Unverified Voracity Has Obligatory Empty Stadium Photo
I wish I had anything other than grimace emojis to show you. Michigan announces limited seating at Michigan Stadium this fall "if U-M is able to have a 2020 football season":
- There will be no football season tickets. Status as a season ticket holder remains unchanged, and season ticket locations will be retained for the 2021 season.
- If U-M is able to have fans at Michigan Stadium, all home games will be sold on an individual game basis, with sales limited to current season ticket holders and students. There will be no ticket sales to the general public.
- For season ticket holders who elected to adjust their season ticket location/quantity during the June upgrade period, that new location/quantity will be retained for the 2021 season.
- Details regarding a potential individual game sale will be communicated once a decision on playing with or without fans is finalized.
- In the event that Michigan is able to have fans at any sporting event this season, all forms of ticketing will move to a mobile platform.
We've heard on background that we're looking at maybe 20k people, most of them students. Obviously this is a developing situation, as they say. If I was a betting man I'd guess the number of fans would be zero.
[After the JUMP: sucking yet more air through teeth]
The situation. Andy Staples on where we're at:
But given the current circumstances, the only way a season of any kind happens is with an acceptance of risk by school officials — including notoriously risk-averse presidents — that is much higher than it is now. It would require less focus on the number of positive tests and more focus on how many people are symptomatic. It would require less reaction to case numbers and more attention on hospital capacity. Because if students return to campuses, there will be cases. A lot of them. The data say the cohort that includes college students has a very low incidence of severe symptoms, but college students also will come in contact with older college professors and university staff members. They will come in contact with their own parents.
You can't bubble college football, and the country has fucked up its coronavirus response worse than anyone else in the world except maybe Brazil. So the way to justify playing the season is to shrug and assume everyone on a college campus is going to do keg stands off a symptomatic person and oh well.
Schools are pushing forward because the public relations need to seem financially precarious has left them with zero reserves despite skyrocketing revenues. Iowa State:
“Some people have suggested that we should simply play fall sports in the spring when the challenges of COVID-19 could be reduced,” Pollard wrote. “Unfortunately, there are no guarantee things will improve in the spring and there are numerous hurdles to overcome. The most significant challenge is committing another six months of operational costs (roughly $40 million in our case) for the fall semester with no revenues to cover those expenses.”
I wonder how much of that expense is salaries well over the 90th percentile. Here's an excellent piece from the FSU Rivals site (really):
According to the USA Today's college finances database, FSU spent $150 million on athletics in 2019. That is almost exactly double what the Seminoles spent on their athletics budget less than a decade ago in 2010.
Let that sink in for a moment.
I know we've heard so much through the years about the "arms race" in college sports that we kind of tune out the particulars, but let that one marinate. In 2010, FSU spent just over $75 million in athletics. By 2019, it was spending over $150 million.
Georgia, Texas, Michigan, Ohio State: same story everywhere. Even a place like ECU blew 700k on a consultant to try to fix the financial black hole the previous athletic director (who walked away with a seven figure golden parachute) left.
Anonymous AD says no dice. Pete Thamel has an anonymous Power 5 AD who says to pack up the lights and go home:
“Right now, I don’t see a path in the current environment to how we play,” said a Power Five athletic director. “I’m confident we’ll get back to what we all think of as normal, but it may be a year before that happens.”
Also this guy:
“Ultimately, no one is playing football in the fall,” said a high-ranking college official. “It’s just a matter of how it unfolds. As soon one of the ‘autonomy five’ or Power Five conferences makes a decision, that’s going to end it.”
At least his twitter isn't talking about an open letter. David Ojabo is still stuck in Scotland:
“You would think I’m lying, but I’m living out of my suitcase,” Ojabo said, laughing. “If they say, ‘Come on,’ I wash whatever I need and literally just zip it up. I haven’t unpacked to this day. That’s how we’ve really been waiting. It’s no joke.
“I thought I was only going to be home for two or three weeks. Then quickly weeks turned into a month, turned to two months, turned to three months. This whole time, I’m thinking, ‘Maybe I could catch a break, catch a flight.’ Nothing. I’ve done it this way for my mental state. The second I unpack and get comfortable – this is me trying to not get too attached to being home.”
The bizarre option he's been presented with: fly to Australia, self-quarantine for two weeks, and then fly to the US.
