Pat Hartman | Childhood Obesity News

Coronavirus Chronicles — Got the Jab, What Next?

Pat Hartman February 22, 2021 1 Comment

This continues the topic of the previous post. What does it mean to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19? It means you have had both shots, if it’s that type of vaccine, or the one shot, if it’s the other kind. Then, another two weeks must go by. Infection can’t typically be identified right away. It has to stew for a while before it becomes detectable for testing. So, during this after-shot period, you are still considered vulnerable, and if exposed to an infected person, should quarantine for two additional weeks, and then be tested.

Of course, that only works if you are lucky enough to be aware of the risk. Anyone you run into could be a sick person who doesn’t know yet that they are sick. You could encounter an asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic person who might pass the virus on to you before your vaccine has a chance to kick in. Which is why the handwash-mask-distance lifestyle continues, even after vaccination.

No one knows

Three months later, all bets are off, because the length of immunity is anybody’s guess. It is really too early to tell, but like everything else in life, the effort to get rid of this virus is multifactorial. A lot of different influences are in play. Sometimes, it doesn’t work out.

As one example, alarming news came out earlier this month: “4 people in Oregon test positive for coronavirus after receiving both doses of vaccine.” They were, by definition, “fully vaccinated.” And yet, they caught it anyway:

Oregon is among the first states nationwide to report “breakthrough cases” — people who test positive for coronavirus at least 14 days after receiving their second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine… The four people had mild or no symptoms. Officials say that studies show that the vaccine may help reduce the severity of the illness.

This is, basically, what it means to have a 95% effectiveness rate. It means that 5% of the people still might catch it. The vaccine is not guaranteed to stop anyone from contracting the virus. What it can do is make your case a lot less serious, and probably keep you from dying.

Really, no matter what a person’s vaccination status is, it makes sense, in the interest of sheer self-preservation, to stick with the routine. At the same time, while taking care of ourselves, we are also extending this care to others. But the way is not always clear. Journalist and former biologist Yasmin Tayag writes,

The changes to the CDC’s guidance imply that a person who has been fully vaccinated is not at risk of becoming infected with Covid-19 after coming into contact with someone who has tested positive.

“Imply” is the operative word there. Even with brilliant science trying its hardest, it might be best to not take anything for granted. To put it another way, the January/ February edition of the AARP Bulletin (print) says,

[T]he vaccine itself doesn’t prevent you from contracting the virus; it simply prepares your body to mount a vigorous defense so that if you do become infected, the resulting illness is far less likely to be life-threatening.

To make the point once again, apparently, the vaccine itself doesn’t prevent a person from spreading the virus. If you are vaccinated, there are strong indications that you can still transmit the disease to others. It is still possible to endanger co-workers, seniors and other vulnerable populations, and children. Hopefully, we will try very hard not to.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “4 people in Oregon test positive for coronavirus after receiving both doses of vaccine,” KTLA.com, 02/12/21
Source: “CDC Issues Welcome Guidance on Quarantining for Vaccinated People,” Medium.com, 02/11/21
Image by Leah Iacobucci/Public Domain

Coronavirus Chronicles — Vaccinated, Now What?

Pat Hartman February 19, 2021 No Comments

A Zen proverb says, “Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.”

The updated version is, “Before vaccination: wash hands, wear a mask, maintain distance. After vaccination: wash hands, wear a mask, maintain distance.”

Sadly, being vaccinated does not lead to a carefree wonderland of giving up these practices. We continue to observe them for the sake of the loved ones we want to spend time with, and yes, even for strangers. But here is the best part. To carry on with these beneficial customs is also in our own self-interest.

Let’s talk about ourselves first! If we are lucky enough to be vaccinated, the first shot does not confer instant immunity. It takes a week or more for antibodies to even gain a foothold. They do not spring into full-blown potency. And of course, if the vaccine is the two-shot kind, recipients need to stick with the program the whole time in between the first and second — at the very absolute minimum. The vaccine can’t do it all. Success requires our active participation.

Incidentally, Johns Hopkins Medicine, in a piece about vaccine myths and facts, asserts that people who have already been sick with the virus might as well go ahead and be vaccinated regardless, because “Some scientists believe the vaccine offers better protection for coronavirus than natural infection.” It goes on,

There is not enough information currently available to say if or for how long people are protected from getting COVID-19 after they have had it (natural immunity). Early evidence suggests natural immunity from COVID-19 may not last very long…

Vaccinated and exposed

The best evidence on hand indicates that when the virus is transmitted from one person to another, it can take as long as two weeks to become detectable by lab testing. This is especially problematic if the new person does not develop observable symptoms. Quarantine is the best-known method of keeping other people safe, especially when testing is not always available or reliable, which happens.

The previous Centers for Disease Control guidelines said, “All people who come into contact with someone who has Covid-19 should quarantine for 14 days.” (Except, if the person had the virus and recovered, within a certain time frame, they could proceed as if they had not experienced live contact. ) Now, the new guidelines provide another exception. The “fully vaccinated,” if exposed to an infected person, do not need to sequester themselves for two weeks.

Next: What does it mean to be fully vaccinated? And can kids be it?

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “COVID-19 Vaccines: Myth Versus Fact,” HopkinsMedicine.org, undated
Source: “CDC Issues Welcome Guidance on Quarantining for Vaccinated People,” Medium.com, 02/11/21
Image by Brooke Allen/CC BY 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — The World Needs More Whistleblowers

Pat Hartman February 18, 2021 No Comments

Obesity increases the risk of coronavirus, and coronavirus increases the risk of obesity, and nobody wants their kids to suffer from either. Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding. who has other degrees although he is not an M.D., tracks the rates of transmission among children and young people. Through his social media presence, the former Harvard University researcher and faculty member reports on the progress of the virus in all its permutations. Currently, he is a Senior Fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, described as a non-profit think-tank.

In the very recent past, Dr. Feigl-Ding has reported that Israeli officials are alarmed by the “sharp rise” in COVID-19 cases among children and teens. Sharon Alroy-Preis, who is head of Public Health Services, has announced that kids now account for about 40% of new cases — and mostly these children are between six and nine years old. Last week the country opened its first pediatric coronavirus Intensive Care Unit.

According to The Jerusalem Post, more than 50,000 children and teens have been diagnosed with coronavirus since the start of the month, many more than Israel saw in any month during the first or second waves. Authorities suggest this is due to the ravenously contagious British variant of the disease. To complicate matters, children cannot be vaccinated because the requisite drug trials were not carried out with their age group. Even among the teachers, only about one-third of them have been vaccinated so far, and the debate over reopening schools is quite heated.

Italy, Britain in trouble too

Dr. Feigl-Ding also discusses Corzano, Italy, where 10% of the residents test positive for the virus’s #B117 variant. He quotes the town’s mayor as saying,

60% of cases are kids from kindergarten and primary school, other 40% are their parents.

The village’s schools are of course now closed. Transmission is particularly sneaky when children are infected and contagious but have not yet developed symptoms, and it seems an awful lot of them never get really noticeable symptoms, but can still pass along the virus. Unfortunately, an asymptomatic person can get that job done just as well as a very sick one. The only good news is that most of the child victims do not become gravely ill, so at least the hospitals might catch a break.

The #B117 strain is quite successful in the United Kingdom, too, where daycare centers have been open, and in-person school has been struggling along with 20% attendance. The five to nine-years-olds are getting hammered. Infection rates for newborns to four-year-olds are rising too. It is suspected that the statistics are probably even worse than they appear because children are diagnosed on the basis of symptoms like fever and cough, and not by the actual laboratory tests.

Dr. Feigl-Ding has been criticized by some journalists and infectious disease experts who describe his work with terms like misleading, lacking in nuance, alarmist, fear-mongering, and intentionally provocative. Many people in positions of authority seem to believe that spreading panic is the worst-case scenario. Others feel that, if ever there was a time for appropriate, suitable, warranted panic, this seems to be that moment. The subject of all controversy himself says,

The world needs more whistleblowers.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Spike in kids with COVID-19 means Israel unlikely to open schools, JPost.com, 01/26/21
Source: “Covid’s Cassandra: The Swift, Complicated Rise of Eric Feigl-Ding,” Undark.org, 11/25/20
Image by Ron Reiring/CC BY-SA 2.0

The Bus Conductors’ Secret

Pat Hartman February 17, 2021 No Comments

All this talk about organized youth sports has been exhilarating, but as a specific issue, it really only affects a very small percentage of children and youth. What seems to be hurting a lot of people is their lack of anywhere near enough movement in general. To fill that need, almost anything counts. Walking against gravity counts. Remember the excellent results obtained by Alasdair Wilkins with his uphill treadmill?

Way back in 1953, before a lot of us were even born, epidemiologist Dr. Jerry Morris felt the itch of curiosity. He was looking at the difference between two kinds of employees who shared identical work conditions. They both inhaled automobile exhaust all day, and dealt with noise and passenger complaints and strange germs and weather, and were in the same traffic accidents.

So, why did the bus drivers get twice as much heart disease as the bus conductors? Because the drivers sat, while the conductors constantly went up and down in different parts of the bus. The researcher calculated that the average conductor climbed 500 steps per shift.

Journalist and author Peter Walker recently commented for The Guardian,

It’s no coincidence that Morris’s discovery was about movement at work. The current inactivity crisis hasn’t come about because of a sudden outbreak of laziness; it’s because of the decline in “incidental activity” — movement as part of your everyday life, from manual work to chores, or travel on foot or bike.

Walker is no fan of the built environment, which overwhelmingly preferences vehicles over pedestrians. The psychological environment is not so great either. People are blamed and shamed for not walking or stair-climbing their way to health, when…

[…] as with the parallel, but separate, crisis of obesity — it cannot be seen outside the context of the lived-in environment.

Frequent moderate-to-brisk exercise used to be intrinsic to almost everyone’s life, regardless of sex or class. Workers burned calories at their jobs, while aristocrats played polo and other vigorous sports. Now, Walker says, exercise “has to take place in ‘free time,’ carved out from our busy lives.”

Someone might object, “But surely during this pandemic, with so many people unemployed, time is not of the essence!” That is true for people who have space and minimal responsibilities, along with other amenities. Still, some live in cramped conditions with no way to get some vigorous motion under their belt, indoors or out. Multiple factors are in play.

There is always a dissenting voice

Back in Dr. Morris’s day and since, his bus employee theory has been questioned. One critic proposed that probably fitter candidates tended to apply for the conductor positions in the first place. A counter-argument is, sure, but there might be a reason why those individuals were more fit on application day — because they routinely did things like climb the stairs rather than take the elevator.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “‘Inactivity is an ongoing pandemic’: the life-saving impact of moving your body,” TheGuardian.com, 02/06/21
Image by Martin Arrand//Public Domain

Coronavirus Chronicles — Mom, When Can We Go Out to Eat?

Pat Hartman February 16, 2021 No Comments

Last fall, indoor dining was halted in Michigan. The state Restaurant and Lodging Association sued the director of Health and Human Services, claiming that to target the industry in this way was unconstitutional. But the judge said people have to remove their protective face coverings to eat, so restaurant interiors should not be open to customers.

In Detroit, the married owners of a pizza parlor both work there (with one other employee) so that is where their young children hang out during the day, doing virtual school. Fortunately, many customers were already used to thinking of pizza as a takeout meal, so the business has been sustainable since November’s indoor closing. The governor announced February 1 as reopening day, but these parents are not comfortable with the risk and plan to continue with takeout only.

Adaptability, the #1 survival skill

The indoor restaurant of a boutique brewery is not reopening yet, either, out of consideration for the employee’s health, and also because an old friend of the owner, who had a similar place in another city, died of the virus. When the general vaccination rate goes up, the management will reconsider.

Still, craft beer connoisseurs are different from pizza enthusiasts. They want more than a curbside pickup. They want to hang out and socialize. So the establishment added some heated outdoor seating. It gets expensive, but these days, entrepreneurs consider themselves lucky to find any solution that allows staying in business.

At Detroit’s Yum Village, Chef Godwin Ihentuge handled the November ruling with explosive creativity, initiating a number of new products and services including African drumming classes, a podcast, and carry-out Afro-Caribbean “TV dinners” that have proved to be incredibly popular.

Caution advised

Writer Caroline Chen interviewed 10 scientists about letting restaurants open, and their opinion was generally unfavorable, with some extreme reactions like “completely reckless” and “the worst is yet to come.” Both of those quoted comments are from Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Science and Security.

People are displaying an unwarranted amount of bravery, when the grounds for confidence may not be there at all, and might in fact be quicksand, sucking us into ever greater peril. There seems to be a belief that having been a COVID-19 victim gives immunity, which is by no means confirmed. Chen says,

[S]tudy after study has identified indoor spaces — particularly restaurants, where consistent masking is not possible — as some of the highest-risk locations for transmission to occur. Even with distanced tables, case studies have shown that droplets can travel long distances…

Making the situation much worse, the virus branches out into variants, which then mutate and become new variants, and science can’t keep up. The writer quotes Michael Osterholm, of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, who understands every risk and speaks in mixed but appropriate metaphors:

We are so good at pumping the brakes after we’ve wrapped the car around the tree. There’s still a lot of human wood out there for this coronavirus to burn.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Some Michigan restaurants are deciding not to reopen for indoor dining, even though it’s allowed,” MetroTimes.com, 02/05/21
Source: “Why Opening Restaurants Is Exactly What the Coronavirus Wants Us to Do,” ProPublica.org, 02/06/21
Image by Eden, Janine and Jim/CC BY 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — More About Sports, Schools, and COVID-19

Pat Hartman February 15, 2021 No Comments

As described in the previous post, some Michigan parents sued their state Department of Health and Human Services for continuing the ban on contact sports competitions in high schools. Immediately the National Federation of State High School Associations made a statement about “accumulating evidence that the majority of sports-related spread of the virus appears to occur from social contact, not during sports participation.”

The same claim has been made about virus transmission among college athletes. However, an argument could be made that most of that social contact is probably contingent upon the sporting events, and happens in bars, dorms, frat houses, and off-campus apartments. While high school students may not have such extensive freedom, they find plenty of places to get together to celebrate team wins and mourn losses.

In which case, canceling the sports altogether would be healthier for everyone. Without stretching too far, an argument could also be advanced that facilitating the spread of the virus in colleges threatens the brightest and (in the case of athletes) the most physically gifted members of the younger generation. A case could be made that it is a kind of reverse Darwinism, which kills off not the weakest, but some of the strongest and the fittest.

A couple of days later

Michigan’s governor announced that the Department of Health and Human Services had changed its mind. As of February 3, in-person practice and competitions in all sports would be permitted, nay, encouraged, to resume. According to officials, metrics are “trending in the right direction.” And it is unquestionable that exercise deprivation affects millions of children and youth very badly. Still, the plan could be called audacious, and not in a good way. Journalist Annah Johnson gave details:

The order states that participants must be masked at all times, but when it is not safe or possible for a participant to wear a mask, such as swimming competitions, they must follow specified protocols, before they can be involved in the practice or competition… Attendance will be limited to two spectators per athlete.

In Washington, D.C., when distanced and sanitized classrooms opened early this month, 49 students at Johnson Middle School had committed to coming in two days a week. But on the first day, only one student arrived on the premises. “By Friday,” says reporter Perry Stein, “nine did.” The principal had specifically reached out to over a hundred students perceived as “struggling,” but very few were interested.

The principal again contacted families, asking what was wrong. For one thing, the kids had missed their required routine immunizations, which seems to be a problem in many parts of the country as people are without money or transportation, and doctors are cautious about treating patients in person for other than emergency reasons. Stein goes on to say,

It was a scene that unfolded in schools across the city’s lower-income neighborhoods. They were operating under capacity with dismal attendance — a challenge exacerbated by bad weather and logistically complicated schedules necessary to accommodate the 9,500 students returning to classrooms and more than 40,000 students who remained home doing virtual learning.

As of last week, the city’s school system (52,000 students strong) could accommodate 15,000 students in a COVID-compliant manner — yet fewer than 10,000 returned. Already, five different elementary school classes have been sent home for 14-day quarantine because one classmate tested positive.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “NFHS revises guidance on risks for COVID-19 transmission during high school sports,” LATimes.com, 02/02/21
Source: “Contact Sports to Resume Feb. 8 Per New Epidemic Order,” TheCollegiateLive.com, 02/04/21
Source: “D.C. completes a week of in-person classes: Low attendance, frustrated teachers, confident principals and happy students,” WashingtonPost.com, 02/07/21
Image by Phil Roeder/CC BY 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — Sports, Schools, and COVID-19

Pat Hartman February 12, 2021 No Comments

Things are happening with young people, connected in one sense with the virus, and in another way, with the whole field of physical activity, including organized group exercise and, at the most active and impactful extreme, with team sports. This is by no means a comprehensive list of all recent news stories, but a random bouquet of items that happened to be noticed.

As long ago as last April, news was published of a Japanese study which found that the spread of COVID-19 was “18 times greater indoors than outdoors.” No one claimed this to be an exact ratio in all places and at all times, because obviously, a change in environment means a change in variables. But subsequent experience and further study have confirmed that it is much safer to be outdoors than inside walls.

School daze

In the problematic area of physical education and team competition, one difficulty is that “school sports” comprise several different programs. There are the fall sports, like football, cross-country, soccer, and tennis, that are played outside. “Season B” consists, but for the obvious exceptions of hockey and skiing, of indoor sports like basketball, swimming, and wrestling.

As we have seen, the Centers for Disease Control issued updated guidance for the benefit of youth sports administrators. Of course, any district with in-person school going on was already doing a lot. Colorado announced its rules in early January, including…

Athletes, coaches and officials in all sports will be required to complete daily symptom checks and be symptom-free before participating in any practices or competitions. No spectators will be allowed, basketball and hockey players will be required to wear masks or other facial coverings during competition, everyone will play fewer games and the opportunities for postseason competition will be reduced.

Other limits were imposed, too. For informal practice sessions, only a certain number of athletes would be allowed in a gym at once. If a team went on the road, there could only be 25 people on the bus. Journalist Kelly Lyell comprehensively reported on all the measures that were already being taken, according to previous CDC advice, to protect the participants in basketball, hockey, skiing, spirit, swimming and diving, wrestling, and more.

In Maryland, also in early January, the Baltimore County Public School system announced the cancellation of the winter sports season. Less than a month later, another state was in tumult because student athletes who looked forward to the start of the winter sports season on February 1 were disappointed by a Michigan Department of Health and Human Services order prohibiting competitions in contact sports at least until the 21 of the month.

The parents of five students filed a lawsuit against the Department. They say that a University of Wisconsin study released in October (years ago, in COVID time) found not much transmission of the disease through high school sports, and besides, college and professional athletes are not subject to the prohibition, so they thought it wasn’t fair.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Closed environments facilitate secondary transmission of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19),” medRxiv.com, April 2020
Source: “Colorado high school sports will look different this winter to fight COVID-19 spread,” Coloradoan.com, 01/10/21
Source: “Baltimore County cancels winter high school sports season amid surge in COVID-19 cases,” BaltimoreSun.com, 01/11/21
Source: “‘Let them play!’ High school athletes sue Michigan over contact sports ban,” BridgeMI.com, 02/02/21
Image by Phil Roeder/CC BY 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — Safety and Sports, Continued

Pat Hartman February 11, 2021 No Comments

The previous post mentioned the new Centers for Disease Control guidance for school sports administrators, which includes the types of cooperation they should look for from coaches, teachers, and parents:

Space players at least 6 feet apart on the field (e.g., during warmup, skill building activities, simulation drills, while explaining rules)…

In the old days, parochial schools held very sedate parties for teenagers, to teach social graces. If a couple slow-danced too close, an adult chaperone would step in to tap the boy’s shoulder and say, “Leave room between you for the Holy Ghost.” Now, the warning would be, “Leave enough space for two wheelchairs,” or the length of a medical exam table, or the distance from top to bottom of a shower curtain.

Once again, adult chaperones are needed to keep the kids away from each other. Parents are urged by the CDC to stick around at athletic practices and events, and remind their kids about the mask and distance rules. All staff, parents, and everyone else involved, must set the example, and forget about handshakes or (shudder) hugs.

And keep participants apart unless nearness is absolutely necessary to the sport. Before the official starting time, athletes are asked to wait in cars with the adult/s who brought them. When the event is over, no lingering or mingling. Parents are also asked to bring support materials:

Ensure adequate supplies to support healthy hygiene. Supplies include soap, water, hand sanitizer containing at least 60% alcohol, paper towels, tissues, disinfectant wipes, masks (as feasible), and no-touch trash cans.

The planet is a victim, too

The pandemic has affected the travel industrial complex in many ways. Toll roads are struggling. Traffic dropped a lot in March and April of last year, and air pollution went down for a while. But people still have to go places, or at least, we successfully convince ourselves that we have to. In Manhattan, traffic is said to have almost returned to pre-pandemic normal. In September, SmartBrief.com reported,

As state and local governments begin reopening, businesses and in-person activities have led to an increase in vehicle miles traveled in cities across the country. Today, “vehicle miles traveled (VMT) nationwide is almost back to where it was in March,” said Laura Schewel, CEO and co-founder of StreetLight Data.

Just so you know, both these excerpts are from an article described as sponsored content from IBM. It goes on:

Current trends show an increasing preference for the personal car. A rise in single-occupancy vehicle commuting could cause a massive influx in road traffic, causing huge congestion and delays going forward.

Of course, people want to be in their individual cars if possible. Subways and buses can be death traps. After years of training the public to lower poisonous emissions by carpooling, and building special highway lanes to reward high-occupancy vehicles, it is a shame that the authorities now have to cater to the pandemic, which tries to ruin everything. The CDC advice to everyone partaking in youth sports is,

Limit the use of carpools or van pools. When riding in an automobile to a sports event, encourage players to ride to the sports event with persons living in their same household.

Another thing parents should absolutely do is, notify the school if a child has one of the co-morbidities that make COVID-19 extra dangerous. Any adult with a connection to youth sports will find a plethora of helpful ideas, along with resources like coach checklists, posters, etc., at the CDC site.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Considerations for Youth Sports Administrators,” CDC.gov, 12/31/2020
Source: “Q&A: Coronavirus pandemic takes a toll on tolling industry,” SmartBrief.com, 09/04/20
Image by Paul Sableman/CC BY 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — Safety and Sports

Pat Hartman February 10, 2021 1 Comment

Every so often, a story is published that just sounds crazy. Somebody throws a birthday party for their cat, and subsequently, at least a dozen people test positive for COVID-19. In America, pretty close to half the K-12 students are in virtual-only schooling. Minnesota hospitals are taking in patients from four adjacent states. Every day brings some new wrinkle to which we must then adjust.

How about this one? In Los Angeles County, California, for the sake of air quality, normally only a certain number of cremations are allowed in any given time period. But the rule had to be abandoned. In hospitals, funeral homes and crematoria, the bodies of pandemic casualties tend to pile up. When the authorities run out of refrigerated trucks, those furnaces need to fire up.

A lot of belief systems still include the tenet that young people do not catch the virus. But 19-year-old Isaiah Mays (Evansville, ID) and 18-year-old community volunteer Wilber Portillo (Denver) died of COVID-19, to name just two recent casualties. Some young victims played sports, others did not.

In the drive to end childhood obesity, the pandemic is not helping one bit. For everyone’s sake, kids need to move around and burn off both physical and emotional energy. At the same time, virus-wise, most of the activities they do for exercise involve a hazardous amount of proximity to other people.

How to run school sports

If the reader can only spare two minutes, a video about best practices can fill in a lot of blanks.

The Centers for Disease Control kicked off February with the publication of voluminous information and advice for the administrators of youth sports. We summarize here a small sample of points not already mentioned. For example, coaches might need to make philosophical adaptations, and have the players work on individual skills, more than teamwork, for the time being. To directly quote from the massive and impressive paper,

Coaches may also put players into small groups (cohorts) that remain together and work through stations, rather than switching groups or mixing groups. Minimize equipment sharing, and clean and disinfect shared equipment between use by different people to reduce the risk of COVID-19 spread.

The CDC suggests that parents “or other household members” are obligated to hang around and make sure their kids observe distancing and keep their masks on; thus bringing more people into the contagion/exposure pools. At the same time, schools should “limit any nonessential visitors, spectators, volunteers, and activities involving external groups or organizations.” It is possible that determining who gets in and who does not, who may attend, and who must attend, could involve strenuous discussion and possibly even litigation.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Considerations for Youth Sports Administrators,” CDC.gov, 12/31/2020
Image by Jernej Furman/CC BY 2.0

Kids and Sports and COVID-19

Pat Hartman February 9, 2021 No Comments

The American Academy of Pediatrics published guidelines for keeping kids safe if they engage in sports, these days. It is mostly common sense that shouldn’t even need to be verbalized. Of course, wrestling is risky. The combatants exchange bodily fluids and exhale in one another’s faces. And sports with shared equipment, from dodgeball to basketball, are risky too.

Any indoor sport is risky, especially if it involves copious heavy breathing on the part of the athletes and/or a lot of cheering and yelling from the audience. If the ventilation is inadequate, the danger goes exponential. And the bringing together of teams from different geographical areas to mingle and exchange cooties, and then return to their homes, is a virus’s dream scenario.

Sports like bike riding and golf, where distance is maintained, are obviously much safer. Likewise, sports where equipment is not shared. When the threat is an airborne illness, the outdoors is manifestly the preferred venue.

Needful propaganda

What if children are impatient with or scornful of the rules? What do we tell them? People should stay six feet apart because experts with fancy equipment and specialized computer programs have figured out that it is safer than being closer.

And what about masks? They protect the child, yes, but mainly a mask protects other people. Of course, your child is too kind and considerate to ever want to make someone else sick. That goes without saying. But they need to understand that a person can carry around the virus, and give it to other people, without ever feeling sick — without ever even knowing that tiny hitchhikers were flying out of their nose and mouth, trying to reach other people and bring them down.

Sample sales pitch: “If you are sick and don’t know it, you could accidentally hurt somebody a lot. But if you wear a mask, you could save somebody’s life and be a hero.”

If the child’s sport requires gear around the face and/or head, incorporating a mask might be an extra challenge. They might need help to make everything work together.

Sample question: “Out here on the bike trail, I’m not going to talk to any strangers. Why do I have to wear a mask along with my helmet?”

Sample answer: “Because if, heaven forbid, something goes wrong and you’re on the ground injured, and a passerby or a medic comes to help, they’re breathing all over you, and if they have the virus, you could catch it. So, mask up please.”

Cases vary, and hopefully, everybody will do the best they can under the circumstances. For basic guidance, here is the official word from the World Health Organization:

While the WHO does not recommend wearing face masks during vigorous exercise, it should be worn when non-vigorous exercise is being performed and physical distancing is not possible.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “How can you help keep your kids safe while they play sports?,” SBM.org, undated
Image by Phil Roeder/CC BY 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — Got the Jab, What Next?

No one knows

Coronavirus Chronicles — Vaccinated, Now What?

Vaccinated and exposed

Coronavirus Chronicles — The World Needs More Whistleblowers

Italy, Britain in trouble too

The world needs more whistleblowers.

The Bus Conductors’ Secret

There is always a dissenting voice

Coronavirus Chronicles — Mom, When Can We Go Out to Eat?

Adaptability, the #1 survival skill

Caution advised

Coronavirus Chronicles — More About Sports, Schools, and COVID-19

A couple of days later

Coronavirus Chronicles — Sports, Schools, and COVID-19

School daze

Coronavirus Chronicles — Safety and Sports, Continued

The planet is a victim, too

Coronavirus Chronicles — Safety and Sports

How to run school sports

Kids and Sports and COVID-19

Needful propaganda

Profiles: Kids Struggling with Weight

The Book

About Dr. Robert A. Pretlow

Presentations

Food & Health Resources