COVID concerns and questions touch home for the Reds

I just posted this thread on Twitter, so I thought I’d also put it here for the people who have the good sense not to use Twitter:

First, best wishes to Matt Davidson and his family and friends that the course of the virus will be mild and that it hasn’t spread beyond him.

MLB’s protocol, at least as we know it, is testing every-other day with results released 36-48 hours later. In this case, under that assumption, Davidson would have been positive when he took a test on Thursday.

But we don’t really know when he actually *became* positive? His previous test — a negative one — would have been on Tuesday. That means Davidson could have been positive since Wednesday, but certainly was by Thursday.

Either way, Davidson was around his teammates Thursday, Friday and Saturday and played against the Tigers yesterday. We know MLB and the Reds are taking strict precautions, but we also see them close together without masks on the field.

With finding out about Davidson’s positive test today, presumably all the Reds would be tested today. But when will the results from that be back? Monday morning?

Meanwhile, how confident can anyone on the team be that they are negative? Should they quarantine themselves from their family until they get negative results? Should they play the game today?

The Washington Nationals faced a similar situation on Thursday and MLB had them go ahead and play the Opening Day game against the Yankees. My guess is the Reds-Tigers game will take place today, and tomorrow as well.

In the weeks leading up to this weekend, everyone was skeptical that MLB could get this off the ground. Even they were, I bet. But they did it. With few positive tests this week, there were wonderful Opening Days across the country, including in Cincinnati.

So I worry that MLB will push too hard based on the confidence they gained in the past couple weeks that they can simply go forward even though there are positive tests here and there and games taking place without knowing whether players are positive or negative.

We shouldn’t be lulled by the past week and successful start into minimizing the real ongoing risk to the players, coaches, team personnel and their families and friends.