He'll get through this. This is how many college sophomores live even when they get to their dorm or apartment. I am disappointed this is going to blunt Ojabo's ability to be this offseason's Loch Ness Monster, as it were. Now I will name other Scottish things: golf, scotch, waffles(dubious), patter, something called Irn Bru(?).
Obligatory Scottish Twitter interlude:
Freaks me out that u never know what anyone’s actual up to, ur neighbour could be sitting in their gaff the now munching an onion like an apple and ur none the wiser
— Marco (@marcoc0nte) July 14, 2020
This is a man with City Slickers on DVD.
Brass tacks. Marcus Thompson II on the NBA bubble:
How long will a pound last?
There are 453.5 grams in a pound. How many, um, sessions can you get out of that? Heavy smokers pack a blunt with about two grams per. So that’s about 227 blunts.
Six of the 22 teams will be in the bubble a maximum of 40 days. Of the remaining 16, half will be going home no later than 53 days in. Four could stay for up to 67 days maximum. The teams in the NBA Finals could end up being there a maximum of 82 days.
For players who are eliminated first, a pound of weed is more than enough. But for players on teams that make the conference finals, or the NBA Finals, that’s getting down to about two blunts a day. That might be cutting it close.
Apparently bongs are much more efficient.
The irrepressible. Meanwhile, Moe Wagner on the NBA bubble:
Moe Wagner called the bubble “basketball paradise.”
— Fred Katz (@FredKatz) July 14, 2020
Quote: “I actually really enjoy it. It kinda reminds me of the national team stuff when I was young on steroids…I sent the video of the facilities to a coach at home, and he said it’s like basketball paradise. And it is."
That is "the national team stuff—when I was young—on steroids", not "the national team stuff, when I was young on steroids." Punctuation is key, transcribers of quotes.
The Wisconsin OL… uh… machine. I have had some interaction with OL coaches. Any at all is enough to make the, uh, fecal undercurrent running through this Athletic piece on Wisconsin's remarkable ability to develop OL unsurprising:
Michigan blew up the play, and Konz knew exactly what was coming next as he jogged to the sideline.
“It’s like scars,” Konz says. “You never forget these things.”
It was time for Konz to own up to his mistake and do something countless Badgers offensive linemen had been asked to undertake through the years, accepting the premise of a vulgar yet perfectly apt phrase for the moment. It was time for Konz to eat his metaphorical shit sandwich
Also
“Every day you walk into that film room, your butthole is puckered to less than a millimeter because you know you’re going to get your ass reamed from all the bad stuff you did,” Thomas says.
Also
“We were running the ball over them and doing whatever we wanted,” Deiter says. “It felt like they were like, ‘Ah, get me out of here. I don’t really want to get deuced again by these guys.’”
I suppose there might be an innocent explanation for the last one but no, there is not, this is definitely a Wisconsin offensive lineman roleplaying as an opposing DL who is being repeatedly pooped on.
There are many paragraphs about other stuff that are also interesting.
Etc.: MAC schools aren't putting out any COVID data, which is a one-sentence explanation of why it makes sense to only play conference games even if some of them are in New Jersey. SEC having issues as it stumbles towards football. Jett Howard interviewed at length. Sports writers are caught between a rock and a hard place. How Kobe Bufkin landed in Ann Arbor.
I hope this whole situation helps to reign in college [revenue] sports back to what they were originally intended to be.
It won't, but that's my hope.
I agree - so many of these coaches and administrators are crooks.
Why limit to the athletic departments? Universities are guilty of everything Brian accuses the athletic department of. Hell, schools are raising tuition while also committing to being fully online. The system is out of control.
It's ridiculous. I'm in the Foreign Service and my kids have so far lived in China, Brazil, South Africa. More and more FS kids are going to college abroad. I'm already getting my kids ready to meet requirements for European Universities. Tuition at Oxford (where a colleague's son is going next year)? $12,000 USD/year. Univ. of Cape Town, where we live presently, and which is a pretty good school? $7000/year. Probably better experiences anyway.
South Africa?
Not sure about that one, bruh.
Dude said he's in the Foriegn Legion, man! Of course Africa!
Learn to read bruh!
You named two countries with universal health care. The U contributes about 14k/year towards my health insurance. Michigan employs about 40k people. Granted, not all of that money comes from tuition, but that's still a big chunk of change that Oxford doesn't have to worry about.
Especially in the non-power 5 schools (e.g., MAC).
There was no excuse for the athletics departments of EMU, CMU, WMU, etc to lose $10-$20 million each year before the pandemic; there should be even less now.
