Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Don't Shut Down Sports Again for COVID
Townhall.com ^ | December 24, 2021 | Josh Hammer

Posted on 12/24/2021 3:59:36 AM PST by Kaslin

In March 2020, when COVID-19 first exploded onto the scene, sports fans waited with bated breath to see which teams, and which leagues, would bow out on precautionary grounds. The answer quickly became clear: all of them. But actions that were more justifiable at that particular juncture, when we knew nothing about what was then called the "novel coronavirus," is now silly and perhaps inexcusable. As we approach 2022, and as the exceedingly contagious but exceedingly nonlethal omicron variant spreads like wildfire, sports leagues and organizations should all commit to resisting COVID hysteria and keeping their doors open.

The initial unanimity of the March 2020 sports cancelations has, in the age of omicron, ceased to exist. The National Hockey League, for instance, announced earlier this week a pause to its season. The NHL is nominally set to resume play on Monday, Dec. 27, but it is difficult to see what could change on the ground between now and then. The NHL also announced that, due to the omicron surge, it would not be sending its athletes to Beijing in February to compete in Xi Jinping's Winter Olympic Games.

But the National Basketball Association, which as an institution is perhaps the most culturally far-left and woke-sycophantic of all the professional sports leagues, has nobly taken the precise opposite approach. Earlier this week, Commissioner Adam Silver succinctly articulated the conclusion that tens of millions of sober-minded Americans reached a long time ago: "I think we're finding ourselves where we knew we were gonna get to for the past several months. And that is, this virus will not be eradicated, and we're going to have to learn to live with it."

As the popular anti-woke sports pundit Clay Travis tweeted, "Welcome to the party, pal." Kudos to the normally virtue-signaling Black Lives Matter apologist Silver, and shame on NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman.

As of this writing, precisely one person is reported to have died in the U.S. due to the omicron variant. That is despite the fact that "full" vaccination -- an ever-changing target, but for now having the definition of initially jabbed and subsequently once "boosted" -- appears to be remarkably ineffective against omicron, according to all indications. A recent study from a large South African health insurer, for instance, found that a two-shot dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is just 33% protective against omicron.

In a sane world where the virus were not politicized, the outbreak of such a contagious but mild virus variant as omicron would be recognized as no big deal, at minimum -- and potentially even a genuine blessing in disguise, helping the populace bulk up on natural immunity and eventually develop herd immunity. As popular conservative commentator Ann Coulter tweeted, "GOD: Here's a gift humans: a COVID variant that's wildly contagious, but not lethal, to spread immunity far and wide!" She then added, "HUMANS (in blue states): TRIPLE MASK! CANCEL GATHERINGS! SHUT DOWN!"

Even holding aside Coulter's sound logic, our general predicament, almost two years into the pandemic, is simple: COVID is not going anywhere. Period. It will continue to mutate into new variants and, much like influenza or even the common cold, will be with humanity for the foreseeable future. The push from some in the Faucist biomedical security state to continue the rhetorical (if not substantive) push for "COVID-zero" amounts to a denial of empirical, observable reality. The COVID hysteria-induced lockdown apologists might as well deny the blueness of the sky, at this point.

The onus is now on the other sports leagues and organizations to follow the lead of Silver's NBA, not Bettman's NHL. The risk is real that the National Collegiate Athletic Association might delay its impending College Football Playoff, or perhaps the rest of the high-profile men's basketball season. Ditto Commissioner Roger Goodell's National Football League. Such cancellations would be tremendous mistakes. Patrons can make up their own minds about whether they can assume the necessary risk to attend sporting events. And the risk to the athletes themselves -- who are, by definition of being professional or collegiate athletes, healthier than the vast majority of the population -- from such a nonlethal variant as omicron is infinitesimal. The NFL's recent move scaling back asymptomatic testing for COVID is a sane step in the right direction.

Let the games go on; give a citizenry starving for a modicum of normalcy to return to their lives something to rally around. Sports at its best can be a unifying phenomenon. But in order for American sports to be unifying, it must first resist the biomedical security state's misguided siren song of COVID hysteria.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: coronavirus; covid19; covidlockdown; sports; wuhancoronavirus

1 posted on 12/24/2021 3:59:36 AM PST by Kaslin
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

Too late. Some bowel games being cancelled.


