Friday, August 7, 2020
Australia: Victorian hospital admissions soar amid warnings COVID-19 surge will continue for weeks
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/06/vict-a06.html
By Oscar Grenfell
6 August 2020
As “stage four” lockdown measures and workplace closures go into effect in Melbourne, the state of Victoria yesterday recorded its highest tally of coronavirus deaths and infections, with 725 confirmed new cases and 15 fatalities. A further 471 infections were reported today.
Of Wednesday’s 15 victims, at least 12 were linked to aged-care homes, with around 100 such facilities in Melbourne being centres of active infection. One of those who died, however, was in his 30s, tragically demonstrating the falsehood of claims that younger people are not at serious risk.
Many more deaths are anticipated, as hospitalisation rates soar, especially in Melbourne. On Tuesday, there were 456 Victorians in hospital as a result of complications from COVID-19, 35 of them in intensive care units (ICU).
Some 24 hours later, those figures had risen to 538 hospital patients, with 42 in ICU. This was the sharpest spike in hospital admissions since the pandemic began. A month ago, there were fewer than 25 COVID-19 hospital patients in all of Victoria. Graphs of hospitalisations show an exponential growth.
The increase has sparked renewed warnings from doctors and medical experts that Victoria’s entire hospital system could be overwhelmed. Speaking on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) “7:30” program last night, Dr Sarah Whitelaw, an emergency consultant at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, stated that hospital capacity would be exceeded within weeks if new infection tallies did not begin to fall.
Whitelaw commented: “We thought at the beginning of the pandemic that our problem was going to be intensive care beds and the number of ventilators that we had… we’ve all been blindsided by the fact that our problem is the workforce. I think the number of healthcare worker infections is a real concern.”
Earlier this week, it was revealed that there are more than 700 active cases among Victorian healthcare workers, including hospital doctors and nurses. That accounts for some 10 percent of all active infections, and recalls the situation in the most heavily affected regions of Italy and in New York, when they were struck by the worst of the pandemic.
Whitelaw and other doctors have noted that a substantial portion of the rise in admissions stems from the transfer of infected aged-care residents to public hospitals. For weeks, Victorian and federal authorities resisted calls from relatives for all sick aged-care patients to receive hospital-quality treatment.
As daily fatalities have risen, however, it has become clear that aged-care homes are becoming killing fields, and that there will be a large number of casualties if a substantial number of residents are not immediately provided with expert care. Low-paid casual staff have been denied the necessary training to deal with an unprecedented public health emergency, while no precautions were put in place throughout the sector for a major outbreak of a communicable disease.
This is a glaring indictment of Labor and Liberal-National governments, which have overseen the transformation of the sector into a fully-corporatised one that provides substantial profits to private owners.
The extent of the criminality was pointed to by a report in the Herald Sun yesterday, revealing that an unnamed Melbourne aged-care operator told staff members that it was impossible for them to contract the coronavirus on the job.
This was one day after federal aged care minister Richard Colbeck told a Senate committee hearing that he would be “reluctant” to release a public list of all facilities hit by COVID-19 outbreaks. Colbeck declared that some operators could not “handle a big media influx,” and warned that revealing them would result in “reputational issues.” In other words, it would affect their profit margins.
The intense strains on the healthcare system are also the result of decades of funding cuts, which have been intensified by the failure of state and federal authorities to boost spending in the sector, as they promised when they began the pro-business lifting of lockdown measures in May.
The expansion of the pandemic is directly related to the breakdown of contact-tracing, with the majority of new cases each day being reported as “under investigation,” meaning the source of infection has not been confirmed. There are well over 700 “mystery infections,” where the circumstances of transmission are completely unknown.
When the pandemic began, the Victorian public health team responsible for tracing communicable diseases had just 14 staff members, fewer than a football team. Over the following months, thousands of untrained individuals, including redundant call centre employees and military personnel were recruited.
Yesterday, Nine Media revealed that even these superficial measures were wound back in May and June, coinciding with the back-to-work campaign of the state and federal governments. Nine stated that “sources very close to the operation” said that that the decision was “catastrophic,” coming just weeks before major clusters exploded in quarantine hotels. The source stated that the authorities had relied on businesses to self-report cases and investigate them.
The consequence of these criminal decisions has been hundreds of workers contracting a potentially-deadly virus.
The ABC reported this morning that employees at the Australian Lamb Company meatworks in Colac, a regional Victoria town, waited between five and ten days for their COVID-19 test results, after the virus began circulating in the plant. Contact-tracing took even longer. The outbreak has since led to almost 90 infections.