I don't understand why some Michigan politician (of either party) hasn't taken this as a hobby horse and pounded this message home. Seems look good policy and good politics to say to universities "We will reduce the amount of public money we give you until you stop spending $700,000/year on Jim McElwain & millions more on his assistants etc."
Wisconsin entire starting OL are RS. 4 of them are RS Juniors, and one is a RS Senior. Moreover, the next 9 of 10 OL on roster (2 and 3 deep) are also RS.
Incredible.
"Come to Whisky, we will bulk you up on hormone cow meat, protein, cheese and weights. You will not play as a freshman, and probably not as a sophomore either. You will play in the NFL". Sign here
Cheers
And beer
edit: and bratwurst
And milkshakes made from the milk they get from their own herd of dairy cows. Best milkshake I've ever had.
You're right that it won't. As long as millions of people want to watch, TV revenues will be high. As long as TV revenues are high, ADs will look for ways to hide that they could be swimming in Scrooge McDuck vaults of gold coins and they do that by keeping expenses in line with revenue
I think it will help in at least one sense: many colleges felt their athletic departments could operate at a loss (which is absurd in itself, since that situation pulls money from the university's actual purpose), but few if any accounted for a massive loss like what is about to happen. I would expect many university presidents to impose financial accountability that at a minimum would contain the damage from a lost season, and possibly to go further than that. While there is an argument for allowing an athletic department to lose money in extreme circumstances such as this, these circumstances very clearly illustrate why a loss-making business model doesn't work generally.
In the meantime, though, it's hitting me just how sad this is for players, students, alumni, everyone.
man, is that ever true.
the point at which some of these schools should have stopped trying to compete with power 5 schools passed decades ago.
i'll go further - it's fair to ask whether 'big-time' college football should even exist in its current form. college basketball is, in my opinion, starting to move that way - the top-10 guys skipping college to play in a developmental league is completely appropriate, and in a just world, the nfl would have created a minor-league system years ago. the existence of 'big-time' college football as an nfl developmental league is fundamentally at odds with the very intent of the University as a concept.
I would have no problem (assuming we play football this year) with having a reasonable number of high roller donors sitting in the club seats and sky boxes. Let them pay a shit ton and take the risk.
"...and the country has fucked up its coronavirus response worse than anyone else in the world except maybe Brazil."
I mean I know we are not the best, but to say we are the worst is in the world is not backed up by data. We are one of the best in the world when it comes to testing on a per capita basis, which there is a strong correlation between testing magnitude and case volume. Also, our deaths per capita (422/1m population) is again not the greatest, but it is certainly not the worst. Some examples deaths per capita (per 1m population):
UK: 664
Spain: 608
Italy: 579
France: 460
Sweden: 549
Belgium: 844
Brazil: 350
Shh... your truths are inconvenient. Thou shalt honour thy sacred opinion of thy betters!
---
This country was founded upon principles of not having large national responses to anything, because rarely are the best decisions made by people 2000 miles away from the situation. I think a lot of people are attributing to malfeasance what's best attributed to chance -- just like when posters in the game threads insist that Michigan's shooters are missing their 3-point shots due to X, Y, or Z instead of bad luck.
This virus appears to be more-or-less perfectly evolved to attack a mobile society; it has a long incubation period and can seemingly be spread prior to the onset of symptoms -- and the US is among the more mobile societies in the world.
I've said from the beginning that this virus cannot be stopped. I continue to believe it. Even China, which was willing to use martial law -- and a total lack of respect for individual rights -- to try to stop the virus, hasn't been able to contain it.
If we're going to have a "national response" to the situation, it should involve figuring out a way to live with this virus without infringing on people's liberties. Unfortunately, that's likely impossible, because it relies upon politicians having the courage to do nothing in the face of a disaster, and that seems unlikely.
So, therefore, I just ask this one thing. Please, all of you out there who are trying to force your masks on people's faces: watch the statistics, and when it becomes clear that mandatory face mask rules make no difference at all, rescind them instead of doubling down on a failed strategy. (And don't cluck about people disobeying the rules: it's far less common than you think. In fact, the US is reporting higher mask usage rates than Europe at this point).
The simple fact of the matter is, this is being politicized by both sides.
It's like SE Asia doesn't exist to you. Taiwan (population 29 million): no deaths, no more than five cases in a day for two months. South Korea (population 50 million) has had 13,551 cases and 289 deaths total. Vietnam (population 97 million with a mostly free land border with China) has had 372 cases with no deaths.
