Thanks for the update.

I saw that Taste of Madison the weekend before IMWI was cancelled. Granted it has more people, but still telling.

Huge mistake on Dane County's part. Especially as more and more data is coming out that spread outdoors and among asymptomatic is negligible (also any outdoor transmission with spacing is virtually negligible).


Any plan that is predicated on something that may never come and is likely to be imperfect even if it does come, is not an acceptable plan. Then they add in Phase 4, AFTER a vaccine is out, listed as "New Normal." We are not going to a new normal, we are going to normal. I feel terrible for anyone living in Madison or any other part of the country planning to continue to wreck their community indefinitely for possibly years.

Just wish a decision would be made!!!

Thank you guys for being voices of reason. One positive is that I've been seeing more and more of this outlook lately and it seems clear most people are transitioning to realizing we need to live with the virus and can't shut down the world for it. In a few months when the summer has passed with all the concerts, sporting events, county fairs, races, and other gatherings being cancelled without ever being close to overwhelmed while bars and stores (where the virus actually spreads) have still been full and we haven't been overwhelmed, hopefully policymakers are held properly accountable.

This idea that mass participatory sports events can happen because “we won’t be overwhelmed” doesn’t mean people won’t be getting sick. It just means hospitals have space in their ICUs and enough ventilators to help you not die if you get COVID-19.

Just because there is room in a hospital for an illness that is killing something like 3 to 6 percent of those who get it doesn’t mean that I’m comfortable risking an infection.

The various reopening strategies in Dane County and elsewhere depend on case levels falling and remaining low. After the festivities we saw over Memorial Day and the recent street protests, I think we’re in for a spike in cases that will extend the restrictions.

I would like to race IM WI, but am not counting on it.

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Sharon McN
@IronCharo
#TeamZoot
Clif Bar Pace Team 2003-2018

Anyone know how they plan on running the 70.3 the same day? Getting to the point that I just want to know so I can plan for this race or not....

Considering your user name, I can't believe you think this is even a remote possibility. In normal times, doing both races on the same day is logistically improbable. Add in CoVid and its impossible.

Traverse City is technically my A race this year and I wake up every morning wondering if CoVid will cause a cancellation... then I remember that they still don't have a confirmed course and laugh to myself that I even have hope.


I hate to be Debbie Downer but these races are not going to happen. And if they do, I will GLADLY eat my words at the start line.

My assumption how the day will go.

They will send you off in waves. The number of people in each wave will be within the certain gathering size limit. Ironman waves will go first, then 70.3.

The courses will mimic each other, which means that the 70.3 course will follow the Ironman course. They won't try and create two different courses as they will only pull more resources away.

The run for the 70.3 will be 1 loop of the full's course.

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Inside The Big Ring: Podcast & Coaching

The Covid does not kill nearly 3-6% of people that get it.

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Dimond Bikes Superfan

If you are looking at different stats please let me know but both Johns Hopkins and World Meters have total deaths in the US at around 119,000 and total cases 2,200,000 which is 5.4%. I would assume with more new testing bringing the positive numbers up will hopefully not correlate with the same rate of deaths so that number will go down. But we will see in a few weeks about that.

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You think that around ~100% of people who have COVID have been tested for it apparently? From the WHO . . .

"For COVID-19, data to date suggest that 80% of infections are mild or asymptomatic, 15% are severe infection, requiring oxygen and 5% are critical infections, requiring ventilation. "

It's probably reasonable to guess around 0% of mild or asymptomatic people in the US have been tested. So 5.4% * 20% = around 1% actual mortality rate, which is trending down with better understanding of treatments. If you are healthy and under 60, the odds are substantially better yet. I'm not advocating the view that this is "NBD", but some people are being completely ridiculous, and commenting that COVID kills 3-6% of people who gets it counts as being ridiculous/wrong/fear mongering.

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Dimond Bikes Superfan

CDC's estimates COVID-19 death rate around 0.26%, doesn't confirm it

Basically, the CDC is showing a fatality rate of 0.4%-1% in people exhibiting symptoms, and between 20-50% of people are asymptomatic. "By combining the two estimates, the estimated overall fatality rate of those infected with the virus – with and without symptoms – would be 0.26%."

Here's another:
Study from Indiana University

IU tested 3600 randomly selected people and 900 volunteers, and found 45% of people as having the virus, but showing no symptoms.
"IUPUI scientists estimate the infection-fatality rate for the novel coronavirus in Indiana to be 0.58 percent, making it nearly six times more deadly than the seasonal flu, which has an infection-fatality rate of 0.1, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

So when you include asymptomatic people, the death rate is much lower than it looks at first. It is still much high than the seasonal flu. This will be a delicate balancing act between public health and people's freedoms. I do not envy the officials who have to make decisions. Based on the stats that I see, I would feel comfortable racing outside. Putting IMWI and the 70.3 on the same day doesn't seem as realistic though.

