College Football Players - COVID-19 Liability

[nnfdnole]

What does any of this have to do with risk management and liability analysis and lawsuits?

Has everything to do with risk/benefit. When you drill down to the facts, it’s is a “flu like” illness and should be treated as such. No more of a liability than just that, a flu. 18-21 year old die annually from the flu a slightly higher number than Covid as of 7-7-20 stats. Almost all from both flu and Covid have a had underlying health issues. So if you want to use your “risk/benefit” better plan on cancelling all sports because of fear of liability every flu season. But hey the ambulance chasing lawyers are lying in wait for a big payday! Life has risks and we do everything within reason to minimize those risks. But as some point life has to go on! Just my 2 cents! Go Noles!!!

 

[CHAMLER]

So your point is that liability is not an issue because the exact number of deaths might be a let’s say several thousand less?

My point is you were wrong when you stated flu and pnuemonia cases were not being counted as covid stats. Just admit it.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/blogs/working-stiff/85925

Deborah Birx, MD, the response coordinator for the White House coronavirus task force, said, "There are other countries that if you had a pre-existing condition and let's say the virus caused you to go to the ICU and then have a heart or kidney problem -- some countries are recording that as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death. Right now ... if someone dies with COVID-19 we are counting that as a COVID-19 death."

 

[nolepimp]

I have heard on so many talk shows talking about the risk of playing football this year. They are trying to make the point that if "one" player gets COVID and then (God forbid) dies, that the liability for this would be off the charts.

Think about this... it makes no sense. We are worried about the liability of a college football player dying from COVID when the chances of a player dying from a head to head collision is at least 100 times greater!!! Tell me how this makes sense?

You're kidding right? Smh!

 

[PopsNole]

How about calling in tens of thousands of students into a University? If the team is following suggested protocols and the student attends a gathering without protocols as most do or will, wouldn't a reasonable person assume the point contagion be outside the University? Wouldn't the fact of so many testing positive in the state of Florida make the case more difficult to hold a University liable?

Again the plaintiff lawyer is not looking to win in trial. He wants a large settlement, which he’s going to get because of PR issues.

 

[CHAMLER]

Has everything to do with risk/benefit. When you drill down to the facts, it’s is a “flu like” illness and should be treated as such. No more of a liability than just that, a flu. 18-21 year old die annually from the flu a slightly higher number than Covid as of 7-7-20 stats. Almost all from both flu and Covid have a had underlying health issues. So if you want to use your “risk/benefit” better plan on cancelling all sports because of fear of liability every flu season. But hey the ambulance chasing lawyers are lying in wait for a big payday! Life has risks and we do everything within reason to minimize those risks. But as some point life has to go on! Just my 2 cents! Go Noles!!!

Yep

 

[nolepimp]

I can't ****ing believe people are sitting here discussing how expendable 17-23 year olds are so that they can watch a sport on television, this is America!

 

[PopsNole]

Has everything to do with risk/benefit. When you drill down to the facts, it’s is a “flu like” illness and should be treated as such. No more of a liability than just that, a flu. 18-21 year old die annually from the flu a slightly higher number than Covid as of 7-7-20 stats. Almost all from both flu and Covid have a had underlying health issues. So if you want to use your “risk/benefit” better plan on cancelling all sports because of fear of liability every flu season. But hey the ambulance chasing lawyers are lying in wait for a big payday! Life has risks and we do everything within reason to minimize those risks. But as some point life has to go on! Just my 2 cents! Go Noles!!!

I’ve never said they shouldn’t play football my post said I’m fine with them playing.

 

[MDNolefan77]

Again the plaintiff lawyer is not looking to win in trial. He wants a large settlement, which he’s going to get because of PR issues.

That is the Truth and the Heart of the matter. You can argue all day long about the danger or lack there of, all the lawyers see is an opportunity to make money.

 

[PopsNole]

My point is you were wrong when you stated flu and pnuemonia cases were not being counted as covid stats. Just admit it.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/blogs/working-stiff/85925

Deborah Birx, MD, the response coordinator for the White House coronavirus task force, said, "There are other countries that if you had a pre-existing condition and let's say the virus caused you to go to the ICU and then have a heart or kidney problem -- some countries are recording that as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death. Right now ... if someone dies with COVID-19 we are counting that as a COVID-19 death."

