Former Michigan TE Mark Campbell and others discuss their COVID-19 with Trump (and others)
I realize this is a touchy subject for many, but I thought this Detroit News piece would be worth sharing. Former Michigan TE Mark Campbell and a few other COVID-19 survivors discussed their experience with President Trump and others on Tuesday:
How do we know dinosaurs weren't vegans?
They would have told us already.
How do we know person X isn't a Trump fan?
They would have started a new post on mgoblog already.
Well this was a swing and a miss, sorry everyone
April 17th, 2020 at 11:14 AM ^
Pot, meet kettle.
good post.
prediction for the rest of this thread:
Could it be...
Might it be...
It looks like it possibly is...
The Friday POSBANG!!!
P.S.: Great article, thanks for posting, OP.
Unless a former Michigan athlete discovers a treatment, I can’t imagine a more relevant covid post for this blog. Campbell touches on so many good points both practical and personal.
From wanting knuckleheads to take tis more seriously to discussing concerns about small businesses and the need for more testing.
My only disappointment in the thread so far is the people who feel the need to predict that there might be lively back and forth on an important topic like this without adding anything more substantive (or witty). And even more annoying, the race to be first to do it. God forbid people have differing views on an important topic and express those views on a message board.
'lively' back and forth would be welcome.
looking at most of these threads, however, reveals repeated train wrecks of condescension, name-calling, straw men, profanity, false absolutes, conspiracy theories and other than some of the folks (hat tip to them) who are doing some serious number crunching as things evolve, the same themes over and over again.
let the 'lively' discussions begin. maybe as a group we can truly upgrade the level of discourse.
Just like our football threads, there is a lot of chaff in the wheat. It is not unique to this topic or even to threads that have a political angle. We can all predict many of the comments we’ll see when the next three star signs and can also all predict some of the comments we’ll see in most every covid thread. That doesn’t mean there won’t be some useful nuggets of information and some entertaining zingers as well.
I’m quite confident we’ll get through covid and the economy will recover before we rid the world of inane message board comments. We might even win a football national championship before then.
I know this will be taken by many as injecting "politics" into the discussion again, but it's just an observation:
The fact that our current president was elected shows that a large portion of the country isn't interested in "upgrading the level of discourse" and the MGoBoard is no exception.
I don't say that because of policy disagreements. There are conservative politicians that are capable of having intelligent conversations, taking a position and arguing for it, and facilitating civil discourse even if I disagree with them strongly. But instead, a large portion of the country decided during the primary that this specific person is who they thought would be the best leader. That says a lot.
I agree with Blue in DC's sentiment. We'll get through this and back to work and sports and social lives, but I don't have a lot of hope for "upgrading the level of discourse" in broad terms based on the evidence I see.
April 17th, 2020 at 11:48 AM ^
So hillary was a better option?
April 17th, 2020 at 12:01 PM ^
BlockM, you should really do some research.
Just kidding. Great post.
For the posters here with poor attention to detail (paging Hotroute06), I'm referring to this part:
I don't say that because of policy disagreements. There are conservative politicians that are capable of having intelligent conversations, taking a position and arguing for it, and facilitating civil discourse even if I disagree with them strongly.
Electing Hillary would not have made any difference as to the state of discourse on this blog or otherwise. Both sides have plenty of trashy narcissistic boobs who just want to spew their hatred of something. This medium encourages that. Constantly insinuating one side is bad and the other isn't is nauseating and one of the many reasons why Trump won in 2016. People were mostly tired of PC and DC and MSM and business as usual. Somebody had to go there, stir the pot, and call out some of these fake patriot career politicians.
When both Democrats and Republicans in DC dislike you..
You are probably doing something right.
I guess you did inject politics here. :}
Said differently, it's the internet.
The fact that we can't have rational, relatively polite, "agree to disagree" debate anywhere anymore is just an unfortunate commentary on where we are culturally.
