HalftimeAdjustment

100% (plus money for the Sabres) is obviously unrealistic. It's hard to look at that as a good position even to open negotiations. Would you list a regular house, valued at $200K, at $700K just to see how high of an offer you would get? Having said that, I suspect that the sources for the article were government sources who wanted to immediately make the Pegulas look bad, as part of their own negotiating tactic. The more they can fire up opposition the less leverage the Bills will have. The team will have a hard time going about $300M of public contributions in this climate and that would need a really long commitment period.

Isn't this his 2nd replacement?

"Bills Hall of Famer weighs in on Cole Beasley controversy".

We can call it "Bickering Bills II"

They should deal with it, as much as possible, by focusing on football and avoiding getting drawn in. Beasley's social media behavior is 100% on him. At some point you just have to say, hey his views are not those of the Bills organization and should not be attributed to anyone (player, coach, etc) other than himself and move on. It is obvious at this point that he's not going to change his behavior and so the best approach is to give it less attention. This "show some leadership" idea ignores the fact that he's an adult who holds his own opinions and can speak about them. Now, the team could decide his social media behavior is so bad/detrimental that it warrants cutting him (but they should not, IMO). I am sure that many people would lose their jobs if they become a national-scale irritant on social media. However, at this point it's just not in the Bills' best interest to do so; the line of bad behavior has not been crossed. There is a line at some point, however. I won't indulge in hypotheticals, but there is always a point where the negatives for the team outweigh the positives. If Beasley were a bubble player, he'd probably already have crossed it.

Well, it is time the NFL increased the frequency of testing for vaccinated players. Getting tested isn't a ton of fun but is probably no biggie for 95% of these guys.

It's totally confusing to me what the league will do with a team that has an outbreak, can't reschedule, and is (let's say) 90% vaccinated players. You might have 5 unvaccinated players and 48 vaccinated players on a team. Now let's say they test them all because of a couple of cases and they find 12 people are positive, most or all asymptomatic... and yet this happens on Saturday. What do you do with that game? The whole "if we can't reschedule it, you'll have to forfeit" seems like a huge loophole. Last year they went through hoops to reschedule games and bent over backwards. In fact, the only way I can see them not rescheduling it is if it's a week 18 game. Otherwise... they are going to go to extreme lengths to reschedule, vaccinated or unvaccinated. No one gets paid when they don't play games.

For a minute there I thought you just locked it to save a step!

Quick, someone update the thread title so no one else creates a duplicate thread!

Not really "news", but it is a statement from Bruce Smith regarding the Bills. Many less meaningful utterances from Bills players have caused threads to open.

Well, I am not going to copy that whole thing in a quote, but given that the protocols are currently for preseason only, I suspect they will be slightly relaxed. There is no argument that could convince me that unvaccinated players should not be tested daily for the forseeable future, and that is hardly forcing them to get vaccinated. Similarly the quarantine rules for unvaccinated players who have a probable exposure are unlikely to change. I suspect most of the focus will be on the travel/hotel restrictions and other appearance opportunities etc. Having said that, when you ask how I can say that I am fine with the NFL/NFLPA deciding to make life easier for vaccinated players and encourage (not force) vaccinations, I say that because that is my opinion. Beyond that, I think the conversation gets into off topic areas.

Quite simply I can't agree that the current risk is the same as last fall because community prevalence and transmission rates are lower, which of course could change. That argument could be used to extend the same 2020 protocols to 2025 or beyond as long as there is a single case. Which is not, of course, what the rest of society is doing as far as maintaining rules - not in practice anyhow. I am not saying the protocols are different because I have not seen a side by side comparison but I do not believe that a rigorous scientific analysis is the only driver. Encouragement to get vaccinated is part of the motive and I am completely fine with that.

Hopefully this lets any other players who have felt the need to hide, be more comfortable in disclosing (if they choose). But I also respect players' right to privacy, and honestly care very little about their personal lives. Ideally he will be accepted the same as before but unfortunately there are going to be some haters... there always are.

I feel they designed the vast protocol difference intentionally to nudge the undecideds/uninformed. Once they get down to the hardcore anti- group, nudging is useless so they may provide more "out"s. It is hard for me to describe some players as vaccine-hesitant. That describes people who waited a few months for lots of people to get it, then decided to get it. They literally hesitated. That would describe someone who is still open to maybe getting it. Someone who is firmly against it is really not vaccine-hesitant, they are vaccine-opposed. As noted in the prior article, they will likely not be affected by carrots or sticks unless taken to an extreme. So I think "infection parties" are more likely among the "opposed" than the "hesitant". But it is probably in the NFL's interest to delay providing alternative options.

