Each day the number of people who test positive for COVID-19 goes up along with the number of people who have died from it. People are being advised to wash their hands, not touch their faces, and practice social distancing, even staying at home and self quarantining if they can.
The pandemic hit the sports world when Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the coronavirus. This quickly led to the NBA suspending the season.
It wasn’t long after that cities and states across the country began ordering restaurants and bars to close to dine-in customers and cancelation of group events of more than 100 people. Events such as the NFL draft festivities in Las Vegas which have since been canceled.
Despite these measures, the number is expected to continue to grow. A major problem is the lack of available tests. If/when tests become more widely available, it’s possible we discover a lot more people have been infected that had previously gone unreported.
Raiders linebacker Quentin Poling says he is running into this problem right now after returning from Spain with COVID-19 type symptoms.
Goes to Spain. Comes home. Has fluid in lungs, SOB, sore throat, and dry cough. But because I’m “too healthy” to be hospitalized they refuse to administer me a COVID-19 test and tell me I’m good to go home and fly back to Florida in a couple days! I love it #OhioHealthDepartment
— Quentin Poling (@callmeQQQQQ) March 17, 2020
My doctor told me that he is sure me, my wife, and our two year-old daughter have COVID-19, but that’s the Ohio Health Department wasn’t administering tests because we aren’t high risk. I guess they just don’t want the real number of infected people in the state to be known.
— Quentin Poling (@callmeQQQQQ) March 17, 2020
OR they don’t have nearly as many tests as they pretend they do. Or both.
— Quentin Poling (@callmeQQQQQ) March 17, 2020
Poling rightly sees a real problem in the system with regard to administering tests. That he was told he couldn’t get one because he wasn’t ‘high risk.’ In other words, there are so few tests, they must save them for people who are more likely to die from the disease.
This creates a huge problem. People like Quentin and his family may not be at serious risk of death, but without testing, they don’t know whether they could spread the disease to someone who *is* high risk. And there is a much higher risk of that if he and his family were to get on a plane.
The lack of tests — as Poling noted — also means an inaccurate count of those infected.
For some of us, we don’t see these kinds of incidents as real until a sports figure or famous person becomes infected and tells their story. Poling isn’t the first, and he won’t be the last.
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