So after we heard that both UND and NDSU wouldn’t be playing football on Saturday we have to ask ourselves, what is the endgame with COVID-19 and having some normalcy? Because it seems as if, using a football analogy, the goal posts keep moving on what will get us to the point of not having to test, wear masks and get to social gatherings without size limits.
As I am typing this it has been reported that almost 100 million people have been fully vaccinated in the United States. That is good, and will get us closer to herd immunity. The question now is will herd immunity get us to the point where sports teams won’t have to test because Dr. Anthony Fauchi said we are doing a study on whether or not people who have been fully vaccinated can still spread the disease. Looking at it, it would make sense that you could, considering the vaccine doesn’t stop you from getting COVID-19, it just hopefully will get your immune system to fight it off without you getting sick.
Also the news came out in Minnesota that people who have been fully vaccinated are testing positive for COVID-19, unfortunately some of them are symptomatic. They were either a part of the small percentage of folks in the category of vaccines where the shot didn’t trigger their immune system to fight the virus off once it got into their body.
So we know many of the most vulnerable in this country have been vaccinated, hospitalizations and deaths are down overall in this country (according to Covidactnow.org) and the high school sports seasons went on without stringent testing and there were no major reports of masses being hospitalized and dying after games. At some point as a country we have to ask when testing can stop. Because it doesn’t give us a good barometer of anything with more and more being vaccinated.
I have lost people very close to me who contracted COVID-19, so it is not that I haven’t been taking this seriously. I have changed much of my lifestyle to do my best to avoid the virus, and so far so good (unless I was symptomatic so I never knew it); but we need to talk about a definite next step to normalcy, especially with lower risk groups in athletics. The virus isn’t going away, there is no realistic ZERO CASES scenario. Science doesn’t back that up, even if everyone is vaccinated. It will take a medical leader to tell us we need to learn to live with it, while still giving plans on being responsible to fight COVID-19. Do we really need to test and cancel events over one test if everyone else is negative? It is a question worth asking.
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