What's the appropriate level of risk for footballers? I mean it just came out that there are a larger number of 30 and 40 year olds that are getting strokes because of covid-19. And also that there are children that are experiencing symptoms similar to the kawasaki disease because of covid-19.
So is it okay to ask footballers to play while even scientists are still learning the impact this virus has? Or are we just going to assume they're all under 30 and therefore they will have no health concerns?
Even Sweden hasn't started their league play yet and everyone is jerking off to how they're handling the situation.
We return to the point that it might take years for scientists to develop an accurate sense of what impact the virus has. Would it be proportionate to grind society to a halt for the full duration of the interim period?
It's interesting to see Gary Neville's thoughts in the post above about risk - and the point he raises about construction workers is an important one, not merely because that industry remains at work, but because construction work can involve exposure to dust - with effects that might increase one's vulnerability to Covid-19, as alluded to here
Construction dust - Controlling hazardous substances - Managing occupational health risks in construction.
I wonder whether anyone has done comparisons between incidences of infection among key workers cut according to their professions, and whether any trends emerge. Likely not, given that testing has overwhelmingly been focused on health professionals. The deaths of health staff, bus and tube drivers has been quantified from time to time in the media, but not so shop workers or construction workers as far as I am aware. (Which I'd suggest would prompt a question - if the latter two sectors aren't receiving much consideration from the media, why not - there was much initial reporting about some construction workers resenting being classed as key workers. All the more important, surely, to investigate whether those fears were justified.)
Footballers would be expected to be healthier physical specimens than construction workers or shop workers; they work far shorter hours than pretty much any other industry you care to name, and they work almost exclusively in the open air. They wouldn't need to take public transport to work, though as I've mentioned they'd need to be packed into either coaches or planes, depending on circumstances (though I imagine the cost to clubs of hiring extra buses or planes to permit socially-distant travelling would pale into insignificance compared to the losses of precious TV funds). What difference any or all of that makes to risk, who can tell?
In this country, much has been made of the number of BAME deaths exceeding that group's representation in the general population. The general response has tended to be that this is not an issue related to ethnicity, but to one of social inequality. If the virus is likelier to kill poor people than rich, then surely any player who passes the Van Hooijdonk test is safe as houses.
As for Sweden, you must feel reassured to have the US President coming down with his full heft against their approach to the crisis. In the UK, meanwhile, Sweden's methods are far more criticised and doubted than supported, even in the liberal media outlets that would usually hold it up as the New Jerusalem, though a vocal minority (mostly, ironically, from those who would habitually deprecate Sweden's social democratic model) continues to put the case that theirs is the most proportionate response.
