Politicians across the world are pointing to the numbers of positive test results for coronavirus that they are terming as coronavirus “cases” to justify imposing extreme restrains on liberty, including ordering business operations and people’s movements curtailed and mandating mask wearing. But, experience with coronavirus testing in the National Football League (NFL) suggests that those case numbers used to justify coronavirus crackdowns are highly inflated.
Rob Goldberg writes at Bleacher Report that early Sunday morning the Kansas City Chiefs NFL team was informed that seven Chiefs players had tested positive for coronavirus, after which the team “spent five hours doing contract tracing and re-tests before determining the initial results were a mistake.” Got that? One hundred percent false positives.
Goldberg further relates that such false positives have arisen much in the NFL, “including 77 false positives before the season began in August” and the Indianapolis Colts having “four players test positive for COVID-19 in November” who were then all “found to be negative after being re-tested.”
NFL teams have great financial and other incentives to make sure that false positives do not prevent putting their most competitive possible group of football players on the field to play. In contrast, politicians who want to use the coronavirus scare to justify expanding their power have an incentive to promote coronavirus case numbers inflated by false positive test results.
