Super Bowl LV: NFL Heath and Safety Media Briefing For Feb 3, 2021 On Zennie62 YouTube
From YouTube Channel: February 3, 2021 at 06:04AM
ONN – Super Bowl LV: NFL Heath and Safety Media Briefing For Feb 3, 2021 On Zennie62 YouTube
This 35 minute press briefing was based on the January 25th 2021 press conference that introduced a paper called COVID-19 Lessons from the 2020 Season Applicable Beyond Football
Presiding over the meeting were:
Dr. Christina Mack, IQVIA epidemiologist and advisor to the NFL
Dr. Allen Sills, NFL Chief Medical Officer
Jeff Miller, NFL Executive Vice President overseeing Player Health & Safety
Dr. Sills gave a brief run-down of the league’s COVID-19-related data over the 2020 NFL Season, and based on the information presented here, from the paper produced with the Center of Disease Control:
The Intensive Protocol, which has evolved throughout the NFL season based on ongoing analysis of testing and contact tracing data, was deemed in the publication “an effective mitigation measure.” No High-Risk Contacts were identified in 71% of cases where the infected individual’s club was under those stricter measures. Further, the Intensive Protocol decreased close contacts by 60% from October 1 – November 21, when 29 of 32 clubs spent 431 days under the Intensive Protocol.
The NFL’s Intensive Protocol includes virtual-only meetings; limited outdoor gatherings; increased physical distancing; mask wearing at all times, including for players during practice; and eliminating group meals. The league began implementing the Intensive Protocol on October 1, 2020, for any club with a COVID-19 positive case and the recent opposing team if exposed during a game. Beginning November 21, 2020, a league-wide adoption of the Intensive Protocol was mandated though the end of the season in recognition of its benefits in preventing COVID-19 spread.
The NFL made this contribution to the overall COVID-19 science:
The National Football League observed SARS-CoV-2 transmission after <15 minutes of cumulative interaction, leading to a revised definition of a high-risk contact that evaluated mask use and ventilation in addition to duration and proximity of interaction. Intensive mitigation protocols effectively reduced close interactions.
The report on the NFL Season from August to November, is here.
During the question and answer session, I was able to ask two questions of the panel:
1) The Biden Administration is and has ramped up its COVID-19 efforts and I am on the White House Press List, and get the emails (related to the virus-fighting effort). Have you established contact with the Biden Administration on this matter (if only to be aware of rapidly changing policy)?
2) Do you have a scenario plan for the future? The World Health Organization’s November 5th report said it did not know where the virus came from, yet there are variants.
The panel, as the video shows, said that was the case. Dr. Sills said they were in constant contact with not just the White House Task Force, but the CDC, state and local governments, and other sports leagues. He also said that none of the players that had the virus were found to have a variant of it. Jeff Miller said that the NFL wants to get back to normal as soon as possible, and for the 2021 NFL Season.
Given that two years ago, the virus did not exist for all practical purposes, I submit that its arrival (without knowing where it came from) has created a new altered state of society, and if the NFL has not done scenario planning to plan for possible changes not just in virus spread, but its possible social and government changes, the NFL could find itself behind the fiscal eight-ball.
Stay tuned.
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