John Pollock & Wai Tingpresent a special Sunday night bonus POST Roundtable featuring three guests stopping by:
Dr. Alex Patel returns for the latest on the COVID-19 pandemic, how things have changed, the public acclimating to social distancing, his feelings on wrestling shows continuing, Roman Reigns & more.
Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics discusses the financial implications of WWE’s move to stage WrestleMania at the Performance Center and the importance of WWE’s television deals during this time.
Marcus Vanderberg of Yahoo Sports and The Kings of Sport joins us from Los Angeles to discuss how the city is handling the pandemic, WrestleMania next weekend, what to expect from major sports leagues when play resumes, and what WrestleMania Week in LA could look like in 2021.
Question for Dr. Alex Patel or anyone who wants to chime in:
What are your thoughts on the WWE doctors approving people like Roman for competition at a time like this?
These are highly experienced top of the line doctors who are giving the green light for wrestling events to continue along with talent like Roman to continue. As an outsider listening to this stuff…WWE’s doctors recommendations appear to go completely against what we are hearing globally. We have news of several talent being taken off the show due to illness and still these doctors are letting the show go on knowing better than anyone what the direct and indirect risks are. Dr. Patel explained that around 50% of people show fever symptoms…WWE and AEW doctors must know that as well.
The talent and company can easily use this as a shield…no matter what the news says, what the government is saying, what John and Wai thinks or even what their families think…WWE has the backing and assurances of some of the top doctors in the country saying that wrestling is ACCEPTABLE at this time as is everything that surrounds it like traveling.
If you ask the average person would they rather listen to the government about matters of their personal health or their doctor…I’m sure common sense says listen to your doctor. Roman’s doctor never put on the brakes here when it came to Roman removing himself from WrestleMania.
Should these doctors be in a position or blame for their inaction?
I will admit I may be overstepping what I believe their powers are in WWE. Perhaps the role of a doctor in this environment isn’t to consider risks but only assess immediate health. You don’t have a clear sign of Covid today therefore pass. No need to even consider the working environment, risks on others lives, your families lives, people you travel around, etc. If this is the case that has a whole slew of issues as well…but at least it would explain a lot of things such as performers with dozens of concussions combined with pill addictions and the like being given the green light historically. You don’t look like you’ll die in the ring tonight so go out there and entertain the kids!
The particular type of cancer Roman has (CML) is not treated with high dose chemo. I don’t know his exact status but based on recent malignancy and likely being in some form of Gleevac either recently or currently he is at higher risk than the average person his age.
I would imagine with their screening process they are trying to eliminate anyone who is sick etc. However we have more community spread and we have more evidence of asymptomatic spread.
I would have classified him into about a medium risk or so - we can’t say it’s high risk but for instance they could have limited his interaction only being to Goldberg up close and possibly swabbed both of them to ensure it’s negative? We don’t know. That would reduce the risk greatly but again the swab maybe unreliable in asymptomatic people.
So I would tend to give the doctors the benefit of the doubt - we don’t know how far they went in terms of screening and it’s possible with swabs (perhaps even x 2 each) they can greatly reduce the risk.
However it’s not going to be zero and he’s still higher risk for being sicker with it so I think the correct call was made.
Also I just wanted to thank @wai0937 and @johnpollock for having me on - it’s great that they are devoting time to helping get information disseminated to a large group