Wait. You started all of this saying that all the pneumonia and flu deaths are being reported as Covid deaths. Hence my point that no they aren’t.

The cause of death can have multiple entries if a person potentially died from multiple causes they can be and are listed as a cause of death. Hypothetically, if I’m in a car accident with serious injuries and i also have Covid that causes me to go into respiratory failure my cause of death could be trauma and Covid.

Imagine going to trial with the defense being that a number that we don’t know were false Covid deaths so our organization did not take it as seriously as other schools or other organizations. That is a plaintiff lawyers dream scenario.

 

[SoddyNole]

Again the plaintiff lawyer is not looking to win in trial. He wants a large settlement, which he’s going to get because of PR issues.

I understand settlements. I'm curious how one would go about proving point of contagion. I don't believe every organization is simply going to roll over and write checks to attorneys.

 

[PopsNole]

I understand settlements. I'm curious how one would go about proving point of contagion. I don't believe every organizations is simply going to roll over and write checks to attorneys.

Very hard to do. Borderline impossible but you’re dealing with juries who don’t always care about facts or science.

I think schools are 100% going to roll and settle if a player dies of Covid during the season or practices.

 

[MDNolefan77]

Very hard to do. Borderline impossible but you’re dealing with juries who don’t always care about facts or science.

I think schools are 100% going to roll and settle if a player dies of Covid during the season or practices.

From an ESPN article:
Last week, the Washington Post obtained audio of a Wednesday call between Southeastern Conference higher-ups and medical officials and the conference's player leadership council. The call reaffirmed that the league's best laid plans could only do so much to protect its athletes from coronavirus infection this fall and that the long-term health effects of the virus were still unknown.

 

[luxboy22]

What Pops appears to be saying is the veracity of the COVID numbers aside, the American (vocal) society, at large, is wholly convinced of the seriousness and implication of death with the virus, and as a result will not be in support of football being played to begin with.

Should anything happen to a football player that university will have hell to pay, and should their administration be foolish enough to question the facts of COVID it’d be seen as a justification to have placed the player in harm’s way and only intensify national outrage.

No school would have a prayer of fighting it, so in that regard were the COVID numbers even completely fabricated it’d still be immaterial. It’s a lose-lose, so the school would settle out of court and hope it goes away.

Believe that’s what he’s trying to relay.

 

[squiffynole]

They don't already have waiver statements in the scholarship documents? This is a sport where injury is inevitable and an average playing career can result in permanent brain damage.

 

[CHAMLER]

Wait. You started all of this saying that all the pneumonia and flu deaths are being reported as Covid deaths. Hence my point that no they aren’t.

The cause of death can have multiple entries if a person potentially died from multiple causes they can be and are listed as a cause of death. Hypothetically, if I’m in a car accident with serious injuries and i also have Covid that causes me to go into respiratory failure my cause of death could be trauma and Covid.

Imagine going to trial with the defense being that a number that we don’t know were false Covid deaths so our organization did not take it as seriously as other schools or other organizations. That is a plaintiff lawyers dream scenario.

I never mentioned anything about lawsuits or liability. I merely stated that you were wrong about what was being counted as a covid fatality and that the actual number of covid fatalities is unknown. In addition you also stated that covid was much worse than the flu and that too has been shown to be factually wrong.
Look back at your posts. You stated:

"That’s not true. Florida keeps separate statistics on flu deaths and pneumonia deaths. Which ironically the pneumonia deaths so far this year or more than double than they’ve ever been."

"That isn’t relevant to whether pneumonia and flu are separate death statistics."

"Based on the statistics it is much worse than the flu. That’s not even debatable"

Just admit those statements are wrong.

 

[PopsNole]

They don't already have waiver statements in the scholarship documents? This is a sport where injury is inevitable and an average playing career can result in permanent brain damage.

You don’t waive negligence.

 

[PopsNole]

I never mentioned anything about lawsuits or liability. I merely stated that you were wrong about what was being counted as a civid fatality and that the actual number of covid fatalities is unknown. In addition you also stated that covid was much worse than the flu and that too has been shown to be factually wrong.
Look back at your posts. You stated:

"That’s not true. Florida keeps separate statistics on flu deaths and pneumonia deaths. Which ironically the pneumonia deaths so far this year or more than double than they’ve ever been."

