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Corona Virus Testing Complexities and The Departments of Redundancy Departments

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VintonCountyBuck's picture
October 21, 2020 at 4:01am
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Driving on my way home tonight, I was listening to Chris Spatola and Tom Luginbill.  They mentioned a little nugget of information, that I hadn’t realized.   
Apparently, there was a soccer player at Texas A&M that tested positive for the Corona virus.

Convinced she did nothing to put herself at risk, the player sought her own test from the student health center on the College Station campus. The result returned negative. Over the next few days, the school tested the player three more times, producing all negative results.

The soccer player was cleared by the SEC office and then, days later on Oct. 3, the conference’s COVID task force drafted a new item to its 34-page medical guidance policy to address false positive tests.

Tom Bjork, the Texas A&M athletic director was asked about the case of his soccer player and made the following comment: 

“Our deal was let’s use common sense and make sure we are accurate. If you’re testing this much, there’s bound to be falsities. If we had to be the case example to get it going, so be it,” 

According to Spatola and Luginbill, this is the basis for the SEC’s new 9-day old policy, that Alabama had invoked in order to get Nick Saban re-tested 3 more times, all of which returned negative, and back out on the field for their game this past weekend against Georgia.

Luginbill mentioned that this policy does, absolutely, now apply to all SEC athletes as well.

My question is:

Can and will the B1G amend their criteria for testing in a way that would allow the players that have tested positive, to return to the field much sooner than the 21 day stipulation that they now must face, if they subsequently test negative in 3 consecutive tests following?  The players are still required to undergo the myocarditis testing and all that once they are found to have contracted this virus. But is that an issue which could also be amended? I’m honestly at a loss and in search of an answer.. Lol. 
I get that this year has been crazy and sometimes it seems as if everyone is just making up their own rules when dealing with this virus.  I’m not trying to downplay that at all.  I just found it interesting that one of the most high-profile conferences in the country is actively trying to find ways to help their players play.
While another (looking at you B1G) seems to have all their rigid protocols in place simply to find a reason not to play.

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