Dear SEC: Alabama has 531 COVID cases in 3 days
The University of Alabama enters the kingdom of shame after hundreds of students were videotaped partying without masks. (And, yes, given that Alabama is the center of the college football universe, reports like this are relevant on this board.)
https://tuscaloosathread.com/531-new-covid-19-cases-at-university-of-alabama-in-five-days/
August 24th, 2020 at 8:50 PM ^
Individualistic society. People don't give a shit about issues unless it affects them
August 24th, 2020 at 8:54 PM ^
Or people they know. And the honest reality of so much of COVID is that if you ask the average person I am willing to bet at absolute worst case they know someone who got it and just got a little sick, if they even personally know anyone who has had it at all.
August 24th, 2020 at 11:18 PM ^
My dad is on a ventilator so fuck you.
August 24th, 2020 at 11:44 PM ^
I’m sorry to hear about your dad. Clearly, that is awful and you are not the aforementioned average person.
August 25th, 2020 at 11:02 AM ^
Or maybe you are just talking out of your ass, and have no idea who the "average person" is
August 25th, 2020 at 12:27 PM ^
I've tagged Clarence Beeks as a troll on a number of threads lately, but his point here is actually valid. Most (average?) people haven't had a bad experience with COVID yet. Dying from COVID is an abstract concept to most. With the pro-pandemic crowd talkin free-dumb and that COVID is a hoax and that you odds on getting sick or dying are super-low, it is hard for many people to act in the communities best interest. People in my neighborhood have loosened up considerably and if one person gets it, COVID will spread quickly. People will continue to be pro-pandemic until we hit a tipping point where the average person knows someone who died or had an awful experience. It's sad that American's are so [self-centered]. It's literally sickening.
August 25th, 2020 at 1:17 PM ^
maybe not become sick with it but i think the whole world is having a bad experience with it...
October 21st, 2020 at 10:59 PM ^
My father made. Two friends of mine, one who is a fellow alum, did not make it. So I still just want to say fuck you.
August 24th, 2020 at 11:24 PM ^
How much are you putting on that bet? Cause there’s a bunch of mgoblog members you can start writing checks to.
August 24th, 2020 at 11:45 PM ^
If the bet is about the average person (which is what I said), yeah I’ll take that bet.
August 25th, 2020 at 7:27 PM ^
Okay so what are you defining as average? Let’s poll 100 random mgoblog users, Seth or one of the mods can pull random usernames and ask them how many people know someone affected.
That’s generally what’s meant when talking about asking the random American.
August 25th, 2020 at 8:40 AM ^
Michigan has what a little over 100,000 cases and our population is 10 mil. Basic math boils that down to 1 out of 100 have contracted the virus. Not saying the math is perfect but you get the point.
August 24th, 2020 at 8:57 PM ^
I think it's more that people are awful at understanding percentages and rates and always believe they couldn't ever be in that percentage of people that bad things happen to.
August 24th, 2020 at 9:02 PM ^
Or in this case, they do understand percentages and thus believe they won't be in that percentage of people that bad things happen to.
August 24th, 2020 at 9:58 PM ^
I'm sure if you asked the 170k dead in the US most of them would have assumed they wouldn't have been in that percentage either. But yes, let's assume that the 18-22 year-olds on college campuses possess wisdom beyond their years and have thought through the long-term ramifications of contracting COVID-19 and still would rather eat some ass or whatever college kids do these days.
August 24th, 2020 at 10:11 PM ^
Do you drive a car or do you avoid it because you could die in a car accident? How many people die in car accidents? Now how many of those thought they would be fine? Your argument doesn't hold up.
August 24th, 2020 at 11:08 PM ^
Well, I wear a seatbelt, try not to travel during dangerous conditions, and follow stated rules for the road in order to protect myself and those around me. Your analogy assumes normal times when in fact we are decidedly not in normal times, where normal risk applies. A better analogy would be getting into a car with shoddy breaks, a nail in one tire, one busted headlight, and a distinct possibility that your rear axle might bend in half as you drive down the highway at 70 MPH. The fact that a number of these outbreaks occurred at Greek houses and bars points to there being some unsafe behavior going around.
Again, I hear loud and clear your desire to have football to watch in the fall. Sadly that isn't going to happen at least for the Big 10 and the Pac 12. It'll probably happen to some degree for the SEC and Big 12, slightly lower for the ACC because some of those schools are located in states like MA, PA, and NY who seem to be taking this disease pretty seriously. I don't believe college students should be on campus right now nor should they be playing football; because I'm not a college president I am stuck pointing out that we're going to keep seeing this same story play out for the next month or so as colleges start back up in fits and starts before, ultimately, going remote in most cases for the rest of the semester.