The optimist in me hopes this too shall pass. We're in our generation's McCarthyism era, which hopefully gives way to a return to collaboration and thoughtful engagement (good ideas can come from anywhere), but what that era didn't have was instant global connectivity with anonymity. Until we can learn to be respectful on this medium, we'll struggle to become un-entrenched.
As long as social media is a thing, you can forget polite, thoughtful engagement. A growing number of studies are showing that thanks to social media and our news media, we can silo ourselves from those with different opinions.
The past couple weeks have shown me that we're not getting better during a crisis.
yeah I don’t think further explanation is merited. I can think of maybe one COVID related thread that hasn’t immediately become a feces-throwing affair. Yesterday some one posted about a promising cure showing results in early trials and there’s now 160 comments of bickering. How the response to news like that is anything other than “gee sounds great” is beyond me. Whether you’re and an R or a D or something in between it would be cool if we could stop talking about it. Show me the dudes in your political party who joined up after losing an argument on a message board changed their mind. We aren’t on teams - we are people and if you can’t remember that in a global pandemic that affects all countries, parties and tribes, then God (or whatever runs this shitshow of an existence) help us all.
"We aren’t on teams"
I'm gonna need a cite for that. The discussions about Harbaugh and the discussions about Trump seem awfully similar to me.
Changing parties based on losing an argument? Probably not many... But I've definitely had my point of view influenced and even changed completely based on comments and discussions here and elsewhere on the internet. Often there's an angle I hadn't considered and having someone bring it up triggers me to do additional research or causes me to think about it in a different way. Sometimes it's uncomfortable for me to re-think though, and I probably don't do it enough.
April 17th, 2020 at 11:52 AM ^
Absolutely second this. Sometimes it is an explicit point, sometimes it is feeling compelled to back up my own position and all of a sudden realizing, whoops, the rationale that I thought made perfect sense in my mind doesn’t stand up to real world data quite as well as I thought. It is why I have personally found the Mgoblog back and forth pretty useful.
April 17th, 2020 at 11:56 AM ^
BlockM I think you just hit one of the biggest problems were currently going through.
So many of us have been forced to re-think some long held beliefs and it truly is a sometimes overwhelming thing to do, it can be very stressful.
They call this feeling cognitive dissonance.
It's much MUCH easier to just call another poster an idiot than take the time and effort to see if theirs any truth to what they said.
What gets me are the people who gripe "stop posting politics you guuuuuyyyyyzzzzz" but clearly read every yelly yell yell politics post. It's weird. Like, I don't read the hockey recruiting posts, you know?
April 17th, 2020 at 10:39 AM ^
Eh, that's bit reductionist. Avoiding politics is not easy when people inject it into threads that aren't inherently political. Yesterday there was an interesting post about how a new treatment seemed to be showing success in trials. Many people seeking to avoid politics could have clicked on it expecting it not to be political and been surprised to find the very first commenter was somebody who mostly ignored the article to take a shot at Trump.
Seriously. Take a shot at trump?? Liberate mgoblog!! When is this National nightmare going to end?
April 17th, 2020 at 11:13 AM ^
Fuck you for not reading the hockey posts.
There are still so many unknowns with virus. Why, for instance, do some people get so seriously ill when others don’t? Mark Campbell clearly is not obese, and doesn’t seem to have other co-morbidities. He’s obviously not elderly. Still, he got a very bad case.
We all have so much to learn about this.
my guess is they are linked to a specific genetically generated response to the virus that they will actually be able to test for at some point. we know that generally young/healthy do okay with this by and large, but of course some like campbell get sick. one other thing i'd be curious about, if they could ever somehow single this out, is that i do know some young healthy types that are much more likely to be complaining about colds/flu's during a given season than you'd think. i wonder if there is some tie-in about immune systems in general and the depths that this virus can effect someone.
One theory being offered about why kids do well with COVID-19 is that they get colds, lots of colds, many of which are coronaviruses. Consequently, they have a set of antibodies, while not the same as COVID-19, that do provide some degree of protection. One would think that similar logic would apply to parents of young kids as they often "share" what their kids bring home from daycare or school.
