Lobo move to Texas is a bad idea

Really? The New Mexico Athletic Department is suffering financially (as are so many due to the world wide pandemic that is not done with us). Does this justify a decision to move teams to two cities in Texas that are COVID19 hotspots?

Consider the Covid Risk Assessment Planning Tool: covid19risk. biosci.gatech.edu. It allows a search by county, by town to determine the risk level of attending an event, given the event size and location.

Factors to consider beyond cost of the move vs. lost revenue:

1. Lubbock has been the focus of articles in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times for the general population’s refusal to wear masks.

2. Our state-funded university students are going to two towns, Lubbock and Amarillo, that are two of the highest risk cities in Texas, a very high risk state.

3. Our students will be in shared training facilities, and in public places for food and shelter.

4. The students, as students do, will go to bars, or at the least gather for a party themselves after going to get their beverages of choice at local stores (yes, even underage – they have their ways). As an alum, I can assure you Texas Tech is a huge party school.

5. The students and the team coaches and staff will be exposed in the training facilities, stores, restaurants, by the staff at the hotels where they will stay or on campus.

6. Lubbock’s risk factor for groups of 50, the minimum size of the UNM group that will be mingling with residents of Lubbock, is 93 percent and Amarillo’s risk factor is 96 percent per the risk assessment tool noted.

7. Bernallilo is 93 percent which is a basis for the governor’s plea to not expose people and to not allow sports practices close contact.

8. These figures are the chances of a person in a group event being exposed to someone with COVID19, and contracting it personally or becoming a carrier.

9. The hospitals in all three of these cities are at capacity; health care frontline workers are exhausted and strained and on the verge of breaking themselves – shall they be sacrificed to care for people that refuse to pay attention and sacrifice a sports season to keep people from being exposed to a deadly raging virus?

10. Christmas is about three weeks away. Will the students be required to miss Christmas with families?

11. If they go home for Christmas, then the risk factors will travel with them to siblings, parents, friends, friends’ parents, grandparents, etc.

12. These athletic department people are supposed to be role models for the students.

13. The taxpayer-funded athletic officials are defying and circumventing reasonable science-based advice from the public health officials helping our governor to save lives of citizens of New Mexico, and going from the frying pan into the fire.

I am a native of Lubbock. I’ve been in Taos 25 years. I have 20 immediate family members in Lubbock – 11 of those, so far, have contracted COVID-19 since Oct. 1, and they gathered for Thanksgiving. Probably more of my family will be stricken. So far we have not lost anyone. To lose even one Lobo or Lobo family member or friend would be a tragedy and most tragic because it is so avoidable. The Lobos “leaders” should think again.