Fantasy football statheads should be in charge of coronavirus response - really

Bad news: I didn’t win the DraftKings or FanDuel million-dollar NFL tournaments this past weekend.

Good news: I know how to regain some semblance of life as we knew it, and that’s by replacing the number-crunchers at the CDC with the folks who parse NFL data for a living. You know, the people who allow me to make an informed decision on if I should play Davante Adams against the Lions this week (for a whopping $8100) on DraftKings. Yep. Put them in charge.

Why? Because they can easily find Davante Adams aDOT and his air yards and his snap rate and his route runs number and any manner of heat map and literally every move he made on the field last week, and then they can spend hours analyzing the information, analyzing what’s ahead, and then help me figure out the future of Davante Adams based on data. And not just his data; his opponents data, his quarterback’s data, his coach’s data ...

But you know what they can’t do? Find out how many American males aged 45-54 died of COVID and also had diabetes - and diabetes only - as a comorbidity.

Can’t find it. That is unavailable data. I can find, via the CDC, that among men and women aged 4554, there have been 9,266 deaths in America from COVID, and that 1,957 of those people had diabetes. But it doesn’t further separate it by sex, and it doesn’t further seperate it by other comorbidities.

To be clear - and I am not kidding - we would be better off with a bunch of fantasy football players collecting and parsing the coronavirus data than the CDC. These are people who spend their days evaluating risk, and these are people who know how to find the correct data. I’m telling you we’d be better off.

Of course, before we go any further, I have to first accept the data the CDC is spitting out is actually correct.

“I think if we’re being honest, there’s probably government incompetence in reporting of the numbers,” said the Philadelphia-based Adam Levitan, who is one of the cofounders of EstablishTheRun.com, an analytic-driven fantasy NFL and NBA site. “How confident are we in the stats? I’m not saying it was malicious, but clearly the NFL is better at organizing and releasing data than the government.”

Basically, CDC data is like first generation NFL data: Adams caught 14 balls for 146 yards and 2 touchdowns on Sunday; 9,266 humans between the ages of 45-54 died from COVID and 1,957 had diabetes and maybe something else or maybe not.

This is unacceptable. (And if I’m wrong, and the data is there somewhere? It shouldn’t be this hard to locate. I went through every table and chart I could find on the CDC website. Anyway …)

Anyway, this is unacceptable because I’m 48 (don’t look a day over 40) (OK fine 45) and I’m healthy. I’m not obese, I don’t have diabetes, etc. Anyway, I’d like to know how 48-year-old or thereabouts males with no other comorbidities have fared when it comes to COVID. Have 5% died? .5%? .05%? .005%? .0005%? This information would be helpful to have, as it would have a tremendous effect as to how I live my life. If it’s 5%, I’m never leaving my house again. If it’s .0005%, then I’m liable to be skipping down the street French kissing every single person I pass by. (Consider this fair warning.)

How is it we do not have this data? Furthermore, how can we expect our elected leaders - from ol’ Shut ‘er Down Murphy here in NJ to the governors of the Dakotas, both of whom are like, “Mask this, muthafu***” - to make informed decisions?

Honestly? They can’t make informed decisions, because they don’t have a full set of data.

And even the data that is available is … well, “confusing” is a good word.

For instance: One of the comorbidities the CDC lists is “influenza and pneumonia,” which is pointless. COVID cannot cause you to get the flu, but it certainly can cause pneumonia. Either way, it’s useless information. Getting pneumonia after someone contracts COVID is bad, but it’s not like the pneumonia caused the COVID. It’s the other way around. Useless knowledge for the general public.

And then there’s this: Of the nearly 175,000 confirmed COVID deaths in America, over 5,000 of them come with this comorbidity: “Intentional and unintentional injury, poisoning, and other adverse events.”

Huh?

I got thrown off an ATV a month ago. If I got COVID and went to the great bungalow in the sky soon thereafter (I picture heaven consisting of 1950s-style Hollywood bungalows ... you don’t?) I’m guessing I would’ve been part of that 5,000+ number. But why? I wouldn’t have caught COVID from my tumble, unless, of course, I fell into a patch of coronavirus. It makes no sense. It would be like drawing a correlation between Davante Adams’ chances against the Lions this week and how many marbles little Johnny Smith of Des Moines accidentally swallowed last Thursday.

“Any data scientist will tell you getting good data is the hard part,” Levitan said. “There’s people who spend an incredible amount of money to get data about the NFL, and there are whole companies - like Sports Info Solutions and Pro Football Focus - who have armies of people charting every single player in every single game. It just appears the government was so overwhelmed and underprepared for this that getting the correct data and reporting it became a lower priority.”

Bottom line? We cannot make informed decisions without data. We cannot know our relative safety without data. The fact there is more actionable data about Davante Adams than there is about COVID death rates is - to use a term favored by NFL DFS analysts - egregious.