Spot on. If you go down the rabbit hole on remdesivir (the Gilead drug that appears to be having some success, though lots to learn) one of the thoughts now on the virus is how it triggers cytokine storms in some patients (but to your point, in who and why appears to still be unknown).
I'm not a doctor (barely made it through Chem 124 and 125), but what I believe is reason for optimism is the speed at which researchers are learning about this virus. Relative to other global health concerns, it feels like light speed to me. The pace at which vaccines are being proposed for readiness, also light speed relative to historical vaccine timelines.
Chem 124 and 125 were just two of the courses that kicked my ass. Math 215, Physics 242, Aero 330, ....
If you talk to a cinder block it means you are talking to a cinder block. It doesn't mean you are having a discussion with a cinder block.
You need to go out and meet some more cinderblocks, they all get stereotyped as being hardheaded, but some are surprisingly good listeners. They rarely seem to express much emotion and often seem quite immovable but many of them also seem to share a very strong bond with each other, and if during a chat, you hit them with something in just the right way, you may even see one just fall to pieces.
600 cinder blocks came over to my place about a year ago. Met each one personally several times. Talked to quite a few of them too. Hope I never have to meet any more.
With the right psychedelic, a lively discussion can easily be achieved with a cinder block.
In that case, I think the discussion you're having is with yourself... Not that that isn't productive, lots of people could benefit from having an honest discussion with themselves, me included.
April 17th, 2020 at 10:03 AM ^
I talk to myself because I love hearing from a guy who knows what he's talking about, and I love conversations with a guy who really knows how to listen.
April 17th, 2020 at 10:21 AM ^
It's a good article and Campbell made some good points. I'm always a bit nervous when I see references to hydroxychloroquine as some "cure" when we still don't know the long-term issues with treating people with a different drug than it's intended purpose to treat a virus we don't know a ton about, but at this point that cat is out of the bag.
Still, this feels light-years more relevant than half the stuff people get worked up around here.
April 17th, 2020 at 11:37 AM ^
It's also a medication with some serious side effects that can mess up your heart. I have a friend who was treated with it for Lyme Disease & it essentially shorted out the nerves that tell the left side of his heart to beat. If he tries to run, he goes down like he's having a heart attack.
Pretty much seems like a last case treatment, not a miracle cure.
Trump volunteered to take the hydroxychloquine and we all know how big his brain is. Get him in the clinical trial ASAP.
April 17th, 2020 at 10:26 AM ^
Makes some good points. Hopefully the president actually takes it seriously.
April 17th, 2020 at 10:51 AM ^
Good interview. Great news that he survived.
April 17th, 2020 at 10:54 AM ^
I can relate to his sadness and fear when he was being admitted and his wife was walking away in tears. It is an awful, lonely experience when you face the reality that you might die outside the company of those you love the most.
April 17th, 2020 at 11:41 AM ^
Why is it that three months after the whole world decided this was serious and over a month into quarantine (in most states) that it is necessary to use celebrities to put a face on this virus?
Just my suspicion, but there are a lot of people who still don't know anyone who has had this virus, and so they may believe that the whole shutdown is much ado about nothing. By having an actual patient describe what they went through, it moves the discussion away from "how many deaths are too many?" to something much more tangible to a large number of people.
My soon to be wife, is a teacher here in Los Angeles. One of the parents of her students is a Chinese National, who is married to a wealthy developer who takes Chinese money and invests it in to LA. He is American. Anyway, the woman contracted the Wu Flu and was near death...only 10 days ago.
So the doctors gave her Hydroxychloriquine...and now she is recovering.
Once again, Trump was right.... CNN/MSNBC and the rest of the Rats were wrong.
You sold me. I will soon be reading epoch news while simultaneously watching blaze, fox, listening to rush and Ted Nugent. Thank you for enlightening me.