Covid-19 can make an elite fall to AVERAGE

We need to get to herd immunity as soon as possible. It is the only solution.

Are you implying that we should get to herd immunity since everyone, including top athletes, will have their lung capacity and vo2 max decreased, and then the playing field will be even? That's one way to level the playing field, though we wouldn't see any records being broken in the future.

falling and breaking a leg / ankle in training could cause a drop in training such that an athlete could lose 10% vo2 max and go from elite to average status.

smashing into a brick wall at 40mph made someone go from tour de france contender to hospital case barely able to walk - fact.

Washed Up Former D1 Guy wrote:

I saw this in Pennsylvania's Centre Daily Times today: "You could have a very high-level athlete who’s got a very superior VO2 max and cardiac output who gets infected with COVID and can drop his or her VO2 max and cardiac output just by 10 percent, and that could make them go from elite status to average status,” Wayne Sebastianelli, Penn State’s director of athletic medicine, said.

Like with some cases of the flu, with bronchitis, etc.

So the athlete has a drop in performance, takes time to recover, then goes back to the same.

Your vo2 max literally drops by 100% when you die

It causes long-term lung scarring and/ or breathing issues. Not short term. I'm surprised that on a nerdy running message board where people geek out about the tiniest details of how to improve, you wouldn't at least take a cursory look at the risks.

Washed Up Former D1 Guy wrote:

It causes long-term lung scarring and/ or breathing issues. Not short term. I'm surprised that on a nerdy running message board where people geek out about the tiniest details of how to improve, you wouldn't at least take a cursory look at the risks.

We have known about the existence of this virus for roughly 8 months.

How can anyone state with any degree of certainty that there are long-term issues?

Please stop with the feat mongering.

Pajac wrote:

[quote]

We have known about the existence of this virus for roughly 8 months.

How can anyone state with any degree of certainty that there are long-term issues?

Please stop with the feat mongering.

Yeah I guess you're right. Scarring of lung tissue by COVID is completely new to science. (COVID scars might heal better than traditional scars.) I mean, these are a completely new kind of scars. New and improved.

Ofcourse there will be

I like to refer to it as, 'leveling the playing field.'

Djokovic seems to be doing o.k.

Washed Up Former D1 Guy wrote:

"You could have a very high-level athlete who’s got a very superior VO2 max and cardiac output who gets infected with COVID and can drop his or her VO2 max and cardiac output just by 10 percent, and that could make them go from elite status to average status,”

Dropping VO2 max by 10% would not turn an elite athlete to "average status", unless you define "average" as "average among D1 athletes".

If Farah's VO2 max were dropped by 10%, he'd still be able to easily beat the vast majority of runners.

Consuelas Kipruto just had COVID. Watch how average he is in his next race when he crushes the steeple.

Are we talking permanent or just while they're sick? If the latter, well... of course. If the former, that is a scary thing indeed.

That means if I get it... I will go from kinda fast guy in the neighborhood to... well... I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.

Speaking strictly in terms of elite Div I athletes, this is very significant. Even if the scarring were to resolve itself after a few months, the athlete would have to use up a red shirt. And if the rate of 30-35 percent of infected athletes having inflamed heart muscles holds up, you could have enough red shirted athletes to make it difficult to put a competitive team on the field. If the scarring is permanent or last long enough to end a collegiate career, you could be losing pro athletes with multi-million dollar contracts just to get in a shortened season for the rich alumni sitting in their boxes wearing N95 masks. The only reasonable thing to do is call off the season and give everyone another year of eligibility until this can be studied to figure out the level of risk. Anything short of that is putting other interests ahead of the health and well being of student athletes.

Washed Up Former D1 Guy wrote:

It causes long-term lung scarring and/ or breathing issues. Not short term. I'm surprised that on a nerdy running message board where people geek out about the tiniest details of how to improve, you wouldn't at least take a cursory look at the risks.

You should really cite data when you make statements like that. Just like with all of the younger people who end up having a real fight on their hands with COVID-19. These stories are talked about widely in the media, yet when you go and look at the actual data (posted by states and countries all over the wold), the overall hospitalizations are no where near anything on a scale that younger people should ever be worried about.

The data posted by nearly every state in the USA and most countries around the world does not show significant numbers of people having lung scarring. Are you serious? Most people never even get hospitalized for COVID-19. How can we suddenly have all of these people with scarring if they never get hospitalized and an xray in the first place?

Prove me wrong.

If you are an elite D1 runner there is a 90% chance you will never know you had COVID and about 9% chance you will mistake it for a minor cold. There is 0 evidence that it leaves healthy young people any worse off than any number of infectious diseases already in circulation.

If one D1 guy does have a bad reaction and it kills a season welcome to real life. I had my Sophmore XC season killed by swine flu. That sucked. I recovered and in the spring was all-conference on the track. Life isn't perfect and the threat of this virus to healthy young people is insignificant.

Washed Up Former D1 Guy wrote:

It causes long-term lung scarring and/ or breathing issues. Not short term. I'm surprised that on a nerdy running message board where people geek out about the tiniest details of how to improve, you wouldn't at least take a cursory look at the risks.

It's LRC. A very vocal subset of mediocre/never was/ has been distance runners value their political stances and beliefs more than they care for the sport or its athletes.

This thing is scarey. Sounds like our lives are in danger. That makes the case for getting out and living because we could all die tomorrow from Covid. Live life like there is no tomorrow.