My main concern would be wether the hotels are cleares properly

Kind of unlikely that the hotels in rural France are disinfected like the JW Marriott in NYC, but its probably a non issue. I bet the hotels are required to be empty for 24 hrs before the teams move in, which would kill off any virus anyway (time related decay on surfaces).

I read somewhere that each team has a crew going ahead to the hotels to do their own cleaning prior to the teams’ arrival. They also bring their own linens and kitchen stuff. And the people on the cleaning crew never come into contact with any of the riders or staff in the race.

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

1. If i was the sport or health minister of France watching this stage, I would stop this race dead flat. The crowds on the last climb were an extreme spreader event.

2. If I was a rider going through those crowds of lots of unmasked, screaming in your face fans, I would be very upset with race organizers not doing enough to keep riders healthy.

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808 > NYC > PDX > YVR
2024 Races: Taupo

Agree 💯. Today was the beginning of the end for the TdF. Pretty aggravating that a) the directors allowed the fans to crowd the racers like that and b) the fans would actually do it, with a good portion of them not wearing masks.

I’m pretty pissy because this years race was shaking out to be the best in years..... now I’m 100% convinced it’s almost over.

That last climb today...the crowds were shoulder-to-shoulder and completely crowding into the road, yelling at riders without masks. From a virus standpoint, it was a complete mess. It seems pointless that they go to all the effort before the race to not catch the virus and then get thrown into that petri-dish of a crowd during the climb.

Utter failure on the part of race organizers putting the riders at such risk.

Keep in mind that everyone who got to the top of Peyresourde from what I understand got there by bike or hiked up. No cars were allowed on the mountain. the race organizers can't control hikers going up a mountain, but they could control bikes. It was definitely possible to limit road access.

As for the scenario, my thoughts (and just my opinion) that riders going at 15-25kph through a dense group of screaming fans may not have been exposed to enough density of fan breathing given their own speed, outside ambiant air movement and density of potential virus to infect them. You can do the math and see the riders would have gone through the dense fan section for <3 min by rewinding the coverage. 3 min, moving that fast in an outdoor environment, there may be less density of droplets than your local grocery or retail store or restaurant (due to air circulation quality), with stale air and people in there for a long time. But its just my opinion. Someone will have to do proper math and figure out the density of droplets per cubic meter of air volume the riders were going through per second during their 3 min exposure.

I think the probability of a rider getting exposed to the virus and getting sick is higher during his daily post race massage from his own team staff who is exposed daily to far more than the rider. Those are my thoughts. But the fans were likely a hazard to themselves given they are around the same group of people for a long long time, but it would be less dense than traditional pro sports stadium.

In any case, if riders test positive on Monday my guess is it probably was from before Peyresourde, not during the climb that they caught this.

If tomorrow is the last stage of the TdF if they cancel on the rest day, its been pretty awesome, but I suspect they kick out a few riders at most and keep rolling and watching until the next rest day.

There's been no documented "extreme spread" event outdoors.

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"The person on top of the mountain didn't fall there." - unkown

also rule 5

It is more likely than a peleton of boats in Texas.............

That’s good to hear. Seeing those crowds just caught me by surprise yesterday.

So far today crowds on Col de Soudet are much better. But cold and light rain helps too.

It really boils down to if any of those maskless fans shouting at the riders in very close quarters was shedding virus. Could be an asymptomatic person or one with mild symptoms that didn't think they had covid. That might impact only one or a small number of riders. The crowd seemed better on stage 9 today, and they didn't appear to close in so much on the riders during the final ascent.

In my non medical opinion, just looking at how the virus spreads, etc, I would think it would take a lot more than a few virus-shedding fans with only a few seconds exposure outside for these relatively healthy athletes to catch the virus. If I recall correctly, the data most recently show that (on average) it would take more than 15 mins with a positive person indoors with no mask, otherwise the viral load is just too small to contract.

That could definitely change as the Tour goes on and wears on riders immune systems. If ASO really gave a fuck about the riders, they’d realize that the best defense against the virus (other than not being exposed to it of course), is a healthy immune system. They could have adjusted the tour to be shorter with more rest days. And what an exciting tour it would be if it were 15 100-120kn stages!!

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"The person on top of the mountain didn't fall there." - unkown

also rule 5

Droplets vs. aerosol. I wouldn't discount the risk. With luck, none of those fans was covid positive.

I think the best response would be to send a motorcycle team, with electric cattle prods, ahead of the race and let them zap anyone who isn’t wearing a mask. Nothing like 40,000 volts to remind people that they should be wearing a mask when not socially distanced. I sure don’t feel sorry for any moron who needs a reminder of appropriate behavior. These people keep ruining everything for the rest of the responsible population.

I generally agree with what you are saying

Let's look at it one more way. If a group of young people are exercising outdoors in close quarters but otherwise when indoors or not moving and not physically spaced they are behaving responsibly then what do the cases look like. So far this has been going since the Dauphine 3 weeks ago so let's see after the peloton are tested how many riders got the virus. I am less interested how many staff got it as they could get it from external but how many riders got it will be interesting relative to how many staff.

Texas at one point had a Navy, so not that surprising!

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I like it! The Nashville mayor needs to try that here on Broadway with all the tourists who don’t wear masks.

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

Looks like France is becoming a SSHOW. I would say no based on the crowds it could draw. Official finish will not be in Paris.

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http://www.TriScottsdale.org

If they did, I'd certainly hope they'd televise it.

I couldn't imagine a better evening's viewing. Sitting back with a glass of red and some cheeses enjoying the Tour, after watching a curtain raiser of motorcycle cops with cattle prods zapping the groins of recalcitrant morons.

How good would that be? Whether they made it to Paris or not, I would still call it the best Tour in living memory.

If any riders test positive, I hope it’s roglic, Bernal and pogacar, they look the strongest and it would be anyone’s race.

In fairness, the oldest, most co-morbid (the low hanging fruit) is already dead. We also know who is by far the most likely to die (people over 60 and especially people over 80 and especially especially anyone in these groups with serious co-morbidity) and can take extra precautions to prevent them from getting infected (isolate these people). As far as the everyone else, the death rate looks to be on the order of somewhere between 0.1 and 1.0%, depending on what you believe the true infection rate is. So for example, using these bounds, with 5000 new cases per day, this gets you to between 5 and 50 deaths per day (assuming 5000 new cases a day holds and the most vulnerable are strongly isolated), and 20 deaths per day is right in the middle of these bounds.

So I as long as new cases holds steady at 5000 cases per day (and we keep the most vulnerable from getting infected), the death rate should hold and therefore the Tour should make it to Paris. My logic being that if they have accepted about 20 deaths per day in France, if deaths stay at about that number the status quo holds.

A bucket of numbers in what you've written, apparently laced with much speculation and even more wishful thinking.

Mid July, France was recording 500 new cases/day. There has been a continual rise in the 7-day average ever since. End of July, that had increased to 1000. By end of August, 5000. A week later, the 7-day average is 6700.

What are the indicators that it will plateau at 5000? What evidence is there that a significant increase in deaths won't follow the rise in new cases?

It will be very interesting to see the test results after today.

At least we know the Tour would never cover up or explain away testing results to preserve the race.