Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Ignore the Fun Police. Football Is Safe.

—

by

James A. Bacon
in

Virginia Tech’s Lane Stadium

by Kerry Dougherty

Travel back in time with me to the first weekend in September. Anyone remember what the COVID fear peddlers screamed when they saw packed college football stadiums during Week One of the 2021 season?

Just wait two weeks!

Super-spreader events!

Masks! Where are their masks?

And then there was the leader of America’s lockdowners, Anthony Fauci.

When the stadiums were rocking from Blacksburg to College Station to Ann Arbor, Fauci disapproved.

He likes his stadiums empty.

Fauci made the rounds of the Sunday shows and others that week, clearly disturbed that college football fans were flocking back to their seats.

Naturally, his disciples in the mainstream media expressed their disapproval, too. There was this, from CNBC:

“It’s an exciting time to be an American sports fan, from the U.S. Open tennis tournament and college football to the upcoming NFL season and MLB playoffs. Plenty of venues are either at capacity or expected to sell out soon.

“But now isn’t the time to prove that you’re a diehard fan. Rather, says Dr. Anthony Fauci, it’s too soon for fans to head back to full stadiums for in-person games. “I don’t think it’s smart,” the White House chief medical advisor told CNN’s “New Day” on Tuesday.

Looks like Fauci and friends were wrong. Again.

On Monday, Virginia Tech President Tim Sands sent a COVID update to the student body and it was filled with good news.

Sands noted that from August 23 to September 17 there were 158 positive COVID tests on campus. During the same period in 2020, Tech had 823 cases.

Here’s the best part:

Our outdoor events have not been associated with an increase in COVID-19 incidence. We estimate that 17,000 Virginia Tech students and thousands of Virginia Tech employees were in attendance at our first football game on Sept. 3. As of Sept. 17, the seven-day average of daily positive cases on our campus was 4.7 and the seven-day average of positivity was 1.0 percent, compared to 8.1.

Is this a fluke?

Doesn’t look like it. Yesterday The University of Michigan reported a similar decrease in positive tests on campus after more than 100,000 fans squeezed into the Big House on September 4th to see the Wolverines beat the Western Michigan Broncos 47-14.

When I saw these happy new stats, I thought of London Breed, mayor of San Francisco. She got caught busting a maskless move in a crowded club last weekend and was criticized for her carelessness. After all, she issued the city’s latest indoor mask mandate.

Nevertheless, Breed owned her actions:

“Don’t feel as though you have to be micromanaged about mask wearing,” she said. “Like, we don’t need the fun police to come in and try and micromanage and tell us what we should or shouldn’t be doing. “

She’s right. Why should we pay attention to the fun police? They lie in wait and pounce any time they see folks enjoying themselves.

And the captain of the fun police is Anthony Fauci, the frequently-wrong-but-never-in-doubt chief medical advisor to the president.

Ignore him. Head to a football game this weekend.

It’ll feel like old times. It’s just what the doctor ordered.

Share this article

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

Comments

24 responses to “Ignore the Fun Police. Football Is Safe.”

  1. Lawrence Hincker Avatar
    Lawrence Hincker

    Omitted from this column concerning Virginia Tech’s low Covid infection rate is an important point: mandatory vaccinations for students and employees. That likely contributed to the positive outcomes in the stadium. What is the author’s opinions on mandatory vaccination policies?

    1. Stephen Haner Avatar
      Stephen Haner

      Logic is of no use, Hincker… 🙂

      So, let’s go to the numbers. I’ve added up some numbers over ten weeks of this late summer Delta surge. This is all based on the VDH comparisons of vaccinated and unvaccinated. The vaccines continue to appear phenomenally effective.

      Over the ten “hot” weeks, of 100,000 vaccinated Virginians, 14 ended up in hospital. 99,986 did not. Only five per 100,000 have died, and that’s over pretty much all of 2021. (Yes, most of the deaths have been in the surge.) Did they say 90+ percent effective? Those show vaccines over 99 percent effective, even 99.9 something.

      The problem is for the unvaccinated the odds remain extremely good, too, Delta notwithstanding. Over that same period, 99,960 of each 100,000 unvaccinated didn’t die. In the ten week “hot” period, 99,890 of 100,000 didn’t go to hospital. The vast, vast majority never got sick at all, let alone ended up in hospital.

      The vaccines only appear ineffective because the denominator in the equations remains low. The odds of getting sick, getting really sick or dying remain small, even in the age of Delta. Period. The odds of never getting sick even with no vaccine exceed 90 percent. People have seen that all along and many (too many) have chosen to skip the shots, with at least some mathematical logic behind that stance.