August 24th, 2020 at 11:43 PM ^
There is still a chance you could be killed and you are still doing a risk assessment. Like I said, they just have a different risk tolerance than you. Does that make them wrong? Or just different?
August 24th, 2020 at 11:51 PM ^
The car analogy actually works really well if you use really young and really old drivers, which account for the highest rate of accidents. We respond to that by not letting them drive until a certain point, then allow for individual risk tolerance as they age, up until the point that we don’t (which differs by state).
August 25th, 2020 at 7:11 AM ^
No. Car accidents are not contagious.
August 25th, 2020 at 10:02 AM ^
Actually... if there is more than one vehicle involved... they are.
August 25th, 2020 at 12:45 PM ^
That's your response? Really?
August 25th, 2020 at 11:04 AM ^
I'm saying they don't have a strong sense of risk tolerance if they don't understand the severity of the risk they're taking. When my kids were little they would jump off playsets. As kids are want to do, they kept going higher and higher and jumping farther and farther until they hurt their knees landing. When I'd ask both of them why they jumped that far they both said they didn't realize it was that high. Their risk tolerance wasn't particularly well-informed; they mentally assumed jumping from the side of the climbing dome was effectively the same risk as jumping from the top of the dome when, clearly, it wasn't.
Your assumption is that everyone has a reasonably objective and sober view of the risks before them when making their informed decisions; my counter is that college students who have been cooped up in their families' homes for the past 6 months, buttressed by various adults telling them COVID-19 is a hoax or not that serious, may not have the most sober and rational take on the risks they are accepting because they just want to get laid and drink.
August 24th, 2020 at 11:29 PM ^
When you drive your car so you drive around without regards to the lines or lights? Do you haphazardly swerve through intersections and ignore all other drivers on the road and think only of yourself?
Theres simple shit we do when driving like follow the lines and traffic signals. That keeps everyone safer. Just like the simple thing of wearing a mask and distancing keeps everyone safer.
Seriously at this point you’d think the morons would realize their dumbass car analogy is not some “gotcha” retort. It’s been explained to you a million times the difference between cars and viruses. So just admit you’re wrong or better yet quit making uninformed comments in every thread. You people are the reason we don’t have football.
August 24th, 2020 at 11:42 PM ^
That's a different argument and not the one I was responding to.
August 25th, 2020 at 12:43 AM ^
And your car analogy, quite frankly, is so much a reach that it's moronically stupid.
Drivers are governed by rules of the road, safety regulations, drunk driving laws, speeding laws, etc., that we as a society are close to 100% in agreement with, because all have accepted that driving regulations are in place to protect the common good of society. Though some still choose to drive 10-15mph or more over the speed limit, very very few drivers are idiotic enough to scream "but my FREEDOMS!!!" in protest of speed limits and other laws.
Yeah, any one of us could get killed on the road. Difference is, I can, to a very large extent, avoid the idiots by driving safely AND defensively AND maintaining my vehicle properly.
With Covid19, what you can't see is what can kill you and it's much more preventable than the science-denying anti-maskers will admit to.
August 25th, 2020 at 1:18 AM ^
Are these Bama students (or any students for that matter at any campus) screaming about their freedoms as they go to parties? Are they doing this in protest? Or are they merely being reckless? I'd wager it's the latter and maybe that's why kids can't drive until they are 16 and have higher insurance rates, because they have different risk assessment than older adults.
You can also, to a very large extent, avoid these people by self isolating and social distancing.
August 24th, 2020 at 9:23 PM ^
There is a certain disregard for the lives of the elderly too. And yet I'm confident that, if these people live to be 75, making it to, say, 78 will seem pretty damn important to them.
August 25th, 2020 at 7:53 AM ^
500 shrug their shoulders because they don't understand how math works. It's not the 531 cases in 3 days that is disturbing, it's that there is no reliable way to contract trace who those 531 people have been in contact with prior to be diagnosed. Your 531 cases is going to turn into a much larger number in short order.
Reviewing how COVID has affected prison populations provides some insight as to how this could affect student populations. When prisons are showing infection rates on the order of 30-50%, it's a grim prospect for students returning to college campuses.
