Borenstein: Cal Bears COVID controversy fueled by doctor’s false claims

When Dr. Monica Gandhi went on television last week to blast public health officials’ response to the Cal football COVID outbreak, her false claims fanned the flames of the controversy into a full-blown conflagration.

Players were already whining about having to undergo testing for the virus. The outbreak of what was then reported as 44 cases among players and staff had prompted the postponement of Cal’s game against USC and was blamed for the Bears’ shorthanded loss to previously winless Arizona.

Then Gandhi, a UCSF professor of medicine, popped off. Among her peers, she is often an outlier, considered well-informed but one of the pandemic’s more controversial infectious disease experts. She said that the entire football team should not have been tested because almost all members were vaccinated and free of symptoms.

“The public health strategy in this case was off and they were doing mass testing of people who didn’t need it,” Gandhi said in a KPIX interview. This news organization reported on Gandhi’s claims the following day, and the story made the front page of the paper the day after.

But Gandhi’s premise that the Cal cases were largely asymptomatic was wrong. Unfortunately, neither she nor the reporters had confirmed the number of symptomatic cases with the university. And, until then, the university had held that information tight.

Finally, in a virtual meeting with players’ parents the day after Gandhi’s television interview, and in subsequent emails to me, university officials revealed that of 172 team players, staff and volunteers tested, 46 were infected — and at least 31 were symptomatic.

That’s right: More than one in six members of the school’s football organization had reported COVID symptoms. That undermined Gandhi’s claim. But the damage was done. Her unfair skewering of Berkeley city health officials had drawn widespread attention.

Meanwhile, in a San Francisco Chronicle commentary, Gandhi doubled down on the false narrative, writing about “clusters of mostly asymptomatic cases among the vaccinated, like what we’re seeing at Cal.”

During the pandemic, Gandhi has repeatedly challenged public health officials’ cautious approach to the spread of the coronavirus. This time she went too far, recklessly opining without first determining the facts.

Her comments fueled the complaints about the testing from players like starting quarterback Chase Garbers and critics like our college sports writer Jon Wilner — who lambasted in a Twitter post what he called the city of Berkeley’s “lunacy.” Never mind the significant numbers of sick players. Never mind we’re still in a pandemic that’s once again on a national upswing with the holidays approaching.

Gandhi’s comments exacerbated a difficult situation for public health officials already under siege for the tough calls they have to make. When pressed in an email exchange Sunday, Gandhi acknowledged, “Yes I should not have commented without knowing the details.” But she has yet to walk back her criticism of the public health response.

Fortunately, some of her colleagues are more supportive of the health officials. “I don’t fault Berkeley public health at all,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, who also specializes in infectious diseases at UCSF. “They did exactly what they were supposed to do.”

But they were an easy target because they had publicly called out the failure in the football program to follow COVID protocols.

“Cases emerged in an environment of ongoing failure to abide by public health measures,” the city said in a statement. People in the program did not get tested when sick, stay home when sick or wear masks indoors.

Berkeley public health called for the team to follow isolation protocols of the California Department of Public Health, City of Berkeley, Pac-12 and UC Berkeley, and for ongoing testing as required by Cal-OSHA standards until the team was clear of COVID.

To be sure, there is a legitimate debate among experts about widespread testing of asymptomatic vaccinated people. But detection of the Cal football team outbreak began with contact tracing from a single case, not with widespread testing, and there were many symptomatic cases.

There’s also a legitimate discussion to be had as new virus data emerges about how long to isolate vaccinated people who test positive. But, says Chin-Hong, we don’t know enough yet to modify the current protocols.

In the meantime, we do know that the premise of Gandhi’s broadside on public health officials was false. At least two-thirds of members of the Cal football organization who tested positive were symptomatic.

One can only imagine how this furor could have spun out of control, and the vitriol health officials would have had to endure, if the university hadn’t set the record straight last week. Unfortunately, citing confidentiality, Cal officials now say they erred in releasing the number of symptomatic cases and won’t do so again.