#LETTHEMPLAY

BACKGROUND INFORMATION: Most who read this blog know I am a technologist by trade. What many may not know is that a significant portion of my career has been spent evaluating risk. I hold a certification known as the CRISC (Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control). The goal of the CRISC certification is to validate that a person has a proficiency in understanding risks and how they impact an organization. It also validates that a person has a proficiency to devise plans and strategies for mitigating those risks.

Risk management is a big thing in tech these days. Becoming a victim of cybercrimes, data theft, and fraud could result in substantial losses or even bankruptcy for a company. So how do businesses protect against these threats? The first step is always a risk assessment, with the overall goal being to avoid wasting precious time and resources addressing the wrong things.

In it’s simplest terms, the process for evaluating risk is… pretty simple! Regardless of the field or industry, risk assessments always revolve around two key items, LIKELIHOOD, and IMPACT. In layman’s terms, likelihood is how probable it is that a threat will occur and impact is the toll that it will take if a threat does occur. These two items are typically broken down into a matrix and each is rated for low, medium, and high. I told you it was simple, see below:

For a real world example, lets look at the threat of an earthquake. The impact of an earthquake regardless of the location is high, however, the likelihood of an earthquake can vary greatly. San Francisco for example has a high probability for earthquakes and so this risk would be HIGH. Montague, MI on the other hand has a very low likelihood for and so the risk would be low. But why is this important? It makes sense to build earthquake proof buildings by code in California but in Michigan it is simply a waste of money that takes resources away from protecting against more likely threats.

At this point you are probably bored and asking yourself, “What does this have to do with high school sports?” As a matter of practice, A LOT. Our Governor has decided to extend the ban on contact sports for another two weeks with little explanation as to why. I want to remove the emotion and bias and perform a true risk assessment.

THREAT: I think it is important to look at the threat in right perspective. Any place where two or more people congregate will increase the COVID transmission probability. But COVID transmission is not the real threat. The real threat of COVID has always been overwhelming our medical systems resulting in unneeded death. Lockdowns have never been meant to stop the virus. They have always been meant to slow the spread to a point where our hospital systems could handle the amount of patients needing assistance. The threat is then defined as “the incapacitation of our medical system through overwhelming case needs caused by contact sports.”

LIKELIHOOD: Taking the threat into consideration, the first question that needs to be answered is, “what is the likelihood that allowing contact sports will impact our medical systems ability to care for patients?”

• There are 1,466,879 total 10-19 Year old’s in the state with 51,613 total cases among them. Just 3.5% of that age groups population has had COVID.
  https://www.infoplease.com/us/census/michigan/demographic-statistics
  https://www.michigan.gov/coronavirus/0,9753,7-406-98163_98173—,00.html
  
• There are 1870 high schools in the state. If each fields a varsity boys/girls basketball, hockey, wrestling, and cheer team and each team held 15 players there would be a pool of 140,250 athletes participating. **NOTE most schools are missing one or more of these sports, most teams have less than 15 participants, and many athletes dual sport so the overall number should be lower but we want error on the side of caution**
  
• 3.5% (the percentage of this population group with COVID) of the 144,250 potential athletes is 4,908.75 cases among the pool of athletes available to play.
  
• In the state one positively infected individual passes the disease to .9 other people. This means that there would be an additional 4,418 cases brought on by playing contact sports.
  https://www.statista.com/statistics/1119412/covid-19-transmission-rate-us-by-state/
  
• The hospitalization rate for individuals aged 0-34 is 00.25%. This means that infection would result in an additional 11 people hospitalized.
  
• A study completed by the University of Wisconsin Medical School, found that 271 athletes contracted the virus overall compared with 2,318 Wisconsin children aged 14-17 over the month of September. No sports were found to have a higher incidence rate of COVID-19 overall than 14-17 year-olds. None of the cases among the athletes resulted in hospitalization or death.
  https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-public-health-madison-wisconsin-high-school-sports-7f2f41be0c28e1cb6b6341ff1640e8ed#:~:text=MADISON%2C%20Wis.,Health%20released%20the%20study%20Thursday.
  
• Mitigation factors like rapid testing and no fan participation reduces the likelihood even further.
  
• Based upon the data the Likelihood of contact sports increasing transmissions to a point where it posed any threat to our healthcare system is LOW.

IMPACT: If the threat was realized what would the impact be to our medical resources.

• As of 1/27/21 there were 1,594 people hospitalized for COVID in the State, with 26,425 available beds and 4,488 ventilators available. That means the state has a surplus of 24,831 beds and 2894 ventilators.
  https://www.michigan.gov/coronavirus/0,9753,7-406-98159-523641–,00.html

• Given that a majority of infections due to contact sports would be between players, and given that the players fall into the 10-19 age bracket we can assume a .25% hospitalization rate. Even if all 140,250 players were to get COVID we would only see 352 new hospitalizations. With almost none needing ventilators.

• Even if we used the nationwide hospitalization rate of .38% and all athletes contracting COVID we are only at 533 additional hospitalizations statewide which would barely tax the medical system.
  
• Based upon the data above the impact of contact sports on the medical system is LOW

Summary

Risk is a product of impact and likelihood. Risk management actions are taken with this formula in mind and resources are allocated to the areas that produce the largest risk.

The risk matrix for the threat, “The Incapacitation of our medical system through overwhelming case needs caused by contact sports.” is below:

The assessed risk of allowing kids to play contact sports when looking at things logically and by the numbers is unequivocally LOW!

#LETTHEMPLAY