Willing and competent governments could and did basically stop the spread. It was not fate to have this be a fucking disaster. But your ideology says that can't be true.
You've cited one island, one virtual island, and an authoritarian, impoverished Communist country with absolutely no incentive to tell the truth. And the largest of those is a little smaller than California.
If your argument is basically "we could have deprived all Americans of their Constitutional rights, indefinitely, starting in February," then, I guess? But I'm not taking that trade.
And I'm not just talking the right not to wear a mask. I'm talking, no protests, no travel anywhere, by anyone -- quarantine passes for "essential" jobs (aka the government and cronies), no right to criticize, etc. Basically, martial law.
Taiwan and South Korea got lucky, because they identified a local problem before it spread very far, and because they could shut down their borders relatively easily to prevent more from getting in. (And yet how many Taiwanese and South Koreans are stuck overseas right now? How would that play?). The US didn't, because the virus didn't get to the US quite as quickly, and once it did, it wasn't identified immediately.
I don’t see why we shouldn’t expect as good results as Germany. They started testing early and kept their numbers down. Last I checked, they are not an island.
And yet we're not. Again, they got lucky, we got unlucky. So now what?
Apparently our only answer is an invasive attack on our liberties to force us to wear a mark of obeisance. It won't make anybody any safer of course, but it gives one side an easy target to use to affix blame, and that's really what this is all about.
MGoBlog is actually fairly civil. If you read some of the other sites -- particularly media websites -- the absolute glee that some people are taking in others getting sick is grotesque. There's a definite attitude among some people that anyone right of Joe Biden is a "deplorable" subhuman creature who deserves no rights, and without whom the country is better off.
viruses don't spread or not spread based on a matter of luck. Behavior drives viral spread, plain and simple.
But his ideology demands the rejection of germ theory.
Oh, for heaven's sake. I'm a firm believer in germ theory. I'm not a believer in slapping a mask on healthy people because "they might be sick," to prevent aerosolized transmission of a disease that obviously is only transmitted via aerosol very infrequently. (The contract tracking evidence makes this clear, which is why it's routinely ignored by the Mask Mafia).
If this disease were easily spread by asymptomatic people breathing within 6 feet of another person, it would have spread worldwide long before we even had a chance to react. Think about that for a moment: think back to pre-COVID times, and how many people you were around on a daily basis. The transmission rate wouldn't be 2, it'd be 12-18, like measles is -- because measles actually is transmitted via aerosols, and masking infected people would actually be a pretty good defense against a measles outbreak.
I'm also a firm believer that the science is showing it's increasingly unlikely that we're going to get an effective vaccine for this thing. The absolute best we can hope for is something similar to the flu shot -- it appears that the body just won't produce COVID-19 antibodies in sufficient quantities for a long period of time.
So: we need to learn to live with this thing, and that does not mean strapping a mask over everyone's face in perpetuity.
If more people who were one quarter as clever as J. thinks he is posted comments here, I guess the comments section would read like The Economist's or something!
Every benighted comment refuted, J. simply tacks a little further to starboard, singing hosannas of rights & liberty.
Taiwan zero deaths? "An impoverished communist island lying!"
S. Korea? Germany? "Lucky!"
Michigan trending down while Florida trends dramatically upward? "Coincidence!"
Dr. Fauci saying he was completely wrong in the beginning before he'd gotten a full opportunity to study the virus? "See, Fauci was wrong!"
One thing J. said was true tho - I did chuckle low key when I saw the governor of Oklahoma had gotten infected! I had thought there was ample space to social distance at the Tulsa rally, based on what I saw! Maybe he should have worn a mask?!
Hey, now, if you're going to ridicule me, get it right. :) Taiwan's neither impoverished nor Communist, and probably not lying. They're just an island, and that matters. It's Vietnam whose numbers I don't trust.
I haven't specifically said that Fauci was wrong today. I did call him a dictator at one point about a month ago -- that was a poor choice of words, since he doesn't have any real authority. :). He is wrong, though.
And if Michigan is trending down, then why did the governor just institute a mask policy within the last week? The last I'd heard, Michigan was trending back up, unfortunately.
She just re-instituted the mask policy because unfortunately, there are too many other people that think as you do. It's a hazard to the public health.
I can't even wish for you people to get this thing, because you are exactly the people who will go around spreading it. You are ruining it for everyone, and not just in this country. It's so incredibly stupid, selfish, and completely unnecessary. But here we are, pandemic raging on, only getting worse. So keep up your inane bullshit, it's serving everyone so well.
