Premise of U.S. sports’ reopenings comes with vast practical and ethical questions
Masks are mandated in Nashville, Tennessee, but not in many nearby rural areas. So a colleague of Dr. William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University’s School of Medicine, experienced this the other day:
Clad in a mask as he ambled up to a roadside produce stand, Schaffner’s associate noticed no one else wearing one. The man running the stand looked him up and down and said, “If you don’t take off that mask, we’re not going to serve you.”
Schaffner told this anecdote as we spoke on the phone the other night about the complications related to reopening sports during the pandemic.
“There are a lot of people … who want sports to continue and … have an intense desire to return to the old normal,” said Schaffner, the medical director (and past president) of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. “They don’t want to acknowledge the new normal, the new normal that includes the COVID virus.”
This denial remains an essential issue in a country with an incoherent national “strategy” that has enabled the pandemic to surge in shocking proportion to the rest of the world. In the absence of a concerted plan and amid the bizarre politicization of the response, the virus has killed more than 150,000 Americans and is gaining momentum in large part because of premature reopenings.
And with sports remaining not just an escape and diversion but a microcosm of our culture, that landscape frames the dilemmas in the resumption of sports competitions.
The precariousness of the ventures was amplified in a week marred by multiple cancellations of Major League Baseball games just days into its restart because of an outbreak among the Miami Marlins … and in a week that also featured Minnesota Vikings’ infectious control officer (and head athletic trainer) testing positive for COVID-19.
All the unconstrained elements — not the least of which is the virus itself — mirror the reality that sporting events and leagues are up against.
At least the fragility of the moment has one potential public health benefit: If multi-million dollar investments in protocols are this porous, how in the world can we think it’s OK to force children en masse back into schools?
“They are demonstrating how difficult this is, how even highly sophisticated and well-financed people who have a plan going forward can’t keep the virus out if they violate the basic rules of gathering together in relatively large groups for prolonged periods of time,” Schaffner said.
Some think this means sports simply should just shut back down. I’m not ready to say that, perhaps because I’m foolish or perhaps because I think it’s more complicated and nuanced than that.
But I sure think the questions are pregnant with an imminent arrival.
Chicken soup for the soul that sports might seem, is it just wishful folly destined to collapse? Might it be trivializing the health of those playing? Could it even be detrimental to the greater good by draining resources that might otherwise be applied for others?
Naturally, leagues and companies make a case that their testing needs go through private labs and thus doesn’t take away from what others might be able to receive. But Schaffner has a compelling counterpoint to what he calls an ethically questionable pursuit.
“If you have finite resources, whether they’re in the public sector or the private sector, those resources are finite. And the question is how are they best directed if your goal is to control the virus?” said Schaffner, who also sits on the NCAA’s COVID-19 advisory committee and has seen discussions turn much more pessimistic in recent weeks.
He added, “I think you can consider them a diversion of resources. Or certainly, if you don’t like the word diversion, just an allocation of resources — that’s a more neutral word — to these activities.
“And so the question is does (this overall) really contribute to the social good? And that’s a matter of opinion. You know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
The beholder might also consider how much it psychologically means for America to be able to turn its lonely eyes back to games that bind and galvanize communities, and the country itself.
And she may also wonder how much baseball’s early pratfall might be improved with more stringent measures, such as the ones in the making now, according to ESPN, to urge “players not to leave hotels in road cities except for games, mandating the use of surgical masks instead of cloth masks during travel and requiring every team to travel with a compliance officer who ensures players and staff properly follow the league’s protocol.”
Meanwhile, it might also be supposed there is some broader value in the visibility of in-season sports to model behavior. Royals manager Mike Matheny and Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce are among those who have used their podiums to implore the use of masks.
“If you want to get down to the nitty gritty, it’s life or death for a lot of people,” Kelce said Thursday, noting COVID-19’s frequently asymptomatic presence and adding that people should “act as if you have the virus already” as a way to care for others.
But the NFL and MLB have put themselves in an entirely different context than most of their peers.
While plenty more data remains to be gathered, so far it’s evident that the “bubble” premise engaged by the NBA, WNBA, NHL, MLS and National Women’s Soccer League has been effective because it is built to isolate the players and staffs as what Schaffner called “a group of semi-hermits … in figurative Saran wrap.”
That’s not perfect, of course. But it’s a fundamentally more rigorous and cautious concept because it radically reduces variables that football and baseball have to contend with every time somebody leaves the facility.
“One bad act,” Chiefs linebacker Anthony Hitchens said, “can ruin a season or a team.”
Especially in a country whose divisions have been further revealed in the pandemic … while much of the rest of the world has been able to make untroubled returns to sports. European soccer is a good example of this.
“Baseball is the epitome of America’s game, and has been woven into our whole history. And is part of the rhythm of our summers,” Schaffner said. “And so there are all kinds of reasons to want to open up even in a limited and careful fashion.”
But this is all perilous against a backdrop where proclaiming “freedom” to shun masks is mistaken for patriotism.
There’s much to be sorted out when it comes to sports, but it all comes down to individual choices to care about others, too.
“We’ve all got to do this,” Schaffner said. “Not only to help ourselves, but to help each other.”