"That isn’t relevant to whether pneumonia and flu are separate death statistics."

"Based on the statistics it is much worse than the flu. That’s not even debatable"

Just admit those statements are wrong.

Covid is worse than flu that’s not wrong. It’s right.

 

[mjpwooo]

Pops is right in that someone will sue right away. I agree with him there.

If you think he's wrong on that part, I don't know what to think. You can think he's wrong about a lot of other things, but he's on target about the lawsuits.

 

[seminal]

I can't ****ing believe people are sitting here discussing how expendable 17-23 year olds are so that they can watch a sport on television, this is America!

It's easy to do if it's not your kid. Still atrocious, but easy.

 

[CocoaNoles]

Florida flu and pneumonia deaths in 2019 was 3,019.
We had more Covid deaths than that in July of this year.

I think there are a couple things up for debate. The fact that if you die "With COVID" in the US you count as a COVID death regardless of if it was the leading cause of death. Once you agree to this premise (which is undisputed as the CDC guidelines mandate it as such) then all numbers are meaningless.

Garbage In = Garbage Out

You can't compare this disease to any other country / other disease / etc as the numbers are NOT being calculated in the same way for any other country than the US who admittedly is VERY liberal in our recording.

As far as lawyers suing over it, you're probably right.

GO NOLES!!!

 

[PopsNole]

I think there are a couple things up for debate. The fact that if you die "With COVID" in the US you count as a COVID death regardless of if it was the leading cause of death. Once you agree to this premise (which is undisputed as the CDC guidelines mandate it as such) then all numbers are meaningless.

Garbage In = Garbage Out

You can't compare this disease to any other country / other disease / etc as the numbers are NOT being calculated in the same way for any other country than the US who admittedly is VERY liberal in our recording.

As far as lawyers suing over it, you're probably right.

GO NOLES!!!

The fact that you are positive for Covid and die does not automatically mean you're getting listed as a Covid death. However, if the death certificate lists Covid as one of the contributing factors of death then in many cases it is being listed. At that point we're debating at what made up % of cause for death is enough to justify it being listed as a death, which is why if it is a cause of death it's counted.

I'm not going to argue that the number of deaths is extremely precise because there is no way to know because at some level it is arbitrary. If you are in respiratory distress and in part die from that and are Covid positive I think it's reasonable to list Covid as a cause of death.

And just more generally, if covid is a big enough deal where schools are demanding social distancing in the class room, conducting a lot of online classes then it is assumed they think Covid is a big enough deal to want to limit its spread. Once we get there and now we're having 100 or so people in a locker room everyday and them hitting each other everyday in practice it's just asking for a lawsuit when a kid dies or is seriously ill.

 

[haywood50]

No you wouldn't - the player wouldn't be on campus or in the town if he weren't playing football. Morgan and Morgan would be chomping at the bit.

The defense just points to all 99.999% of the others that didn’t have a bad outcome. Now if the one who died was somehow not allowed to follow protocols after testing positive, or was encouraged not to, now there’s a case.

 

[CHAMLER]

Covid is worse than flu that’s not wrong. It’s right.

Pops - According to Johns Hopkins the COVID and the flu are very similar and at worse, the flu affects more and kills more.

COVID-19: Lasting damage to the lungs, heart, kidneys, brain and other organs is possible after a severe case of COVID-19.

Flu: Influenza complications can include inflammation of the heart (myocarditis), brain (encephalitis) or muscles (myositis, rhabdomyolysis) tissues, and multi-organ failure.

Infections
COVID-19: The first cases appeared in China in late 2019 and the first confirmed case in the United States appeared in January 2020.

Approximately 18,093,891 cases have been confirmed worldwide. There have been 4,667,957 cases in the U.S. as of August 3, 2020.*

Flu: The World Health Organization estimates that 1 billion people worldwide get the flu every year.

In the U.S., for Oct. 1, 2019 – Apr. 4, 2020, the CDC estimates that there were 39 million to 56 million cases of flu. (The CDC does not know the exact number because the flu is not a reportable disease in most parts of the U.S.)

 

[PopsNole]

Pops - According to Johns Hopkins the COVID and the flu are very similar and at worse, the flu affects more and kills more.

