to be quarantined due to some positive tests among its players. Interestingly, Naples is sanctioned through the Italian football government for betting an adjustment with players who tested negative, even if it had meant a violation of quarantine.
But my question: Has any existing athlete or coach died from the virus?
I’m following American sport a lot. I’m also five European football leagues with more or less attention. I don’t know any athlete or coach whose virus has taken his life.
I know the wonderful Freddie Freeman was afraid of dying from the virus when his temperature was approaching 105 degrees, but Freeman was never hospitalized and his fever sprang up pretty fast.
I’m not saying that any existing athlete or coach has died of the virus; I bet some did. I’m just not aware of this happening to athletes or coaches in the many sports leagues I am, despite a few hundred reports of positive tests between athletes and coaches in those leagues.
I conclude that if you’re young and healthy, coronavirus has virtually no risk of killing you, and if you’re middle-aged and healthy (most coaches are, but Nick Saban is 68), there’s also very little risk.
I am not one of those who say that, in general, the coronavirus is like catching a bloodless one or having the flu, for many people it is much worse.
But not for healthy young people. In fact, for many of them, contracting the virus is greater than having the flu, at least in terms of non-public health, because many of those who test positive have no symptoms.
I think the general implications of this policy on public policy are clear.
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