      We have no choice now but to to just ride this surge out. It will never fully go away now. Those who are not vaccinated by now will never choose to be.

      1. Matt Adams Avatar
        Matt Adams

        Given the similarities (virus) to the Flu, COVID was always going to be an endemic.

        We will have continuous mutations and it will always be with us, thus we will be issuing vaccines yearly like the Flu.

    2. Eric the half a troll Avatar
      Eric the half a troll

      As Kerry is wont to do, she was selective in her quoting of President Sands’ message and therefore buried the lede:

      “Vaccines are making the difference. The vaccination rate of the total population of students and employees, some 45,000 individuals, is 96 percent. Of the 139 positive tests from students since the start of the semester, about 40 percent were among the small percentage (<5 percent) of students who were not fully vaccinated. Thus, our data indicate that unvaccinated Virginia Tech students are more than 15 times more likely to test positive than fully vaccinated students.”

      1. Stephen Haner Avatar
        Stephen Haner

        This has been brilliant. About 50 percent of the energy and attention span of likely Republican or persuadable voters has been focused for weeks on vaccines and masks, and the dozens of other important issues are shoved aside.

        1. Eric the half a troll Avatar
          Eric the half a troll

          Important issues don’t garner clicks, Haner…🤷‍♂️

          1. Stephen Haner Avatar
            Stephen Haner

            Bread and circuses….

          2. Nancy Naive Avatar
            Nancy Naive

            I thought it was bleeding and leading.

        2. Matt Adams Avatar
          Matt Adams

          The media won’t sustain other important issues, they’d rather keep the message on a single topic which is polarizing.

          1. Stephen Haner Avatar
            Stephen Haner

            Or emotional, like the pretty dead girl and the missing suspect….

          2. Matt Adams Avatar
            Matt Adams

            Their attention depends on the the context of the emotion. They don’t seem nearly as concerned for the individuals left in Afghanistan trying to not get their heads cut off.

          3. Nancy Naive Avatar
            Nancy Naive

            But Steve, she’s white AND blond.

  2. David Avatar
    David

    Instilling fear and demanding compliance has always been the goal and a trip to the grocery store highlights how easy it is to control sheep.
    Is Covid real? yes Is it the second coming of the black death? Not until they introduce the final variant and now that people have been destroying their immune systems with masks and ‘social distancing’ (did you see the report on how they came up with the 6′ distancing?) we are primed.

    1. Stephen Haner Avatar
      Stephen Haner

      “The Final Variant”….a Netflix script awaits….

  3. WayneS Avatar
    WayneS

    He likes his stadiums empty…

    …and his virus labs leaky.

  4. WayneS Avatar
    WayneS

    …Football Is Safe.

    I don’t know if I’d go that far. I’ve seen players suffer some pretty gruesome injuries during football games…

    1. Matt Adams Avatar
      Matt Adams

      I see your football and raise you a rugby match!

      1. WayneS Avatar
        WayneS

        True. And yet, for some reason the rate of concussions is lower in rugby players than football
        players.

        1. Matt Adams Avatar
          Matt Adams

          As a former club player I attribute that to knowing we didn’t have any protection. Therefore you don’t make ill-advised hits leading with your head.

        2. Baconator with extra cheese Avatar
          Baconator with extra cheese

          In rugby you have to take opposing players to the ground when you tackle so you can’t just Ronnie Lott them. And there is no blocking in rugby. I’d day most of the football concussions I had were from getting blind-sided by a blocker.

  5. Nancy Naive Avatar
    Nancy Naive

    Just to show you how biased the Lamestream Media is, CNN just ran YET another story of a hospital interview with a dying unvaccinated Covid patient who BEGS people to get the vaccine, and regrets his decision.

    I am tired of these unbalanced stories. Surely, they must have a video of at least one of these dying unvaccinated patients who is glad they didn’t get vaccinated.

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      Maybe FOX has some “real” stories? 😉

      Clearly – Republicans (Conservatives?) have split into two camps on the vaccines… I think I see where Kerry is and Steve is.. but both will vote the same way anyhow… weird.

      1. Nancy Naive Avatar
        Nancy Naive

        True dat. But you can bet your sweet bippy that Kerry knocked down some old ladies to get to that vaccine in February. Too bad.

        1. LarrytheG Avatar
          LarrytheG

          Kerry actually does represent a significant number of Conservatives views toward Covid and Vaccines.. You can see them at school board meetings these days not only carrying the anti-vaxx banner but anti-max and anti-CRT and anti gender.

          she’s their quintessential mouthpiece, and others that share her general Conservative perspective have an interesting way of disagreeing with her – very different than non-Conservatives (both liberals and independents).

Leave a Reply

Read More