I think the protocols for the unvaccinated s could take into account 2 additional factors: 1) Player's prior history of COVID. Despite a general recommendation that post-COVID infection you should still get vaccinated, there are actually reasonable disagreements on when that should occur. It is also not really in dispute that there is a short term level of resistance conveyed by infection. So, it might be reasonable to allow someone to be treated the same as vaccinated players for X months, such as 3-6. But this would require some data to back it up... such as frequency of reinfection of non immunocompromised individuals in that time horizon. I don't have enough data to judge this either way but it is worth considering. 2) Probably an even larger factor is the prevalence of infection in the community. Is there a threshold below which severe restrictions on player interactions no longer make sense? If the "positivity rate" were 0.01% and there were 100 infections/day nationwide, would that be sufficiently low to relax protocols? I don't have the answer of course, but "disappear completely" seems like an unreasonable standard. I don't believe Ebola has disappeared completely but players are not required to follow precautions against it because their risk is effectively zero.

I just realized this thread has morphed into arguing with one anti-vaxxer. I will stop doing that and focus on Cole/Bills related posts.

Protocols will definitely be in place and it is very unlikely that vaccinated and unvaccinated players will be treated equally. Optimistically, if the overall case rate continues to decline, protocols can/will be relaxed due to lower relative risk. I also believe that player discontent with the announced preseason protocols may well cause some relaxation of the protocols for the regular season. Pessimistically, if there is a surge in cases in the fall, protocols could become more stringent for vaccinated players as well.

No, I am living my life, and I am not advocating for government-compelled vaccination of non healthcare workers nor am I suggesting that government restrictions should remain in place at current levels. Nevertheless, it isn't as simple as "works or it doesn't" except in retrospect.

Either you win the lottery or you don't. Either you win at roulette or you don't. Those two things do not have the same odds... but in both cases, you don't know in advance. In both cases, if you play more times, the chance of a win is increased. Same principle applies here. The vaccine should lower my odds of getting serious COVID. Still... I would prefer to be exposed fewer times. The less cases that are in the population, the less likely I will be exposed. We may see serious cases continue to decline which is good for everyone, juat based on immunity levels so far (both natural and vaccine induced). However, if more people chose to get vaccinated, it is more likely that serious cases will continue to decline faster. Unfortunately we are at the point where vaccination levels will plateau. It is what it is.

It is interesting that they just eased up on the "get rid of the Skyway" push recently.

He sounds like someone with a history of poor decision making.

Oh, I see. Here is a media summary of a Lancet article. https://www.timesofisrael.com/pfizer-vaccine-96-7-effective-at-preventing-covid-deaths-israeli-data-shows/ The reason I mentioned this is that claiming 100% effectiveness at preventing death is negated as soon as 1 person who is fully vaccinated dies of Covid. And there appear to have been breakthrough cases in Israel, the UK, and the US. However it is very rare, and they are extremely effective at preventing death from Covid. Additionally some studies include people who had both shots but were not +2 weeks. Also a study of real world data is by definition an observational study rather than a clinical trial. In the clinical trials all 3 vaccines had 0 deaths as far as I am aware. It should be expected that in hundreds of millions of vaccinated individuals, some will still die of Covid. After all the general population includes a lot of severely immunocompromised individuals who may not get full vaccine benefit. It also is so large that just plain bad luck could apply like hitting a reverse lottery. Anyhow... the use of "100%" may sound like a weaker data point than 98% or whatever to a skeptic, because 100% is easily disproven by a single counter example at which point they reject the entirety of the data. Finally if someone has a "belief" that the vaccine does not help in the face of all available evidence, I don't see that more evidence will convince them.

I hope you are right but I would not be at all surprised if, when it is approved, those same people claim the approval process was flawed.

Oh I completely disagree with his belief. Why are you asking me?

Well, thanks at least for stating your reasons clearly and calmly, without calling everyone else "sheep" for believing the evidence that it does 'help or protect'. It is important to note they were 100% effective against preventing death in clinical trials, but have not been 100% effective at preventing death in real-world usage based upon data and studies from both Israel and the UK. Also, someone fully vaccinated died in Washington state, I believe.