Georgia WR George Pickens tests positive for COVID
December 22nd, 2021 at 10:35 AM ^
Game is getting delayed
December 22nd, 2021 at 10:39 AM ^
Georgia might be lucky to be going through this right now. What I’m worried about is the blog post about Michigan players getting Covid next week.
December 22nd, 2021 at 10:42 AM ^
You shut your whore mouth!
December 22nd, 2021 at 10:45 AM ^
no chance of that. only what, 130 players, most all of them going to separate homes for the holidays at least for a couple of days. see lots of family, their old high school buddies, maybe a girlfriend. then recongregate. nah, no chance...
December 22nd, 2021 at 10:40 AM ^
Primary hope is that neither he, nor any of his teammates / family / contacts have any serious issues with it.
Secondary hope is that the teams stay healthy enough to get this game in. I want to see best vs. best to see how Michigan stacks up.
December 22nd, 2021 at 10:42 AM ^
if this keeps up, its going to be 'slim pickens' at UGA practice for the next week.
December 22nd, 2021 at 11:47 AM ^
*slow clap*
December 22nd, 2021 at 12:23 PM ^
YEEEEEHAAAAAAAAH!
December 22nd, 2021 at 10:43 AM ^
Anyone know what quarantine procedures are at this point for UGA and Michigan are at this point? 10 days vs 7 days is a pretty critical difference at this point in time
December 22nd, 2021 at 10:56 AM ^
I found this news interesting and baffling at the same time:
Can anyone with medical training answer this? Why wait 9 days before the game and only 3 days before Christmas to get the booster when it supposedly takes 10 days to be effective?
Have I got this wrong?
Edit: just reading the previous post. Busy closing the year so haven't been on the board too much.
December 22nd, 2021 at 11:02 AM ^
You’re not really wrong in the effectiveness. But no reason not to get it now if haven’t got it already. Coulda/shoulda got it week or so ago, but better late than never.
December 22nd, 2021 at 11:09 AM ^
maybe it has to do with procuring that many shots at once? no clue TBH, just a guess.
December 22nd, 2021 at 11:38 AM ^
Also I assume the effectiveness of the booster is gradual. So it's not that it has no effect, and then on day 10 it reaches full effectiveness. Rather, over the course of the 10 days it goes from 0 effectiveness to full effectiveness. Therefore getting it now is better than not, even though it would have made sense to get it a week ago (or longer). That's my assumption though--I don't have training in this area.
December 22nd, 2021 at 12:10 PM ^
This is exactly right. It's a ramp-up of a sub-population of B and T cells. That said, the growth tends to be a bit more exponential than linear, but the bottom line is that it starts kicking in right away.
The best time to get the team boosted would have been at least a week or two ago.
The second best time is right now.
December 22nd, 2021 at 10:46 AM ^
Anybody that tests positive now will be fine for the game on 12/31. More worrisome is anybody that tests positive after Christmas - they would almost assuredly be out for the game at that point.
Essentially - any news we get on Michigan guys starting Fri/Sat will be out for the Playoff.
December 22nd, 2021 at 10:49 AM ^
Seriously you worries about protecting privacy. Laughable. Btw this all sets up for Georgia to be cleared by game time and our boys to be out. Booster idea was three weeks too late
December 22nd, 2021 at 11:05 AM ^
Booster likely isn’t going drastically decrease the positive cases if they keep testing randomly. Will just keep them from getting as symptomatic, if at all, if they get covid.
December 22nd, 2021 at 2:19 PM ^
Vaccination prevents hospitalization-level serious infections most strongly, but still drastically reduces the likelihood of transmission, including asymptomatic infections, resulting in vaccinated populations showing about 67% fewer asymptomatic infections compared to unvaccinated.
The idea that covid vaccines do not reduce transmission or infection and are only effective at preventing hospitalizations or severe infections is flatly a bald-faced lie.
December 22nd, 2021 at 10:51 AM ^
He’s by far their best WR, but they also played almost the entire year without him. The UGa offense they put on the field was built with no contribution from Pickens, so this isn’t going to crater their plans. That being said, given how much time he has missed this year, the fact that he can’t run with the 1s for much/any of the time between now and 12/31 certainly lessens the threat he could otherwise represent.
If he’s out, it certainly makes it easier to plant Dax in their star TE’s hip pocket.
December 22nd, 2021 at 10:59 AM ^
He’s also the genius who invented a new way to cost his team 15 yards in a rivalry game with this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERnBxFC9j9M
MENSA member he is not. So it’s entirely possible he is actively spreading COVID to his buddies as we speak.
December 22nd, 2021 at 11:22 AM ^
Expect cancellations of non NY6 bowl games, and rescheduling of big $$$ bowls and the playoffs
:(
December 22nd, 2021 at 11:46 AM ^
I'm not worried about the Omicron variant when it comes to the country getting a massive spike in cases... actually, it may be great news because it is a milder strain (less hospitalizations/deaths, especially for those vaccinated, and double especially for those that are boosted) and it spreads so fast that it will have nowhere else to infect after it spikes, and we'll see a huge decrease in cases similar to last Spring.
I just really hope that the teams will be reasonable about this whole quarantining thing... if the players that test positive are asymptomatic, let them back on the field sooner rather than later (especially if they are vaccinated). It's pure silliness to make them quarantine for 10 or 14 days if they're asymptomatic and 99% of the rest of the team is vaccinated and masked up. It's overkill. Maybe they should postpone the CFP games for 2 weeks in order to get players out of quarantine and to allow them enough practice time for a fair game.
December 22nd, 2021 at 12:50 PM ^
A massive spike in cases is bad news even if the average case is somewhat milder* because there will still be a corresponding spike in hospitalizations, and the health care system is going to get overwhelmed. It's already happening, including in Michigan.
*which, btw, there is very little evidence for yet. Most likely the "milder" cases stem from pre-existing immunity after infection with a previous strain
LINK (article)
Researchers at Imperial College London compared 11,329 people with confirmed or likely Omicron infections with nearly 200,000 people infected with other variants. So far, according to a report issued ahead of peer review and updated on Monday, they see "no evidence of Omicron having lower severity than Delta, judged by either the proportion of people testing positive who report symptoms, or by the proportion of cases seeking hospital care after infection."
LINK (primary paper referenced in article from Imperial College UK)
There is, however, some interesting in-vitro data suggesting Omicron has a little more trouble entering lung cells than Delta. If that's true in the real world, then it could definitely lead to fewer severe cases on a per-case basis (but you'd have more cases, so the net result could still very well be more severe cases overall hence the hospital capacity issue)
“The Omicron variant appears to be much better than Delta at evading neutralising antibodies in individuals who have received just two doses of the vaccine. A third dose ‘booster’ with the Pfizer vaccine was able to overturn this in the short term, though we’d still expect a waning in immunity to occur over time.” ____
Professor Gupta added: “We speculate that the more efficient the virus is at infecting our cells, the more severe the disease might be. The fact that Omicron is not so good at entering lung cells and that it causes fewer fused cells with lower infection levels in the lab suggests this new variant may cause less severe lung-associated disease.
Probably will take a while to suss all this out.
December 22nd, 2021 at 12:34 PM ^
I also just tested positive
RIP (christmas)
December 22nd, 2021 at 1:23 PM ^
At this point we'd be absolutely nuts to think Michigan won't be impacted in some way, shape or form.
The booster shots will help, but I'd be amazed if Michigan somehow got to this game with no one having to sit out.
December 22nd, 2021 at 2:06 PM ^
The cfp will be a shit show but in the end, money and greed will win out.
This game will happen, even if everyone has covid. The money to be made is too much.