2 posted on 12/24/2021 4:05:20 AM PST by dynachrome ("I will not be reconstructed, and I do not give a damn.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

23 Dec: Bitchute: 31m23s: THE SEQUEL TO THE FALL OF THE CABAL - PART 20
by FallCabal
Part 20: Covid-19: Part 3 of multiple episodes about the biggest medical scam of all times.
About Face Masks, Social Distancing, and much more...
By Janet Ossebaard & Cyntha Koeter
https://www.bitchute.com/video/Ir5Z8PVzoudo/


3 posted on 12/24/2021 4:09:16 AM PST by MAGAthon
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

All the major sports entities that went PC and forced the jab need to suffer shutdowns. Poetic justice.


4 posted on 12/24/2021 4:15:53 AM PST by BiglyCommentary
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

The Super Bowl might well be played by a pile of third sting players and rookie QBs


5 posted on 12/24/2021 4:25:19 AM PST by The Louiswu (Peace to you and may God Bless you all)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

After the Bearcats beat Georgia, shut all sports down.


6 posted on 12/24/2021 4:32:27 AM PST by hardspunned (former GOP globalist stooge)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

Too many fully vaxed players collapsing in full view of the public. The public will make the connection if this continues. It’ll be shut down imo.


7 posted on 12/24/2021 4:34:52 AM PST by MulberryDraw (Stop trusting in man, who has but a breath in his nostrils. Of what account is he?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

Pro sports, other than golf is dead to me. Go ahead and shut down the NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB. Let those uneducated “superstar” athletes go paint houses for a living.


8 posted on 12/24/2021 4:35:34 AM PST by machman
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

bump


9 posted on 12/24/2021 4:48:33 AM PST by foreverfree
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

Woke Sports? Let them shut down forever


10 posted on 12/24/2021 4:53:41 AM PST by Vaquero (Don't pick a fight with an old guy. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you. )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

Being it is the young healthy (and vaxxed)that are dying during exercising, maybe the sports programs need to cut out their programs during the continued Covid scamdemic.


11 posted on 12/24/2021 5:10:58 AM PST by jimfr
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin
WGAF.

The author should note that the NHL has to operate differently than the other sports leagues because more than 20% of its teams are located in Canada, most of the players are not U.S. citizens, and the whole operation is subject to international travel and immigration restrictions.

12 posted on 12/24/2021 5:12:46 AM PST by Alberta's Child ("All lies and jest; still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

There are the precautionary lockdowns, but the problem with leagues right now are not those, it’s that tons of players are getting Omicron.

It’s not deadly, but these athletes are still in for a bad week and not able to play. Either you play a game with whole teams replaced by rando callous, or you delay games.


13 posted on 12/24/2021 5:40:00 AM PST by Renfrew
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Renfrew
Hockey players have been playing with cold and flu symptoms for as long as I can remember. The sport is notorious for that.

Interestingly, I suspect one of the reasons the NHL withdrew its players from the upcoming Olympics is that they expect many players to be taking over-the-counter cold medications in the coming weeks to deal with mild COVID symptoms. Most of these common medications have ingredients that will trigger a positive test for performance-enhancing drugs under IOC rules.

14 posted on 12/24/2021 6:20:26 AM PST by Alberta's Child ("All lies and jest; still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

Pro sports have become a tool of the left. Let them self-destruct.


15 posted on 12/24/2021 7:03:45 AM PST by Socon-Econ (adi)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: dynachrome

Yes please shut down football. And please have the vaccine kill off the people mandating the vax.


16 posted on 12/24/2021 8:03:14 AM PST by kvanbrunt2
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

I shut down sports (the opiate of the masses) way before covid. Don’t miss it one bit.


17 posted on 12/24/2021 9:52:35 AM PST by aquila48 (Do not let them make you "care" ! Guilting you is how they control you. )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: dynachrome

PLEASE SHUT THEM ALL DOWN. They relaxed the rules so they could go to games. The money and game forfeit, was killing them. Besides I don’t watch Kneelers.


18 posted on 12/24/2021 10:13:00 AM PST by GailA (Constitution vs evil Treasonous political Apparatchiks, Constitutional Conservative.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

No. Cancel it all. These woke jokesters made their bed, now lay in it.


19 posted on 12/24/2021 12:29:57 PM PST by Tipllub
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson