No one can figure out when Ronnie Barnes slept last season.
The Giants’ chief infection control officer would watch the team’s first round of COVID-19 test results come in at around 7 or 8 p.m. every night. Then the lab would re-run the tests, and Barnes would stay awake to get the confirmations back around midnight or 1 a.m.
Then he would call who needed to know what he knew and immediately begin contact tracing, studying data from trackers worn by players and staff. Then when the players woke up around 4, 5 or 6 a.m., he would call and ask them whom they’d sat next to, whether they’d been wearing a mask, if they’d been indoors or outdoors. And on and on.
So how much did Barnes even sleep?
“Not a lot,” Barnes, 69, told the Daily News on the phone Thursday with a hearty laugh. “There was napping, but first thing in the morning, [it was] back to the office. Football coaches do that all the time, and I joined that circle, ya know?”
Barnes’ dedication got the Giants through a full season during a pandemic. And now, with Barnes “quite concerned” about the virus’ Delta variant, he is applying that same persistence to daily educational conversations with players still hesitant about getting the COVID-19 vaccine.
The message is getting through. One Giants player assured his teammate during a vaccine conversation with Barnes on Thursday: “I trust this man.”
The Giants aren’t one of the NFL’s nine teams that were at or above a 90% player vaccination rate on Friday. But Barnes told The News that “the majority” of the Giants’ players are vaccinated, including “most of the [player] leadership,” and that the team is “certainly shooting for relaxation of protocols.”
That implies they are below but approaching the NFL’s 85% threshold to relax certain rules. Barnes also said more players are coming in every day, including three unvaccinated players who went for their first shot Thursday night.
“My goal is 100%,” Barnes said. “If I don’t get 100%, I certainly will be a little bit disappointed. However I do understand that we have to continue to educate. My biggest fear is someone getting severely ill, being hospitalized, or having long-term effects from COVID.”
The Giants already have 100% of their staff vaccinated, coaches included, with the exception of “a couple” individuals who have religious or medical exemptions. Now “education is the key” to getting the players there, Barnes said, and that can happen in different ways, some more painful than others.
Last season, for example, when Barnes was seeking buy-in on protocols, he said “many of the players had family members who had become ill and some who had even passed away, so that was sobering to say the least.” Naturally, those experiences were convincing.
Often, though, it comes down to a one-to-one conversation with Barnes, the team’s senior VP of medical services and head athletic trainer, and a member of several NFL health and safety committees, including the group that worked on all COVID-19 measures for the 2020 season.
Recently, Barnes said one Giants player still incorrectly believed that the COVID-19 vaccine, like the flu vaccine, was injecting some form of the virus into his body. All it took was Barnes clarifying that wasn’t true and explaining how it works to convince the player it was safe.
That’s the most common player vaccine concern, he said: “What am I putting into my body?”
Then there is the presence of the Delta variant, which has major cities like Los Angeles reinstituting mask mandates. Barnes said he thinks the players “see the concern on my face” during his urgent presentation about a variant that is “far more contagious” than last year’s, and that this dire context is “helping us move along.”
“My urgency is not directed at [the fact that] we might have to cancel a game,” Barnes said. “My urgency is this is a highly contagious variant of this virus. You may become sick. And I try to appeal to the common good: not only are you going to protect yourself but your family and friends and people you encounter.”
He said he is honest with players that there will probably still be “breakthrough positives,” or vaccinated people who test positive.
“But,” he assured, “we do know … that they won’t become severely ill. They likely will not have to be hospitalized, and the symptoms will be mild. I believe that. I’m a scientist.”
There were still Giants players and coaches who caught COVID-19 during the 2020 season despite Barnes’ and the organization’s daily efforts, of course. But while countless teams had to shutter their facilities, Barnes is most proud that the Giants were always open for business.
“[I’m most proud] that we didn’t have to close our facility,” he said. “That we were able to start working through the night and first thing the next morning to contact trace so that we didn’t have to close the facility. Certainly if need-be we would have. We took no risks. But we had all of those answers before the players came to the building. So for me that was a real challenge and I certainly hope I can continue to do that.”
Barnes needed help to accomplish this, too. He had assistants. He had to rely on the compliance of staff and players. And sometimes he had to trust outsiders to do the right thing.
In December, for example, the Giants and James Bradberry only knew to quarantine their top corner as a high-risk close contact in Week 15 because Bradberry’s outside massage therapist reached out and disclosed her own positive test.
“The way that we found out is that the therapist got in touch with us,” Barnes said, noting Bradberry’s mistake was an honest one given the therapist’s frequent safe work with pro athletes. “We didn’t have to go seek it out. She called us to say I’m positive and I have massaged one of your athletes. So I’m thankful for that.”
Not every Giants decision these days is health and safety related.
Interestingly, Barnes said the decision to not have fans at training camp was not motivated by COVID-19 safety concerns.
“It was certainly a decision made beyond me, but I think it’s a good idea given that it’s pretty hot out there, it takes a lot of preparation to protect the fans,” Barnes said. “I did not make that decision. That was not a health and safety decision.”
MetLife Stadium also is slated to be 100% capacity this fall, with no vaccination requirements for fans.
But at the Quest Diagnostics Training Facility in East Rutherford, there is evidence that the virus is still here and that life will be less convenient for unvaccinated players.
Most notably, unvaccinated players will have to be tested daily and won’t be allowed in the building until their test result comes back negative. They’ll have to wait in the parking lot until it does. They’ll also have to wear masks indoors and social distance from everyone.
There are assigned seats in meeting rooms for unvaccinated players. And there are tables on the outdoor patio overlooking the practice fields — under a tent with the flaps pulled up — where unvaccinated players will have to eat their meals if they don’t grab and go.
“When you’re trying to build a team environment, you certainly want them all to be together,” Barnes said. “But the protocols preclude that, so we’ve managed to find space where they can eat outside. And I think you’re going to see that that number will be very small as we continue to move along here with vaccinations.”
As of Friday, the NFL said 80% of its players in training camps were either vaccinated or had received the first of two shots. There are five teams below 70% but none lower than 50%. And all of those percentages will increase as roster cuts are made for the regular season.
But Barnes wants to get to 100% with the Giants. That would keep everyone safe, and most importantly, it would set a strong example for the public.
“I think the broader message we can send in the National Football League is to the people in the country who are hesitant for whatever reason,” Barnes said. “The fact that our players have gotten [vaccinated] and many of them are worshipped by folks outside of this building, by our fans. I would like for our players to be vaccinated to send a message to our fans to please get vaccinated, that this Delta variant is highly contagious.”
“And you realize the longer we let this Delta variant hang out there, there will be other variants,” Barnes added. “This is not politics. This is not anything. This is science.”