Most explosively, the ABC cited a letter, allegedly from the Victorian deputy chief medical officer, instructing an infected worker to return to the job, despite the fact that he was only ten days through the mandated 14-day quarantine period.
The extraordinary correspondence demonstrates that while they have been presiding over a disaster in the healthcare system, Victorian authorities have been actively campaigning on behalf of big business to suppress concerns among workers and ensure that there is no disruption to lucrative corporate operations.
The prospects of a full-scale collapse of Melbourne hospitals have been underscored by modelling, indicating that infections will continue to grow under the new lockdown, for weeks or months.
Secret state government estimates, revealed by the Australian this morning, show that daily cases are predicted to increase to as many as 1,100 by the end of next week, and will remain over 1,000 for eight days. The figures indicate that infections will not decline until late August, and will continue to trend at greater than 300 per day, until mid-September, when the current measures are set to end. This will mean hundreds or thousands more people requiring hospital treatment.
The record demonstrates that the Victorian Labor government, acting in line with the homicidal back-to-work campaign supported by the entire political establishment, only introduced the new restrictions after it was clear that the state was on the precipice of a catastrophe unprecedented outside of war time.
For weeks, Labor Premier Daniel Andrews, with the support of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, rejected calls for the closure of workplaces and schools, due to the impact that this would have on corporate profits.
The “stage four” lockdown measures announced on Sunday involve substantial retail closures in Melbourne, along with the shutdown of some manufacturing, and reduced operations for other sections. The cost will be borne by the 250,000 more workers who are being sacked or stood-down, the hundreds of thousands more who are already unemployed and those who do not receive enough shifts to make ends meet.
Construction bosses, who have been given an exemption because their activities are crucial to the fortunes of the ultra-wealthy, have already begun lobbying for a further easing of any restrictions.
Meanwhile, “stage three” measures, involving retail closures and sharp restrictions on movement are coming into effect today in regional Victoria, where infections continue to mount.
Double-digit cases are continuing to be reported every day in New South Wales (NSW), the country’s most populous state, with epidemiologists giving 50-50 odds of a major surge like that in Victoria. The NSW Liberal government has declared that it will not return to even limited lockdown measures, following the same pro-business playbook that has led to the disaster in Victoria.
Far-right protest against COVID-19 restrictions in Berlin: A put-up job
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/06/demo-a06.html
By Peter Schwarz
6 August 2020
According to police reports, an estimated 20,000 participants gathered in Berlin last Saturday to protest against Germany’s Corona protection measures. The protest was a predictable, put-up job, which closely resembled the scenario of the Pegida demonstrations held five years ago.
Far-right figures and organisations that pull the strings behind the scenes and maintain close links to the Verfassungsschutz (Germany’s domestic secret service), the police and the right-wing extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD) called the protest, and mobilised a broad coalition of confused, frustrated and eccentric individuals. Political circles and the German media then inflated the whole issue, took the moral high ground and criticised the crude slogans of the demonstrators while declaring at the same time that those taking part were “concerned citizens” whose concerns had to be “taken seriously.” In so doing they were able to divert attention from their own reactionary policies and push the political climate further to the right.
The Pegida demonstrations were used in a similar way to sabotage the “welcoming culture,” whereby broad sections of the German population welcomed refugees from war-wracked countries in the Middle East and North Africa, and to intimidate all those supporting the refugees.
Journalists worked their fingers to the bone with articles which concluded that—in the words of the right-wing extremist historian Jörg Baberowski—”it naturally ends in aggression…wherever many people come from foreign contexts” and when the population is not involved. According to this logic, the refugees—i.e., the victims of the far right—were responsible for the growth of right-wing extremism.
The Corona demonstration in Berlin followed the same pattern. Many of those agitating behind the scenes were among the same people behind the Pegida demonstrations, i.e., neo-Nazis, far-right Reichbürger, supporters of the AfD, the neo-Nazi NPD and the conspiracy theorist QAnon movement, who travelled from all over Germany to Berlin. These forces were joined by opponents of vaccination, Corona deniers and so-called “angry citizens,” together with members of Berlin’s party crowd.
