Comments on: Practically no COVID-19 illnesses among professional athletes

By: pzatchok

pzatchok — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 15:54:59 +0000

The same with US highschool football.

Thousands of fans and thousands of players over the last three weeks and no large outbreaks.

By: Edward

Edward — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 03:17:48 +0000

I suspect that the lack of positive tests in professional sports is because the testing companies came to realize that the sports industry gets upset with false positives. A month or so ago, one team came back with all positive or almost all positive results, and all heck broke loose. False positives in schools and other places don’t get that same feedback to the testing companies but are accepted as reasons to recluse the school or whatever place.

We may be seeing the most truth coming from the sports world, where testing is concerned.

By: LocalFluff

LocalFluff — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 10:37:10 +0000

I think that the few athletes who have died by Covid-19 (a couple of cases have been given attention) got mycarditis, i.e. that the virus infected their heart muscle. This can happen with multiple common cold virus if one gets a high pulse. The blood flows through the lungs to get oxygen and eventually through the heart. Some virus from the lung can infect also that muscle. That can stop the heart immediately if one exercises further. I got it myself when I was 19 years old and was forced to stay in bed in a hospital for three weeks, after having experienced chest pains.

Being winded and having high pulse can overwhelm the immune system for the moment. In Sweden in the 1990s a number of athlete “orienters” (the sport of running around one and one between check points in the forest, I think it is a sport of military tradition lesser known outside of northern Europe, not much fun for the audience) died from this because it for a while was transmitted by voles in the forests, and contaminated via the soles of the shoes. I think it happens athletes regularly or episodically all the time in a very minute scale.

So don’t exercise when having symptoms of a cold! An advice hard to obey for an athlete making a promising career.