NO. We don't need to "learn to live with this thing". You people need to get it through your thick skulls, that the only way to defeat this goddamn virus is for everyone to wear a damn mask when around other people. That's it. It's dead fucking simple. Plenty of other countries have done it. But we can't, you can't, and drag us along with you. I hate you so much. Just aggressively virulent stupidity.
As I’ve said, I’d argue that the freedom to not be infected by someone unwilling to wear a mask is way more important than the freedom to not wear a mask. The freedom to go to a hospital that is not overwhelmed by covid patients and get treatment for other things in s reasonable amount of time is more important than the freedom to cram a bunch of people into a bar. The freedom for a grocery store worker to be able to work and have some assurance that customers won’t give him Covid is more important than the freedom of that customer not to wear a mask.
I have coworkers, friends and relatives who are far to the right of me. I don’t think most of them are deplorable (in fact I think very few of them are deplorable). I do think people who want to assert their right to spread covid instead of wearing a mask, in the process getting people sick, killing some and destroying are economy are fairly deplorable.
So quarantine the sick, not the healthy. And, if you want, wear a properly-fitted N95 mask, which actually may help. Also, wash your hands, try not to touch your face, etc. In general, people need to take responsibility for themselves: my health shouldn't be your responsibility.
When you infect a bunch of people and the hospital is overwhelmed and they are cancelling elective surgeries (that are not often really elective), you’ve impacted all sorts of people’s health and it doesn’t help at all that they were cautious and didn’t catch covid. When kids can’t go to school because of concerns about hospitals being overwhelmed, you are impacting other people. Ain’t it great to live in a country where you are free to be a selfish asshole.
They got lucky
I hate you people so much. I don't understand how the rest of y'all have the patience to speak thoughtfully to this person, or others like him. But my hat is off to you for doing it. I just can't.
double post. I don't need the negs twice. :)
Sorry J. that you have to endure the Sheep mentality of this board. Let me give it to you from my perspective here in Florida (the perceived hotspot) - to date, I do not know anyone that has it or had it. My boys have been playing in travel ball tournaments every weekend for the last two months. One tourney had over 160 teams. Still no one has it.
Just yesterday a good friend of my wife's got her test results in the mail. It said she was positive. Funny thing is she never got tested. She went to get tested and got registered. The line was so long and slow moving that she left before she got tested. That seems pretty fucked up to me.
I'm so over this bullshit and the masses that cannot think for themselves. Peace!
The fact that so many people believe the "numbers" is amazing to me. Entirely agenda driven ... any statistic can be manipulated to show exactly what an "expert" wants. There are NO guarantees in life ... a football player has infinitely more risk to have a career ending injury playing football than ANY long term covid-19 risk. Healthy 18 - 22 year olds do not have any significant risk re: covid-19.
But we're living in a time where mayors and governors think their police are worse than criminals ... logic has been tossed out for political correctness. C'mon ... we need football, the country needs football, and this would be a great time for colleges to lead this country !
Go Blue!
To be honest I stopped when I saw the word numbers in quotations. You people are unbelievable. Just admit the earth is flat, Q is all knowing, and climate change is more numbers lying so that we can all laugh at you more.
Germany closed most of its borders in March. When it was suggested that New York quarantine because they were the epicenter, Cuomo had a shitfit. Difference between the United STATES and the EU: they're countries, we're country.
Well, they also had pre-Schengen checkpoints to use if they needed them, and a general concept of their own sovereignty within the EU. Shutting Germany's borders was a lot easier than shutting New York's, Cuomo aside.
Also, AFAIK, no major German cities are immediately near the border and have massive, daily cross-border commute. Certainly, nothing the size of New York City.
I think you're making my point? Comparing us to Europe is silly. We may have roughly the same population, but even in these EU times, we're very little alike.
Because we aren’t the Germans. They are far more disciplined than we are. More importantly they have experience in cataclysmic events that threaten every citizen.
We don’t.
I'm tired of reading excuses. "The Chinese are authoritarian! New Zealand is an island country! Canada doesn't have population density! The Germans learned from the Holocaust! Japan has ninjas!"
There's just always some magical factor to justify the inadequacy of our governments' (plural) response. We just didn't prepare for a predictable cataclysmic event. That's on us, the electorate, for how we voted, and it's on our technocrats, who failed to communicate the inevitability of this event.
you don't seem to know what 'lucky' is.
what you wrote explains they were proactive and responded accordingly to the threat.
lucky is if the virus somehow 'miraculously disappeared' without doing anything.
I’m going to show you some of the studies that convince me that masks work. Would love to see some of your “statistics” that show they don’t. Also, I’d argue that people sharing there covid infections by not wearing a mask is in fact quite a large infringement on the liberty of others.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6928e2.htm?s_cid=mm6928e2_w
Summary
What is already known about this topic?
Consistent and correct use of cloth face coverings is recommended to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2.
What is added by this report?
Among 139 clients exposed to two symptomatic hair stylists with confirmed COVID-19 while both the stylists and the clients wore face masks, no symptomatic secondary cases were reported; among 67 clients tested for SARS-CoV-2, all test results were negative. Adherence to the community’s and company’s face-covering policy likely mitigated spread of SARS-CoV-2.
What are the implications for public health practice?
As stay-at-home orders are lifted, professional and social interactions in the community will present more opportunities for spread of SARS-CoV-2. Broader implementation of face covering policies could mitigate the spread of infection in the general population.
https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.00818
State policies mandating public or community use of face masks or covers in mitigating novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) spread are hotly contested. This study provides evidence from a natural experiment on effects of state government mandates in the US for face mask use in public issued by 15 states plus DC between April 8 and May 15. The research design is an event study examining changes in the daily county-level COVID-19 growth rates between March 31, 2020 and May 22, 2020. Mandating face mask use in public is associated
with a decline in the daily COVID-19 growth rate by 0.9, 1.1, 1.4, 1.7, and 2.0 percentage-points in 1–5, 6–10, 11–15, 16–20, and 21+ days after signing, respectively.
In countries with cultural norms or government policies supporting public mask-wearing, per-capita coronavirus mortality increased on average by just 8.0% each week, as compared with 54% each week in remaining countries.
https://austin.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/39e4f8d4acb0433baae6d15a931fa984
Look at the graph at the bottom of the page. The white dots indicate when rules were put into place. The City of Austin adopted a mask ordinance in mid-April. The bars opened again in mid May. It's not hard to see which of those two things had an effect.
The state of Texas issued a mandatory mask order as of July 2, so theoretically you should be seeing the rates fall by now. (Hint: you're not).
In fact, the city of Austin just extended its mandatory mask policy to November 12. This is absolute madness, but it's par for the course for cities run by progressives. Anyone with any sense can read that as "we don't actually think this will work" -- if they did, they wouldn't need a four-month-long order.
(Incidentally, while you may think of Austin as "Texas," it's basically Ann Arbor. It leans heavily Democratic. I can't tell you from personal experience how many people are wearing masks, because these insane laws have kept me inside, almost completely, for four+ months now. But it's a good bet that compliance is higher in Austin than it might be in rural Texas communities).
(Edit: sorry; forgot to make the link clickable. FWIW, that's a direct link from a City of Austin website; ARCGIS is just a contractor responsible for the graph and mapping software).
But according to your argument above, those stats don’t prove masks don’t work, they just show that some people are unlucky.
Governments should be biased against requiring people to take action. If there isn't strong evidence to show that something is helpful, and it requires active participation by the populace, it shouldn't be a law. The bar should be higher for anything that compels the citizenry to act than it is for anything that prohibits an act.
The government is prohibiting you from going outside without a mask. I would agree that the government should not require you to go out with a mask, feel free to stay in your house,
Touché.
I am staying home, but you're right; you can rework most requirements to do something as a prohibition against the opposite.
I think the case I'm trying to make is obvious, but I fully admit that the argument needs more work. I guess it's more along these lines -- a requirement to salute the flag during the anthem is more onerous than a prohibition against kneeling, and thus should meet a higher bar. In this case, I wouldn't support either law, but I hope it clarifies the difference. (Obviously, a prohibition against refraining from saluting is functionally the same, so prohibition vs. compulsion isn't quite the right axis).
If it is taking 5 to 7 days to get back results from many of the tests and on average it takes 5 to 6 days for people to show symptoms (and people don’t necessarily get a test the day they show symptoms) you can easily be seeing results of tests from people exposed before July 2nd. People who are asymptomatic but were exposed to a person who had covid on July 1st but was not yet tested will take even longer to register as positive since they may have just found out they needed to be tested. If we aren’t seeing a downward trend in another week, your argument will be more compelling.
I do notice that you completely ignored all of the examples in the post above that suggest masks are pretty darn effective.
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