The police watched patiently as the participants disregarded Corona distancing and mask regulations, waved illegal Reich flags and displayed unconstitutional symbols. In contrast to the G20 protests in Hamburg or the recent demonstrations against the murder of George Floyd, where police resorted to the use of pepper spray and water cannons at the slightest opportunity, not a single police officer could be seen along broad stretches of the march. Only after half an hour of the final rally had passed did police officially declare that the protest was ended due to non-compliance with hygiene rules. At the same time, police made no move to break up the demonstration.
Afterwards, leading politicians and the media frothed at the mouth regarding the non-compliance with official hygiene regulations. Demonstrations should be possible, also in a period of Corona…”but not like this,” twittered the German Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU). Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD) declared she had no sympathy for demonstrators who high-handedly ignored Corona precautions. Economics Minister Peter Altmaier (CDU) called for tougher penalties: “Those who deliberately endanger others must expect serious consequences.” SPD leader Saskia Esken angrily referred to “covididiots.”
These expressions of outrage were aimed at diverting attention from the policies of these very same politicians. The anti-social behaviour of the demonstrators last Saturday pales in comparison with their own criminal response. Germany’s federal and state governments, run by various coalitions involving the CDU, CSU, SPD, Greens, FDP and Left Party, are all pursuing a policy of opening up society and the economy that threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands.
As the worldwide number of infected persons approaches 20 million, with the number of fatalities now exceeding 700,000, the number of cases in Germany is again rising significantly. Currently tens of thousands of holiday makers are returning home, having been encouraged to travel abroad by the lifting of travel warnings. At airports in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, where almost half of the returnees voluntarily applied for a Corona test, 2.5 percent proved positive, an extremely high figure.
Despite this, schools are opening up across the country, starting with Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania next week, although it has been proven that schools, with their cramped classrooms and dilapidated infrastructure, are an ideal environment for mass infections.
The Viennese research group Complexity Science Hub, which has statistically evaluated Corona data from 76 regions, concluded that the closure of schools, kindergartens and universities was an “extremely effective means” to limit infection. According to an analysis published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, school closures saved more than 40,000 lives and prevented 1.3 million infections in the US alone.
Conversely, a study by the Technical University of Berlin shows that aerosol concentration in the air of a classroom—critical for transmission—is reached just two minutes after a single infected person in the room coughs. Despite this fact, schools are once again commencing operations at full capacity.
The hygiene measures that have been put in place, which vary from state to state, are risible. For example, the obligation to wear masks, which Federal Education Minister Anja Karliczek (CDU) is now advocating after initially rejecting the proposal, only applies from the school gate to the classroom, but not in the classroom itself, where the risk of infection is highest.
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) also estimates the risk of infection to be high in a full classroom where minimum distance rules are not observed. This information is contained in a letter to the Rheinische Post. The prerequisites for maintaining this distance in classrooms are almost non-existent.
The RKI also warns against studies that attribute a significantly higher resistance on the part of children to coronavirus infection. It may well be that the alleged resistance of children is merely due to the fact that they had less social contact during the closure of kindergartens and schools, the RKI notes on its website.
Meanwhile, the media are trying to portray the Berlin demonstration staged by far-right manipulators as an expression of a broad mood within the population. In its lead commentary on Monday, the Süddeutsche Zeitung claimed that when a five-figure number of people take to the streets in Berlin, “one must fear that what was being expressed were issues concerning hundreds of thousands, at least.”
Opinion polls prove the opposite. A recent survey conducted by the opinion research institute Civey for the Tagesspiegel newspaper concluded that 77 percent of those questioned would accept a tightening of contact restrictions if the number of infections rose again significantly. Only around 20 percent were opposed. According to the current Politbarometer, 77 percent also expect a second wave of coronavirus infections to occur soon.
The pressure to lift contact restrictions and open schools does not come from the population, but rather from business and finance interests together with their cronies in the media and political circles. Having transferred hundreds of billions of euros to the corporations and banks to guarantee the profits and fortunes of the rich, the government is seeking once again to squeeze these sums out of the working class. The opening up of schools is a basic condition for parents to be fully available to the labour market and able to work. The drive for profits is being placed above the lives of millions of children and their families.
The neo-Nazis and right-wing extremists who set the tone at the Berlin demonstration have been deliberately targeted to create the necessary political climate for this policy. They are closely linked to the state apparatus, as was revealed most recently by the NSU murders, the murder of the politician Walter Lübcke and the uncovering of various far-right terror networks in the German army (Bundeswehr) and police.
Protecting the health and livelihoods of the population against the effects of the Corona pandemic is first and foremost a political task. It is only possible on the basis of a socialist programme that puts human and social need above the profit interests of big business.
One can only resolve the urgent problem of education and training within such a framework. It is perfectly possible to provide education in compliance with appropriate safety measures, but this requires that the huge funds currently being diverted into the accounts of the wealthy must be redirected to renovate dilapidated schools, rent additional rooms, purchase computers and IT technology, employ more teachers to instruct small groups, etc.
There is no shortage of ideas and initiatives from committed teachers and parents, but they are being rejected on the grounds of cost or blocked by bureaucratic means.
The Socialist Equality Party (SGP) advocates the establishment of action committees in educational institutions and residential areas that function independently of the trade unions and establishment parties. Such committees are necessary to coordinate resistance to the life-threatening policy of opening up the economy.
Resistance to a system that subordinates every sphere of life to the profit interests of big business and finance is developing in factories, hospitals, transport and public services around the world. The SGP and its sister parties in the International Committee of the Fourth International are fighting to build a broad socialist mass movement.
Florida governor admits state unemployment system purposefully designed to pay out “least number of claims”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/06/unem-a06.html
By Jacob Crosse
6 August 2020
Admitting what thousands of jobless workers in Florida, and millions of unemployed around the country already know to be true, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, in a Tuesday interview with CBS Miami, acknowledged that the state’s unemployment system was designed to frustrate applicants by putting “as many kind[s] of pointless roadblocks along the way” to pay out the “least number of claims.”
DeSantis’s remarks came during an hour-long interview in which the governor agreed with reporter Jim DeFede that the “animating philosophy” of the system was to discourage distributing benefits to eligible workers. Roughly 1.5 million workers in Florida remain out of work and according to the state’s own claim dashboard over 100,000 eligible claimants have yet to be paid.
Florida’s unemployment system has been plagued, purposefully, with website crashes, technical glitches and system errors which have only been exacerbated as hundreds of thousands of jobless workers began applying in March. Users reported having to enter their personal information dozens of times only for their profile to disappear or the page to crash. It is not an exaggeration to state that collectively, millions of hours have been wasted by thousands of desperate workers trying to access their funds while millions of dollars and thousands of hours in manpower has likewise been wasted trying to operate a system that was designed not to work.
Unable to navigate the broken website, applicants were told to utilize the phone lines instead. In the last week of March only 1 percent of the 864,000 calls placed were answered. The state and DeSantis hurriedly signed off on and awarded $150 million worth of no-bid contracts to call center and technology companies which did little to actually resolve systematic problems.
Jobless workers were forced to endure hours-long lines in order to receive paper copies of documentation that couldn’t be accessed on the website, dubbed CONNECT, which had been created by Deloitte Consulting at the cost of nearly $78 million to Florida taxpayers in 2013. On Monday Politico reported that Deloitte was also awarded a state Medicaid modernization contract worth at least $135 million. The contract was signed by the head of the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, Mary Mayhew, a DeSantis appointee.
Of the over 1 million Floridians who had applied for the miserly $275 weekly benefit in mid-March, a Pew Research Center study conducted at the end of April found that only 8 percent had received it. Approximately 40 percent of eligible Floridians who had applied for unemployment were denied and forced to reapply again, affecting some 268,000 people.
DeSantis sought to blame the jobless for being unable to navigate the purposefully broken system and for filling out “incomplete forms.” When pushed by reporters during a May press conference as to why thousands of March unemployment filers had yet to receive their funds, DeSantis scoffed at the idea that they existed, claiming, without evidence, that “99.99 percent of those folks have been paid.”
Using Tuesday’s interview to obfuscate his role in this crime against the working class, DeSantis meekly vowed “some type of accountability” against those responsible for the system’s implementation pending the release of an ongoing Inspector General report. However, when DeFede pointed out that a 2019 audit of the Department of Economic Opportunity had already been conducted and had identified the same flaws that DeSantis was now openly admitting were baked into the system, DeSantis demurred from all talk of accountability, countering that, “Nothing ever reached my desk,” and “I was not asked to do anything.”
Continuing the theme of not doing anything, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows concluded another day of talks Wednesday in which no concrete proposals were agreed upon and no date set for a vote on a new coronavirus pandemic relief bill which would extend federal unemployment benefits, previously set at $600 per week, as well as an eviction moratorium for those living in properties with federally backed mortgages.
Meadows vowed that if a deal was not reached by Friday that Trump would take executive action to extend benefits, end the payroll tax and extend the federal moratorium on evictions on his own. Speaking to reporters, Meadows commented, “I’ve been working around-the-clock to look at the options the president has at his disposal within the confines of his legal authority within the executive branch.”
After benefits expired last week, roughly 30 million workers have seen their incomes slashed between 60 and 80 percent and according to the Aspen Institute, 23 million are at risk of eviction. The Eviction Lab at Princeton University has found that roughly 30 state moratoriums have expired since May.
Courts have already resumed evictions in major cities such as Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which has seen a 21 percent increase in eviction filings since June, with nearly 1,500 submitted since May. Speaking to the Associated Press, Colleen Foley, the executive director of the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee, remarked: “We are sort of a harbinger of what is to come in other places.”
Pelosi, who has already signaled her willingness to compromise on cutting unemployment benefits, claimed to see the “light at the end of the tunnel” in regards to a final proposal, however, “how long that tunnel is, remains to be seen.” While the millionaires in Congress and the billionaire in the White House have the luxury of time, for millions of food-insecure workers and their families the need is dire.
Data released this past Friday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis found that staple food prices continued to rise, some by double-digit percentages. Beef and veal have increased in price by 25.1 percent compared to last year. The price of eggs is up 10.4 percent since February while poultry and pork are up 8.5 and 8.6 percent, respectively.
The World Socialist Web Site recently spoke with Leon, an unemployed service worker from Pennsylvania, on the expiration of his benefits.
“I’m infuriated that Congress wasn’t able to resolve this issue,” said Leon. “My situation with food and groceries is now in the air. I’m going to have to be very creative in order to survive.”
A former Starbucks employee, Leon was making over three times the income he made while working while on unemployment. “The CEO of Starbucks makes nearly $20,000 an hour. That’s more than I made in a year,” he said. Leon responded to the claims being endlessly repeated by Democrats and Republicans that the pandemic benefits are a “disincentive” to work: “My immune system is compromised. I’m not returning to work, pay or no pay.”
“There are no places to go to work, even if I wanted to,” he said. “What’s available?”
Leon spoke about the political situation, which he had been following very closely as the pandemic benefits wound down. “Both Democrats and Republicans don’t care. I heard that Nancy Pelosi didn’t want to extend benefits for even another week, even though the Republicans and Trump did. Supposedly her reasoning was that the Democrats would rather end the benefits altogether than keep what we had going until there was an agreement in Congress. That makes no sense. It just proves that she hates poor people.”
“She’s actually making Trump and the Republicans look good in this, which is just horrifying,” he concluded.
Resuming college football driven by financial interests
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/06/coll-a06.html
By Andy Thompson
6 August 2020
Despite a dramatic increase in new COVID-19 cases in July and expectations of another surge in the fall as schools reopen, US colleges and universities are moving forward with plans to operate their college football programs with minimal changes.
It is practically guaranteed that the opening of the 2020 football season and the fall college semester will spark new outbreaks of COVID-19 among players, the general student population and the surrounding communities. The average student is at an even greater risk because, unlike players, they will not have access to the testing or dedicated health resources reserved for athletics.
Although ostensibly an amateur competition (although under-the-table bribes are common practice to secure commitments from top high school recruits), college athletics in America is a multi-billion dollar business, with attendances and TV audiences equal to, and in some cases greater than, professional competitions. Top college football coaches, who at public universities are technically state employees, make salaries similar to those of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.
In the intense struggle for fan interest and revenue, top schools routinely funnel hundreds of millions into their athletics programs even as their academic infrastructure crumbles. Last year’s football champion, Louisiana State University, receives more in donations each year from alumni to its athletics program than to the actual university. The contrast between its decision to invest millions into a futuristic locker room for the football team and the continuously-flooded basement of the school’s library was widely covered in the press last year.
At lower, less lucrative levels of competition, hundreds of programs have already canceled their seasons. All championships for the National College Athletics Association (NCAA)’s Division II and Division III have already been canceled, the sport’s governing body announced yesterday. Many programs in Division I’s lower-level Football Championship Subdivision have also canceled fall sports.
But at larger, more lucrative programs, university administrations are proceeding full speed ahead. Many schools have not even made the decision to play without fans. The University of Texas, whose football stadium is in the middle of downtown Austin, one of the most populous cities in the country, plans on playing its home football games in front of 25 percent capacity crowds, or 25,000 people. Similar schemes are in the works at the University of Georgia, Ohio State University and other schools. Not even Major League Baseball, whose reckless return to play is on the verge of collapse after several outbreaks, has allowed fans into its stadiums.