COVID-19: Lasting damage to the lungs, heart, kidneys, brain and other organs is possible after a severe case of COVID-19.

Flu: Influenza complications can include inflammation of the heart (myocarditis), brain (encephalitis) or muscles (myositis, rhabdomyolysis) tissues, and multi-organ failure.

Infections
COVID-19: The first cases appeared in China in late 2019 and the first confirmed case in the United States appeared in January 2020.

Approximately 18,093,891 cases have been confirmed worldwide. There have been 4,667,957 cases in the U.S. as of August 3, 2020.*

Flu: The World Health Organization estimates that 1 billion people worldwide get the flu every year.

In the U.S., for Oct. 1, 2019 – Apr. 4, 2020, the CDC estimates that there were 39 million to 56 million cases of flu. (The CDC does not know the exact number because the flu is not a reportable disease in most parts of the U.S.)

The flu does not kill more the highest projection is around 60,000 a year from the flu in the US.

 

[CHAMLER]

The flu does not kill more the highest projection is around 60,000 a year from the flu in the US.

So you're right and the CDC is wrong and so is John Hopkins.. I get it

 

[PopsNole]

So you're right and the CDC is wrong and so is John Hopkins.. I get it

CDC estimates that the burden of illness during the 2018–2019 season included an estimated 35.5 million people getting sick with influenza, 16.5 million people going to a health care provider for their illness, 490,600 hospitalizations, and 34,200 deaths from influenza (Table 1). The number of influenza-associated illnesses that occurred last season was similar to the estimated number of influenza-associated illnesses during the 2012–2013 influenza season when an estimated 34 million people had symptomatic influenza illness6.

That's from the CDC for 2018-2019.

 

[ryandris1]

Not getting into the back and forth just making a statement. There are a lot of variables with this. I don't want to see anything happen to anyone regardless of the reason. It order to sue the school would have to be negligent in some way whether the death was COVID19 related or not.

Personally, I have always felt we were going to have football. The death rate as a whole is low, and really non existent for the age group we are talking about here. That said, we do need to give the players the ability to opt out without any sort of penalty. They are amatuer athletes, not professionals, if they wish to sit out this year then they should be allowed to do so. Pro athletes are getting that right and we should afford college athletes the same.

 

[thinkingnole]

CDC says there have been 24,000 and 62,000 flu deaths in the U.S. from October 1 through April 1, the 2019-2020 flu season.

Somebody run the numbers but I think that's fewer than COVID-19's 158,000.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm

 

[Hogpynn]

The likelihood of them dying isn't relevant. Putting "amateur athletes" out on the field right now is a lawsuit waiting to happen. Plenty of people have genetic heart defects and pre-existing conditions you don't know about at their age. It's just going to take one player have a genetic heart issue and they get covid and die and the lawyers are going to be swarming his family within an hour.

I'm not against football being played it's just a huge potential liability if something goes wrong. Remember the Darling situation? Now imagine it with a Covid death right now. It's going to scare the hell out of coaches, players and administration.

POPS, Will you be watching the game alone in your living room with your mask on drinking your drink through the straw size hole in your mask?

 

[PopsNole]

POPS, Will you be watching the game alone in your living room with your mask on drinking your drink through the straw size hole in your mask?

This has nothing to do with risk management at a large school about to play football.

To answer your question no I don't drink alcoholic beverages with a straw and a hole in a mask would defeat the purpose.

 

[Hogpynn]

This has nothing to do with risk management at a large school about to play football.

To answer your question no I don't drink alcoholic beverages with a straw and a hole in a mask would defeat the purpose.

You do know about good Booze thou. I learned a lot from you on the booze thread

 

[PopsNole]

You do know about good Booze thou.

I've had too many bad experiences with cheap booze to drink anything but the good stuff at this point.

 

[Hogpynn]

CDC says there have been 24,000 and 62,000 flu deaths in the U.S. from October 1 through April 1, the 2019-2020 flu season.

Somebody run the numbers but I think that's fewer than COVID-19's 158,000.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm

Everything is coded to C19

 

[Hogpynn]

I've had too many bad experiences with cheap booze to drink anything but the good stuff at this point.

Amen to that!!

 

[PopsNole]

Amen to that!!

Didn't drink bourbon for almost a decade after thinking it would be a good idea to take about 10 shots of Jim Beam in my younger days.