Coronavirus in football

Cloud7 said:
Nope. A lot of footballers come across as genuinely stupid people so it doesn’t surprise me that they get caught up in misinformation and conspiracy theories. It’s not often you get a footballer in the top tier who actually comes across as intelligent.
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This is definitely true. I know here in Australia, there have been a bunch of WAGs of Cricket/Rugby players who with their husbands support, fly the flag for all things naturopathic, including for Covid.

Elite athletes are often young and impressionable and have been told from a young age they’re always right and it’s not hard for them to be taken for a ride by the charlatans out there. I’ve encountered many during my medical career where we’ve had to steer them back to the right path.
 
Sky1981 said:
Nope. Still cant force them to. They might fire them if they dont comply but cant force them to take the jab.

Most people who needs job just take the jab, as most sane people does. I took mine the first day it's available.

But still. You cant literally tie them up and force them to if they dont want it. And even to fire them would not be a simple thing.

Not that i agree with it
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They can fine them and suspend paying their wages. Unvaccinated players need to automatically quarantine after being exposed leading to the cancellation of matches.
 
SuperiorXI said:
Stop, mandate vaccinations, re-introduce higher levels of testing and bubbles etc, it was done before we can do it again.
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Omicron requires 3 shots. Thus, it would take at least 8 to 12 weeks until the players can be considered as fully vaccinated.
 
B. Munich said:
Omicron requires 3 shots. Thus, it would take at least 8 to 12 weeks until the players can be considered as fully vaccinated.
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I thought the reason for them saying 3 shots was due to a majority of the population had their first 2 more than 6 months ago, when their effectiveness starts to drop
 
Chesterlestreet said:
Would be interesting to see if there's a correlation between nationality and vaccine hesitancy in the PL.
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One of The Athletic podcasts that came out after their first vaccination article talked briefly about the fact that a huge chunk of the unvaccinated players in the PL are British - and that their unvaccinated % FAR outnumbers overseas players in the PL.

There was an article too - I think from Samuel Luckhurst in the MEN - that said almost all of the unvaccinated players at United are British. Made the point that Cavani is a spokesman for vaccine awareness - and has been since 2018.

I know just from their social media posts that Cavani, Fred, De Gea and all three of our Portuguese players have been vaccinated.
 
B. Munich said:
Omicron requires 3 shots. Thus, it would take at least 8 to 12 weeks until the players can be considered as fully vaccinated.
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Surely it only requires 3 shots if the other two are not working anymore because of time past.
 
OneUnited24 said:
I thought the reason for them saying 3 shots was due to a majority of the population had their first 2 more than 6 months ago, when their effectiveness starts to drop
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That applied for the Delta variant. However, with Omicron evading the immune response given by the vaccines even more, they recommend to booster already after 2 to 3 months.

Things are changing constantly and fast, so it can look completely different again in a few months.
 
Suspend the league for 2 weeks. Create a bubble and then pick up the competition.

Cancel the FA and league Cups.

Something will need to be sacrificed, this won’t just disappear.
 
Martial'sEmergingSmile said:
One of The Athletic podcasts that came out after their first vaccination article talked briefly about the fact that a huge chunk of the unvaccinated players in the PL are British - and that their unvaccinated % FAR outnumbers overseas players in the PL.

There was an article too - I think from Samuel Luckhurst in the MEN - that said almost all of the unvaccinated players at United are British. Made the point that Cavani is a spokesman for vaccine awareness - and has been since 2018.

I know just from their social media posts that Cavani, Fred, De Gea and all three of our Portuguese players have been vaccinated.
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That - sort of - makes sense.

Sort of. The percentage of vaccinated people in both Italy and Spain is considerably higher than in the UK. But then again, the difference between Germany, France and the UK isn't that dramatic - from what I can tell (UK is behind but not by that much) *. And - which is the really odd thing here - the percentage in the PL is actually lower than in the general populace.

That's just bizarre, really - the tendency is the very opposite for every other league (the percentage of vaccinated footballers is much higher than the total percentage of vaccinated residents).

* Actually, England (by far the most players in the PL are English) has a slightly higher percentage than Germany (according to one source, at least) at the moment. Slightly lower than France (pretty much the same).
 
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TheLord said:
You'll allow doctors and nurses and other healthcare workers working tirelessly for the last two years, many succumbing to death themselves, enough time to recover from what will surely be a huge surge in hospital admissions next week onwards. The number of new cases is steadily increasing to ~ 100,000 per day in the UK.

You don't want the NHS to be even more overwhelmed than they already are because hundreds of thousands of folks decided to shout together in jampacked stadiums to watch 22 players playing a ball, do you?