In June, the NCAA announced that it would permit schools to allow student athletes to return to campus for summer workouts and pre-season training. Most football programs jumped at the opportunity to get their players back to training, in order not to lose an edge on their competition. Almost immediately, large-scale outbreaks occurred on team rosters. Both reigning champion LSU and the previous year’s champion, Clemson, confirmed over 30 cases each on their teams.
The NCAA had stated that athletes would be given access to testing, facilities monitored by health professionals and other amenities to prevent an outbreak among the teams. Despite these measures the results so far have been a disaster.
At Rutgers University, nearly 30 football players and several team staffers have tested positive for COVID-19. The players have been sent to quarantine in on-campus dorms, which are often cramped and close-quartered.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy told reporters Tuesday that he will not order the university to cancel their season, explaining that the outbreak among players has not changed his previous decision to allow the season to move forward. Murphy insists that the decision to cancel the season is not with him, but with the NCAA and the Big Ten Conference, of which Rutgers is a member.
Rutgers stands to lose $50 million if the season is canceled. This is actually one of the lower projected losses for a canceled 2020 season. Ohio State would be expected to lose over $104 million in revenue should the season be canceled.
On Wednesday, the Big Ten put to bed any speculation that the season would be shut down when it released the conference’s 2020 football schedule. It is projected to start on September 3 with a contest between Ohio State and the University of Illinois.
The only significant disruptions to football schedules have been the cancellation of out-of-conference games by the Big Ten and the other “Power Five” conferences which monopolize the sport’s revenues. While the ostensible purpose is to provide schools with flexibility to reschedule games, it is more plausible that the pandemic is being seized on as an excuse to further entrench the cartel system which controls the sport’s highest levels.
So far, only one top football program, the University of Connecticut, has announced it will not play in the 2020 season. However, even in this case, financial considerations likely play a role, as the school’s football program has been hemorrhaging money for years and the school faces pressure from boosters to abandon football altogether in order to concentrate resources on the school’s more successful and lucrative basketball program. While it is possible that more schools will individually cancel their season in the coming weeks, at this point it does not appear to be the norm.
There are growing signs that schools are attempting to cover up outbreaks on their football teams. According to a report by CBS Sports, multiple Colorado State football players and staff members claim the school is attempting to hide an outbreak among the players and threatening students with losing their position on the team if they report symptoms.
One student interviewed told CBS, “We had a player who definitely had coronavirus symptoms, coughing at practice and he wasn’t wearing a mask and I was next to him, touching him and there was spit and sweat. I told him he needed to get tested but he really didn’t want to because then he would be out. The next day he is not at practice. [If he tested positive] he already had spread the virus. That’s why a lot of players don’t feel safe at football practice.”
A staff member told CBS: “There are some red flags in the athletic department but the common denominator with this administration is to protect the coaches before the student-athletes and that makes them feel more like cattle.”
Resistance to the drive to reopen is emerging among athletes themselves. A group of players in Pacific-12 Conference (Pac-12) has written an open letter to the NCAA with a list of demands regarding the 2020 season. They write, “Because we are being asked to play college sports in a pandemic in a system without enforced health and safety standards, and without transparency about COVID cases on our teams, the risks to ourselves, our families, and our communities, #WeAreUnited.”
The players’ demands include health and safety protections, the ability for students to opt out of the season without consequences, and a prohibition on compulsory COVID liability waivers. They also state their opposition to the shutdown of less profitable sports programs, several of which have been cut from various schools. The letter also calls for an “end to racial injustice in college sports and society” and for “economic freedom and equity.” Specifically, the letter states this would mean players would form a “civic-engagement task force.” They are also demanding that they receive a percentage of sports revenues and rights to accept sponsorship deals, effectively acknowledging them as professional athletes and ending the age-old sham of their “student-athlete” status.
Almost immediately after the letter was published, players began being threatened by coaches for organizing opposition to the 2020 season. One player at Washington State, Kassidy Woods, told the New York Times that when he called his coach to tell him he wanted to opt out of the season because he had been diagnosed as high risk for sickle cell disease, his position on the team would be at risk.
The coach told Woods that his scholarship could be honored for this year because of health reasons, but that if he was part of any organized action against the season that it would be handled differently and his position on the team could not be guaranteed.
As of Wednesday morning, players from the Big Ten have released a similar list of demands as the Pac-12. These players also call for protections against COVID-19, and added language calling for students who report symptoms or violations by the school to be protected against repercussions.
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