SEC, Florida responding to coronavirus concerns

Yesterday, the SEC announced that it would follow recommendations from the NCAA and close all conference sporting events to spectators from today through March 30. At that point, the league will reevaluate and either extend or lift the restrictions.

UF announced that in addition to the SEC’s provisions, it is moving all classes online from next Monday, March 16th until at least the 30th. Spring football practice will be closed to the public as well. All tickets sold for events during the SEC’s spectator blackout will be refunded. The university is not closing campus, however, and all facilities will be open. This is in contrast to, for instance, Vanderbilt, which is closing campus and requiring all undergrads living on campus to move out by this coming Sunday, March 15.

The novel coronavirus, commonly referred to as COVID-19, is only beginning to affect things in the United States. In the grand scheme of things, these kinds of disruptions to sports are not that big of a concern.

If you want to get fully technical, COVID-19 is the disease caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2. That’s SARS as in the 2002-03 SARS outbreak, as the new virus is a cousin of both that one and MERS. Because SARS-CoV-2 is a new mutation, no one anywhere in the world has resistance to it.

Every time you exhale, some amount of water vapor leaves your lungs. When you yell, even more water vapor leaves your lungs, and it does so at a higher velocity. That water vapor may carry viruses if you have a viral respiratory disease.

Therefore, when there is a new viral respiratory disease going around, it makes logical sense to halt large gatherings where people yell a lot like sporting events. You absolutely should not attend games if you have the seasonal flu for this same reason, but at least there is a vaccine and other known therapies for it. There won’t be a vaccine for COVID-19 until at least a year from now because that’s how long it takes to create vaccines. There aren’t any antiviral medications or other targeted remedies for it either.

That latter point is important. For people who catch the virus and have severe symptoms, all that can be done is to put them into hospital beds with respirators and other symptom-alleviating equipment and let the disease run its course for probably several weeks. As you might guess if you thought about it, there is a limited supply of hospital beds and equipment in any given location.

In places that were caught off guard by the virus’s presence, such as the Wuhan province of China where it emerged and the Lombardy region of Italy, the death rate has been considerably higher because of hospitals being overwhelmed. The limits to hospital capacity are why it’s important to slow the spread of the virus, or “flatten the curve” as it’s becoming known. Canceling large gatherings like sporting events will help avoid rapid spread that swamps medical facilities’ ability to treat the sick.

I have no inside information — and I don’t think any decision has been made anyway — but I don’t expect the Orange and Blue game to happen.

Alachua County only has one confirmed COVID-19 case right now, and both that person and the people she’s been in contact with have been quarantined. For the purposes of forecasting the spring game’s chances of happening, it’s important to note that the person with the disease is a Georgia resident who traveled to Alachua County.

The spring game brings in Gator fans from all over the state and, I assume, nearby ones as well. That’s a unique feature to football events that, say, weeknight baseball games don’t have. If there are still active cases around the region in mid-April, and there’s no reason right now to think there won’t be, it’s hard to justify staging an event that will draw people from all over into an environment perfect for spreading a viral respiratory disease.

UF wouldn’t be alone if it did cancel the game. Ohio State and Michigan have already done so, and Kent State has even canceled spring practice entirely. Sports activities themselves are great ways for viruses to spread after all. Players are in close proximity and will be breathing heavily, yelling, and hitting each other hard enough for saliva to fly out of their mouths. That’s why the NBA has suspended its season after one of its players tested positive for COVID-19.

Coming off of back-to-back New Year’s Six games with expectations high, it would be a disappointment for the Orange and Blue game not to happen. I am eager to see the this year’s team, and I’m sure you are too.

However right now, we all have a bigger responsibility to try to slow the virus’s spread. You may be relatively young and in shape and therefore not at high risk. However, some people around you are 60+ years in age, have histories of respiratory illness like asthma or bronchitis, and/or may be immunocompromised due to genetic conditions or cancer treatments. The reason the public health officials are stressing public distancing and washing your hands with soap — not hand sanitizer but plain old soap, which chemically destroys coronaviruses — is as much about people around you in the community as it is about you.

If some of the restrictive practices that other wealthy, industrialized counties like Italy have put in place happen in the United States, then we’re looking at a situation that no one has ever experienced. Sports just aren’t that high a priority even now, much less in that kind of situation. We’re talking about an actual life-and-death matter here.

Ideally the world will get a better handle on this disease in the coming months, and that combined with warm weather in the northern hemisphere will stop the virus’s spread enough that football will happen in the fall as scheduled. We can wait until then.

Disclaimer voluntarily applied by the author: opinions in this piece are not necessarily the viewpoint of Gator Country, and always listen to the advice of actual, credible public health officials over sports columns.