Or at least, the games should be played behind closed doors immediately.
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I think they're totally different issues. A stadium ban for supporters could be introduced tomorrow and would remove that problem. That's very different to pausing the league until the new year. For players, the same issues would exist - some would be vaccinated, some would not. What difference would a month or even two make? The reason games are being postponed right now is nothing to do with supporters, it's players contracting or being exposed to the virus and having to isolate. How would that change a month from now?
 
Does the jab make you less seceptible to the new variant? if not as I presume, I why bother isolating vaccinated or not? What am I missing, I have friends triple jabbed who have had the new strain so it doesn't prevent against that...
 
I've had issues in the past here with this subject, so disclaimer: I don't claim COVID not to be real, I don't think it isn't a risk, don't want to get into all that, just don't understand why if someone triple jabbed vs someone unvaccinated is as un/ protected when it comes to the new variant why the isolation rules are different. If you have had the disease, as it's a virus, surely someone with antibodies would be just as prepared as a fully vaccinated person? PL need to assert some rules here
 
AngeloHenriquez said:
Does the jab make you less seceptible to the new variant? if not as I presume, I why bother isolating vaccinated or not? What am I missing, I have friends triple jabbed who have had the new strain so it doesn't prevent against that...
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Not preventing and being less susceptible are two very different things. Yes it makes you less susceptible, no it doesn't prevent it. Your anecdote reinforces the latter and tells you nothing about the former. That's been the case since the first variant and the first vaccine, and it also applies to many other vaccines we're familiar with, like the flu vaccine...it shouldn't be a puzzling thing.
 
AngeloHenriquez said:
Does the jab make you less seceptible to the new variant? if not as I presume, I why bother isolating vaccinated or not? What am I missing, I have friends triple jabbed who have had the new strain so it doesn't prevent against that...
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No vaccine is 100% effective, but the Covid vaccine is more effective against the new variant than having no vaccine, just as it was against all the previous variants. People are still getting confused by this though.
 
Brwned said:
Not preventing and being less susceptible are two very different things. Yes it makes you less susceptible, no it doesn't prevent it. Your anecdote reinforces the latter and tells you nothing about the former. That's been the case since the first variant and the first vaccine, and it also applies to many other vaccines we're familiar with, like the flu vaccine...it shouldn't be a puzzling thing.
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It isn't puzzling, a vaccine in turn helps you build antibodies by putting (Usually dead) version of the vaccine in your body, if you have already had it, you are as good as triple jabbed surely? What am I missing
 
11101 said:
No vaccine is 100% effective, but the Covid vaccine is more effective against the new variant than having no vaccine, just as it was against all the previous variants. People are still getting confused by this though.
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Do you have a source to prove that? From what I've read the vaccine does nothing against the new variant... Jus trying to understand here..
 
AngeloHenriquez said:
It isn't puzzling, a vaccine in turn helps you build antibodies by putting (Usually dead) version of the vaccine in your body, if you have already had it, you are as good as triple jabbed surely? What am I missing
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It doesn't sound like you really care much about the answer to that question because if you'd looked into it at all, you'd find out that no, natural immunity and artificial / vaccine-induced immunity are not equivalent in general, or in this case. Of course, that has almost nothing to do with the original question you asked: does the jab make you less susceptible to the new variant? It's almost as if the question was insincere from the beginning, and you just wanted to unravel a particular trope
 
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AngeloHenriquez said:
From what I've read the vaccine does nothing against the new variant...
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Where have you read that?

The vast majority of reported cases where the patient a) requires intensive care and b) is not very old and/or has no underlying conditions involve...what do you think? Vaccinated or non-vaccinated people?

The vaccine clearly does work (and very well at that - especially after the booster shot) against Omicron (which is more contagious but less severe than previous versions - this is what the evidence suggests at the moment, and it's a very good thing).
 
Ramshock said:
Was anyone else as shocked as me when you found out that professional footballers were for the most part not vaccinated?
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It's not really a surprise as footballers are known not to be the sharpest tools in the box (and that's being kind).
 
Brwned said:
It doesn't sound like you really care much about the answer to that question because if you'd looked into it at all, you'd find out that no, natural immunity and artificial / vaccine-induced immunity are not equivalent in general, or in this case. Of course, that has almost nothing to do with the original question you asked: does the jab make you less susceptible to the new variant? It's almost as if the question was insincere from the beginning, and you just wanted to unravel a particular trope
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Well said my old friend
 
Chesterlestreet said:
That may be true, but it doesn't explain the difference between the PL and other top leagues. In Serie A 98% of all players are supposedly fully vaccinated.
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Could that be due to ethnic background?

Are there not major differences between ethnic backgrounds as to how many are vaccinated?
 
alexthelion said:
It's not really a surprise as footballers are known not to be the sharpest tools in the box (and that's being kind).
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Yeah the vast majority of them are thick, they see some shite that someone has posted online and they believe it.

I was reading some of the stuff Matt Le Tissier has posted on twitter about covid, vaccines etc. It's quite astonishing how ill informed some people are.
 
Jesus, the amount of misinformation in this thread is frightening. No wonder its spreading like wildfire.
 
And just for anyone interested, I love listening to this guy - his common sense approach is what I think is the right way and how I go about thinking about this.



This also talks to the previous convo I had with someone about infections. 70% protection against symptomatic Covid is a great benefit for a booster. Definitely suggests boosting plus omicron's prevalence can end the pandemic short of another awful variant emerging before the summer.
 
alexthelion said:
Could that be due to ethnic background?

Are there not major differences between ethnic backgrounds as to how many are vaccinated?
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I don't know if ethnicity (whatever that term actually implies - it could mean different things) is relevant, but there seems to be demographic differences, certainly.

However, it's difficult to see how this plays any part when nearly 100% are vaccinated in one group (Serie A) and below 70% in another group (Premier League) - and both groups contain multiple nationalities and ethnic (again, whatever that actually is in the relevant context) backgrounds. And - of course - one has to mention that both groups by and large are made up of extremely wealthy/privileged people relative to the overall populace, so in that sense they belong to the same demographic.

What I've seen mentioned (and this is hardly an established fact) is that the category of Serie A players who are not fully vaccinated include individuals who have refused the vaccine on "religious" grounds.

Again, though, the most striking difference between the PL and the other major leagues is that the former's ratio of vaccinated individuals is lower than the national (in the UK) ratio. Whereas it is significantly (vastly, even) higher for all the other leagues (compared to the national ratios in Germany, Italy, Spain and France).
 
What’s odd is everyone acting as if all of this stuff is new and unexpected. Adenoviruses don’t want to kill their host, but they do want to spread. They eventually mutate to become more transmissible, but less deadly. This is not novel science.
Vaccines were always meant to prevent hitting the threshold curve of overwhelming medical systems. It’s main value is NOT preventing transmission totally: it is in preventing the need for hospitalization and lowering the viral load of carriers to help at least limit transmission. Again … none of this is new. People comparing it to the flu NOW are wrong. People comparing it to the flu historically? It is pretty close in terms of scenario. So 60 years from now there will be yearly flu and/or covid shots, 180 or so active strains, and it will be a ubiquitous part of life.
Get your shot. Don’t strain the hospitals. I have this weird feeling that a significant percentage of the white collar world secretly wants more shutdowns so they can telecommute in their Jamie’s, spend more time with their kids, and binge watch Netflix shows. Science has given us tools we didn’t have in 1918. Use them. Don’t panic. Get to work.
 
Sky1981 said:
Nope. Still cant force them to. They might fire them if they dont comply but cant force them to take the jab.

Most people who needs job just take the jab, as most sane people does. I took mine the first day it's available.

But still. You cant literally tie them up and force them to if they dont want it. And even to fire them would not be a simple thing.

Not that i agree with it
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Mandating people to have vaccines isn’t forcing them to take it, it just makes life more difficult in the hope they comply. Once it’s mandated in law, they’re not allowed back into the work site, so basically they’ve chosen to leave.
 
Chesterlestreet said:
That - sort of - makes sense.

Sort of. The percentage of vaccinated people in both Italy and Spain is considerably higher than in the UK. But then again, the difference between Germany, France and the UK isn't that dramatic - from what I can tell (UK is behind but not by that much) *. And - which is the really odd thing here - the percentage in the PL is actually lower than in the general populace.

That's just bizarre, really - the tendency is the very opposite for every other league (the percentage of vaccinated footballers is much higher than the total percentage of vaccinated residents).

* Actually, England (by far the most players in the PL are English) has a slightly higher percentage than Germany (according to one source, at least) at the moment. Slightly lower than France (pretty much the same).
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This BBC article says Bundesliga is higher (94% double vaccinated) .. with France and Italy leagues higher still.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/59702363
 
Bluelion7 said:
What’s odd is everyone acting as if all of this stuff is new and unexpected. Adenoviruses don’t want to kill their host, but they do want to spread. They eventually mutate to become more transmissible, but less deadly. This is not novel science.
Vaccines were always meant to prevent hitting the threshold curve of overwhelming medical systems. It’s main value is NOT preventing transmission totally: it is in preventing the need for hospitalization and lowering the viral load of carriers to help at least limit transmission. Again … none of this is new. People comparing it to the flu NOW are wrong. People comparing it to the flu historically? It is pretty close in terms of scenario. So 60 years from now there will be yearly flu and/or covid shots, 180 or so active strains, and it will be a ubiquitous part of life.
Get your shot. Don’t strain the hospitals. I have this weird feeling that a significant percentage of the white collar world secretly wants more shutdowns so they can telecommute in their Jamie’s, spend more time with their kids, and binge watch Netflix shows. Science has given us tools we didn’t have in 1918. Use them. Don’t panic. Get to work.
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The Delta variant was more transmissible and more deadly. There's evidence to suggest the spanish flu's second wave was much more potent for the same reason. And a coronavirus is not an adenovirus. If you're going to dismissively educate people about non-novel science you should probably be a bit more cautious with the scientific facts you share.

The virus might mutate to become more transmissible and less deadly, it's an entirely plausible theory, but the idea that this is just the logical evolution of all viruses involves some obvious logical missteps.
The trouble is that how easily a virus transmits from one host to another doesn’t necessarily correlate with how sick it makes its host. Take the bacterium that causes cholera for example, which needs people to get sick – often deadly sick – before it can spread, principally through diarrhoea. Respiratory viruses need people to be close enough to be breathing the same air, to be transmitted to a new host, but don’t necessarily need them to be sick. SARS-CoV-2 is thought to be most infectious shortly before and during the first few days after people develop symptoms. The most severe COVID-19 symptoms don’t tend to develop until the second week of the infection, by which time most of the active virus has been neutralised by the body’s immune response. Indeed, the catastrophic organ failure and breathing difficulties experienced by people with severe COVID-19, are largely driven by an overactive immune response to the virus, rather than by the virus attempting to transmit itself to a new host.

So, unless SARS-CoV-2 becomes so virulent that it causes people to become severely ill and self-isolate before they transmit the virus to other people, there is no pressure on it to become less deadly.
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Source

"The statement that 'in the history of virology, there has never, ever, been a viral mutation that resulted in a virus that was more lethal' appears to be quite untrue," Timothy Sheahan, virologist and assistant professor for the Gillings School of Global Public Health of the University of North Carolina, told USA TODAY.

Sheahan pointed to several examples such as the Ebola virus, which was discovered in 2016 to have undergone a mutation that not only made it more transmissible but likely more infective. This variant eventually died when the epidemic ended in 2016. The West Nile virus was found in 1999 to have mutated into a highly virulent strain, killing crows on multiple continents.
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Source
 
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Red_toad said:
Mandating people to have vaccines isn’t forcing them to take it, it just makes life more difficult in the hope they comply. Once it’s mandated in law, they’re not allowed back into the work site, so basically they’ve chosen to leave.
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Yes, and being made harder doesn't guarantee them taking the vacinne.

Many establishment already did this soft enforcing but a good % of the population still choose to not getting one.

There's a difference with being "encouraged" and being "forced" to
 
I'm not really for forcing people to inject the vaccines against their will so I prefer a suspension and stricter guidelines to get this under control and then restart when its no longer as big of a concern

Also what bayern did Seems like a decent idea cut the wages when they get covid and can't play should incentivies a fair share of em who don't get it

Aside from that I don't know what can be done that ain't too dictatorial
 
Dr. StrangeHate said:
The least the PL can do is name the players who aren't vaccinated. We can shame them from our end.
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I think this has to do with privacy issues.
B. Munich said:
I'm totally with Klopp here. Why don't they just publish for every club who got and who needed to quarantine because they had close contact and aren't vaccinated.

First it's better transparency for everybody, secondly it would put some more pressure on unvaccinated players to finally get the jabs.
I don't see any benefits of making a big secrecy out of it. This will only spread conspiracy theories.

The cases of Choupo Mouting and Kimmich at Bayern should be a stem warning to all players who believe they aren't at risk because they are young and athletes.
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I think this has to do with privacy issues. People has the right to reveal whether they are vac or not. The govt also needs to allow publication of such things before premier league can publish.
 
Just seen Klopp say they won't sign any unvaccinated players. Hate to say it but they're really leading the way in the premier league for how to handle this. Everyone vaccinated, strong message supporting it and saying they won't sign anyone against it. Fair enough and I hope we follow suit.
 
BeforeKeanetherewasRobson said:
This BBC article says Bundesliga is higher (94% double vaccinated) .. with France and Italy leagues higher still.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/59702363
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Yes, I know.

I was talking about the countries (Germany and France) - not the Leagues. The point is a) that all the major leagues have a much higher vaccination ratio than the PL and b) that the PL has a lower ratio than the national one (unlike the others).
 
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