The Power of the Word ‘Case’

I for one haven’t forgotten all the money that was flushed down the toilet for unnecessary Covid tests.

BO KNOWS PCR TESTS: Oregon QB Box Nix was a freshman at Auburn in 2020 … so he has ample experience getting a cotton swab stuck up his nose four times a week.

At another site, two members of an email group made the point that naming a disease “gives it more power.”

This astute observation prompted me to give another example of the power of semantics: 

The best example of this truism is naming someone a "Covid case" … simply because someone tested positive on a PCR test. 

To this day, the public still doesn’t know the real percentage of "asymptomatic cases.” This figure might be 10 or 80 percent. (I’ve seen estimates between both ranges.) 

Whatever the real percentage, these certainly weren't traditional "medical cases" - e.g. a sickness that required some kind of medical treatment. 

For example, I've still never heard of an "asymptomatic case of the flu.”

“My friend Joe had to stay home from work for a week and quarantine. He has an asymptomatic case of the flu.”

My point is that this new, ubiquitous word - “case" - did its intended job … namely, it scared the hell out everybody.

I played journalist and asked what I thought

was a fair and good question …

Several years ago, I attempted to perform some journalism in a (futile) effort to give the public and my readers a good answer to the “asymptomatic-percentage” question. 

A big college sports fan, I knew that, for almost a year, Division I athletic programs mandated that every one of their athletes get tested for Covid. Some schools tested athletes four times a week; others three times a week. 

Each Division I school probably has close to 1,000 scholar-shipped and walk-on athletes, plus coaches, trainers, managers and athletic department administrators who would have been tested every week.

If we multiply these people x the 133 Division-I sports programs that play football, this gives us approximately 133,000 athletic department personnel who were tested for Covid.

I was curious what percentage (or raw number) of athletes and coaches who "tested positive" had "asymptomatic cases." 

To me, this would be important Covid scientific information the public might be interested in learning. 

I also note that these tests were administered by prestigious research colleges which, one assumes, had statisticians, epidemiologists and scientists who might be very interested in learning these results.

Bill shoots out an email …

I was probably the only journalist in America who emailed media spokespeople at four of the major athletic conferences and asked them this question: "Of the people tested by athletic departments every week, how many - or approximately what percentage - were ‘asymptomatic?’ “

Only one conference - the SEC - responded to my query. The SEC’s chief media spokesman told me this was confidential information … for HIPAA reasons. 

Either that, or these colleges and conferences never made the effort to ascertain this figure/percentage, which, to me, is a wasted opportunity when you have a massive and captive sample group that could have been studied.

A third possibility would be that these conferences and universities know the answer and they simply … ain't telling. 

Per my cynical bent of mind, this might be because almost all "cases" were asymptomatic - that is, these "Covid cases" never even became “sick.”

These tests had consequences …

As college sports fans no doubt remember, once a student-athlete “tested positive,” he or she had to be quarantined for 10 to 14 days and couldn’t practice or play in games. Not only that, any teammate who spent more than 10 minutes in “close proximity” to these “infected” people also had to quarantine.

This explains why a good number of scheduled games were cancelled … or football teams had to play their rivals with 20 to 40 of their (perfectly healthy) athletes back in their apartment, chilling on the couch eating pizza. 

The rationale for this testing policy was this would reduce the risk a student-athlete would contract and then, perhaps, die from Covid-19.

Of course, in four years, no Division I college athlete in the country has died from Covid and probably only two or three had to be hospitalized with the illness. 

It seems to me this 0.000-percent mortality percentage for college athletes should have been well-known to college administrators and scientists by April or May 2020 - and certainly by September and the start of football season.

Still, the testing mandates stayed in place well into the sports seasons of 2021.

And then you have the price tag of this

Covid “safety” measure …

I did some back-of-the-envelope math to try to figure out how much money was flushed down the toilet by these athletic conference health czars. I tried to be conservative with these estimates.

If just 250 people were tested three times every week, this would equate to 750 tests administered each week. 

I can’t remember how much one PCR test costs, but I asked Google this question and learned:

“Among hospitals disclosing price transparency data, the median discounted hospital-based self-pay rate was $51 for a COVID-19 antigen test and $91 for a PCR test. 

The colleges probably also got a volume price break. I’ll split the difference between $51 and $91 and say the colleges were spending $71/per test.

At 750 tests/week, this would mean a typical Division-I athletic department was spending $53,250/week on mandatory Covid testing. Since this testing went on for at least half a year (26 weeks), a typical college might have spent $1.384 million on Covid tests just for the athletic department personnel.

(Many non-athlete students also had to get tests to go to college. I don’t know who paid for these millions(?) of  tests, but I don’t think it was the cash-strapped students. One assumes the tax-payers picked up the tab).

Could this money have been better spent?

As many people perhaps don’t realize, the vast majority of athletic departments lose money by offering sports.

Today, with schools paying the “going NIL rate” (often six figures) for a star quarterback or receiver, many colleges athletic departments are probably losing more money than ever. 

Regardless of how much money the schools lose on, say, women’s track or men’s swimming, athletic directors are probably worried about where they are going to find the money to pay for all these scholarships, coaches’ salaries and travel expenses in the future.

That is, they probably wish they had that $1.4 million they had to flush down the toilet for Covid testing.

They also probably wish they didn’t cut stadium attendance in 2020 by 80 to 100 percent (as the fans weren’t at risk either).

Still, they advertised their superior virtue …

Then again, athletic directors and conference commissioners didn’t spend any of their own money. Someone else ponied up to keep Deborah Birx happy. In fact, these “leaders” are probably still reveling in the accolades and power trips they received from “protecting the student athletes.”

Certainly, no sports pundits on ESPN or at state newspapers criticized them for the 100-page documents they produced, itemizing their 50 mandatory Covid safety measures.

After all, the athletic directors and conference commissioners had all these “cases.” The tests proved it. They had to do something.

Whoever came up with the Covid “case” designation knows not what they did .. or the harm they caused. Or, they probably know … and they just don’t care.

They also know most everyone would forget about the ludicrous mandates the best-and-brightest leaders of higher education imposed.

But I haven’t.

Subscription update: I broke through 300 paid subscribers two weeks ago, reaching 301, but now I’m back to 299. Maybe this little PCR ditty will get me back to my round-number milestone. Also, Ko-Fi “tips” are greatly appreciated!

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