August 24th, 2020 at 8:48 PM ^
So... about 1.5% of their student body?
August 24th, 2020 at 9:06 PM ^
In three days, and the spread will be exponential if not severely checked asap.
August 24th, 2020 at 9:06 PM ^
Sure, though at the same time the article doesn't say when the tests were performed; based on my limited reading in other articles these results could be a day or two old, meaning there could be many more who are infected who either haven't been tested yet or have tests pending.
It's telling that the mayor of Tuscaloosa just closed all bars for two weeks and the school and city are going to ramp up testing based on geographic hotspots they've been seeing in the results thus far.
August 25th, 2020 at 9:00 AM ^
Also of note is that this doesn't include 300+ positives that were from their student reentry program.
August 24th, 2020 at 9:38 PM ^
Virus only spreads in the first week following the return of students. After then it knows to stop because it knows not cool bruh. Classic virus behavior.
August 24th, 2020 at 8:49 PM ^
Zero fucks will be given. Footbawwwwl and owning the libs is far more important to those people than containing COVID will ever be.
Saban and the governor could be on their deathbeds and Bama would still be lining up on Saturdays.
August 24th, 2020 at 8:51 PM ^
The perhaps ironic part (of a thread like this where a bunch of people are going to post down on the south) is that Michigan’s image did itself no favors on this with the Phi Psi banner making its rounds on the internet...
August 25th, 2020 at 7:14 AM ^
Ah, I see you've been learning from the Fox overlords.
August 25th, 2020 at 9:28 AM ^
The problem there was that the banner in question wasnt from Alpha Sigma Sigma
August 24th, 2020 at 8:58 PM ^
SEC will play.
August 24th, 2020 at 9:00 PM ^
Show me the way
To the next whisky bar
Oh, don't ask why
Oh, don't ask why
For if we don't find
The next whisky bar
I tell you we must die
I tell you we must die
I tell you, I tell you
I tell you we must die
Oh, moon of Alabama
We now must say goodbye
We've lost our good old mama
And must have whiskey, oh, you know why
August 24th, 2020 at 9:08 PM ^
Break on through to the other side!
August 24th, 2020 at 10:15 PM ^
Definitely one of the more interesting but bizarre songs on that first Doors album. Geez, it's been awhile since I've put that vinyl on my turntable.
August 25th, 2020 at 9:08 AM ^
A really under-rated band, The Doors... Morrison was a sick fuck, but he sure could write...
August 24th, 2020 at 9:38 PM ^
Roll Damn Tide.... right into oblivion.
Go Blue.
August 24th, 2020 at 9:47 PM ^
I mean, who knew these things could happen in a pandemic, right?
Alabama knew like everyone else, but like the rest of the SEC, they will only give up the revenue in death, and perhaps not even then as the will might demand that the final disbursements be to unmarked graves throughout the southeastern US.
August 24th, 2020 at 10:11 PM ^
At what point do people move on and deal with the risk though?? When there is nothing left? Seriously I don’t advocate being a complete bozo and acting as if there is nothing going on but at some point we have to be let back out into the world.
August 24th, 2020 at 11:01 PM ^
Shhhh...! You’re not allowed to say this here! Didn’t you get the memo?
August 24th, 2020 at 11:13 PM ^
I mean, people are allowed to go back into the world. According to the article Alabama had something like a dozen positive cases when they initially screened students and now they have a couple hundreds after the Greek houses and bars started hosting students. So it's mostly college students doing college student things like drink, hook up, etc. without taking proper precautions. Which isn't their fault, to an extent, but also isn't necessarily "dealing" with the risk thoughtfully.
There are no good answers here and I do feel bad for the students but we've seen months of people wanting to get "back to normal" and it's almost always followed by a series of rising hospitalizations and deaths. Students are just another victim of a disjointed response to this disease.
August 25th, 2020 at 7:29 AM ^
At what point to people just follow the recommended safety guidelines so we CAN move on and deal with the risk? The more that people decide to drag their feet and flat out ignore the safety guidelines, the stronger presence this virus is going to maintain. Which in turn makes it increasingly difficult for us as a country to move on and deal with the risk.
How many people have to die from this before people do simple things like social distancing and wearing a mask when they go out? We had the ability to minimize the effects of the virus. We had the ability to limit its spread. This could be virtually over and handled. But we failed as a country in how we handled this from the beginning. And once leadership got their shit together, you still had/have large pockets of individuals who refused to follow suit. And it’s completely screwed us.