Bison137
Professor
Posts: 16147
Reg: 01-23-06
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07-10-20 12:33 PM - Post#310243
In response to bison63
I think the biggest issue when it comes to sports is how to keep the older coaches safe. For athletes without major pre-existing conditions, the risk of death from covid-19 is extraordinarily low.
For example, per CDC stats, the percentage of people aged 15-24 who have died from covid-19 is 0.000331% (142 deaths in a population of about 43 million). That means for each one million people aged 15-24 that just over three have died from this virus. And that includes those with pre-existing conditions. Since covid has been rampant for about four months, triple the above numbers to get a yearly estimate of 426 total deaths, i.e. 10 per million if the virus remains at the levels of March through June.
For comparison, the death rate in auto accidents is about 0.026645% for the 16-25 age group, almost 30 times as high - with about 266 deaths per one million of population . And the percentage of the 15-24 population who died from drug overdoses is approximately .01%, meaning about 100 persons in a population of one million died from that cause in 2018.
Comparing total deaths for the 15-24 age group, it looks like this:
Total Covid deaths (annualized) = 426 *
Total auto deaths = 11,308 (16-25 age group)
Total overdose deaths = 4300
* Assuming virus continues to kill at the same rate for an entire year
Note that there are different ways to interpret these numbers - but the general conclusion would be the same.
One other factor is that in the northeast, covid has been controlled reasonably well in the past month. Union County, fwiw, has had a low death rate - way below the Pennsylvania average.
At this point I am not arguing to play a full sports schedule but rather am advocating a wait-and-see approach. Given the low risk to college age students, go with the original plan to start games in late September and see if the plans already in place are sufficient to control things. if not, sports could still be cancelled with no difficulty around Labor Day.
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