Ok I am not going to have a debate about which study to listen to and which is wrong and which states aren’t reporting numbers correctly because I am sure none are 100% correct. But that stats we have with those who have been tested vs died from it show 5.4% death rate. Now I agree that there are people who have it who haven’t been tested. But if that’s the case and the rate goes down to 1%, like you said. that’s still huge considering the amount of people who would be walking around with it without knowing and infecting others just means a higher percentage of the population will get it which means a higher number of people will die from it.

And to say that you’re safe if you’re under 60 with no health issues is completely insane. So now we are willing to sacrifice old people and already at risk people because they’re old or sick? But I have been saying it to my wife we will see in a few weeks how the death rate is with all of these new cases in the states who have opened up with not many restrictions. I think that will give us a better understanding of things.

Not all of that post is directed at you but more general comments to those who also try to downplay the death rate because no matter how low it gets its still too high since it doesn’t seem like this is going away anytime soon.

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I think the other thing we need to think about besides death rate is long term health impact. The number of stories and accounts from nurses and doctors saying how even when recovered the long term lung damage. So even if you don’t die the chances of lasting health issues ate still high. And even if I thought I would be ok racing I am not ok with the possibility of bringing it home to my older parents.

But like you said luckily I am not making that decision.

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This bears no resemblance whatsoever to what I said. I simply pointed out that you were wrong that the odds of dying were ~5% if you get COVID, and that there is an exponential increase in the odds of dying that inflects around ~60. I did not use the word "safe", nor did I imply that old people could or should be sacrificed.

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Dimond Bikes Superfan

You also irresponsibily advocated for the use of hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of patients infected with COVID, in the absence of any valid scientific study supporting it’s use. Don’t quit your day job Eric.

The last part of my post said that not all was directed at you. But was more general to all of those who say “you’re not going to die unless you’re at risk”. I was just stating that those who say that are willing to sacrifice people’s lives to be able to “be free”.

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If you are eligible to defer to IMWI 2021 I would go with that option. I just sent IMWI a quick email and within a few hours everything was taken care of.

The headache of not knowing if this race will happen, the undoubtedly watered down experience and severe lack of swim fitness (I'm assuming this applies to most) is reason enough to pull the plug. Aside from that, I do feel it is poor planning in this climate to include the IMWI 70.3 as well as allowing athletes from other canceled races (IM Santa Rosa) to transfer to IMWI...boggles my mind because this is the exact opposite of minimizing the amount of people at an event.

Sidebar: It is hilarious how derailed threads get on here:)

turningscrews wrote:

[You also irresponsibily advocated for the use of hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of patients infected with COVID, in the absence of any valid scientific study supporting it’s use. Don’t quit your day job Eric.

Irresponsibly advocated for HCQ? . . . wow, that seems like a stretch. I said I thought HCQ works, and gave examples of actual medical doctors using it as treatment buried inside a thread where the discussion was whether we could have Ironman racing this year. I guess that's 'irresponsibly advocating' for it? But FWIW, I still believe HCQ w/ AZ+Zn works if given early, and I'm not sure how that belief makes me an irresponsible advocate, but whatever. And here are the quotes in question.





and




Nice timing to bring this all back up anyway as this came out today . . .


https://www.usatoday.com/...d-deaths/3197420001/

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Dimond Bikes Superfan

Additionally it's worth keeping in mind that dying isn't the only potential bad outcome from getting covid.

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Dimond Bikes Superfan

my fault, apologies.

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Dimond Bikes Superfan

https://www.rtmagazine.com/...e-lose-eua-covid-19/

I don't want to get into this entire debate. There is still a lot of data that needs to be reviewed. However, HCQ has not shown good data at this point and has shown a very high rate of QT prolongation (especially when used with Azith). So, the EUA was pulled by the FDA. We stopped using it over a month ago in my hospital. However, we are continuing to learn and some other drugs are showing some good EARLY data. So, I optimistically believe we will get better at treating patients with COVID and the death rate and severe complication rate will decrease. I don't think we can stop the spread at this point. So, there has to be some balance of living with it.

I truly think everyone arguing in this thread is correct in their individual thinking. I just wanted to correct the score on HCQ, the early data was weak at best and it was over hyped to solve all our problems. That has been proven false at this point.

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https://www.strava.com/athletes/23685202

Totally. I said that in one of my above posts. This isn’t a “well I didn’t die so I’m all good” issue. It’s a “well I didn’t die and let’s also hope I don’t have long term lung damage” issue which makes it so bad in my opinion. The number of cases I’ve read about a young healthy person taking months to get over Covid only to have so much lung damage that they will have issues the rest of their life is terrible.

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God forbid we follow peer reviewed Science! One if the first papers from France also left 3 individuals in the study out of their statistical analysis (as described in their materials and methods), one that died and two that dropped out of the study because they couldn’t tolerate the treatment. With fewer than 25 people in the study group, any reasonable person would have thrown that study in the trash. Not to mention the study was fast tracked in a journal the lead author was an editor for.

I deferred as well. I'm also signed up for Traverse City and have already decided I'm not going regardless of whether or not it actually happens. Zero swim training since March and I just have no motivation to train hard. Of course, that needs to change soon or I'm definitely not fitting into my wetsuit in 2021