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Comment by natrik | Hacker News Reader

A player, Rudy Gobert, tested positive for Coronavirus today.

He recently did this, https://twitter.com/SomeonesAnIdiot/status/12379197037812940... claiming something along the lines of 'it's not a big deal'

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If he tested positive after participating in practice and being with the team, I wouldn’t be surprised if other Jazz players end up testing positive too.

Good thing the Jazz-Thunder game was called off because with all the physicality and contact during an NBA game it would have been so easy to spread the virus to other teams even if Gobert wasn’t in the game.

https://twitter.com/JDFSports/status/1237913999074787328

His teammate Emmanuel Mudiay has also tested positive.

Edit:Unconfirmed source

No credible source for Mudiay

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/28891354/donovan-mitchel...

His other teammate tests positive.

So, I don’t believe in karma, but man that is something. I wonder if deep in his subconscious he knew he had the disease, and was acting rebellious.

It would be interesting if the disease caused the host to be inclined to spread it.

Colds make people more social I've heard, so doing that would be plausible.

There's only a few studies on this I could find via some google & google scholar:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/darwins-subterranean...

https://evesdrift.com/2014/01/01/change-in-human-social-beha...

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1349985915923183693...

Syphillis does that. Lowers the hosts inhibitions and increases their risk seeking behaviour.

There's a parasitic fungus that does this with insects. It takes over, compelling the host to move to a location where the fungus can reproduce.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vijGdWn5-h8

This is also the plot hook for The Last of Us, a superbly-crafted game for the PS3/4.

And soon to be HBO show! [1]

[1] https://www.techradar.com/news/the-last-of-us-hbo-tv-show

Fantastic! Thanks for letting me know!

I'm assuming you mean beyond inducing the host to aerosolize infectious fluids via sneezing and coughing.

Here's a fun fact: Toxoplasma gondii causes rats to like cats (feces) instead of fearing them, making them prone to being eaten by cats - which is great for the parasite as it reproduces in cat's alimentary system. Incidentally, humans with Toxoplasmosis are over-represented in traffic accidents, which may suggests some of that recklessness effect carries over.

Like rabies?

This was in the story "saviour of the plague years" in a 1995 Wired magazine futurist fiction compilation. They called the desire to run around and spread the disease the "Hong Kong Jog."

The guinea worm spreads via drinking egg-infested water. When the parasite becomes fully developed in the human body, it migrates to the skin where it causes blisters accompanied by burning pain. The pain induces the host to immerse the boil in water; immediately relieving the pain - and allowing the parasite to release its eggs for the next host to drink.

Or it's possible that's where he contracted it.

He is showing symptoms too quickly to have gotten it from that, but he certainly could have been spreading it.

I would be a little hesitant when making that claim. It would certainly be a shorter than usual incubation period, but I don't know how many sigmas away from the mean it would be.

Three days is considered the minimum to be symptomatic.

It's possible, of course -- maybe very high activity accelerated the timeline -- but he spends his days around hundreds of people, and then occasionally tens of thousands of people. Just walking out of the tunnel he is under the respiratory cloud of hundreds of people.

It seems deeply improbable that this event was the cause, not least because the timeline isn't among the probable set.

Oh, sure, I'm very happy to agree with the claim that it's very unlikely that he got the virus from this event. I wasn't trying to dispute that.

I think this kind of behavior does increase your risk of getting the disease, but I imagine there's a strong selection bias.

People that don't do this, won't have a viral moment when it's announced that they have the disease. People that do this kind of thing can have a viral moment when it's announced.

One of the Utah sports journos has said that their feeling at the time was that Gobert was saying he had no fear of contact with the journalists (forced to be 8'+ from him) rather than wasn't scared of dispersing the virus. Doesn't help much in hindsight and this incident may define him from here!

https://twitter.com/andyblarsen/status/1237960552938385408

While that was a stupid thing to do and in poor taste. Rudy Gobert did not know he had covid-19 until tonight and the NBA cancelled the season within an hour or so.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B9nfSnMhqJF/?igshid=1n32u59f63bp...

It looks like the video's been removed?

https://twitter.com/sportsreup/status/1237914886220455938

Is it possible he could be sued over this if any of the reporters contract it?

I hope so.

Fascinating question...

There's this standard case for law students (here in Germany): A man wishes his wife was dead. He sends her out to the mailbox on rainy day, muttering "I hope you get hit by lightning" under his breath. She does get hit by lightning and dies. Murder?

force majeure

He didn’t know he had it and the team doctors didn’t check until earlier tonight. But it was in very poor taste.

Rest of world: This will overwhelm our health system.

USA: This will overwhelm our legal system.

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