Sports and the Pandemic? When do we finally open this up?

Interesting stats in MA - 98.3% of deaths from covid had an underlying issue.

There are no reported deaths in MA for ages 0-19 from covid.
https://www.mass.gov/doc/covid-19-dashboard-june-9-2020/download

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), among nearly 150,000 cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. between Feb. 12 and April 2, only about 2,500, or 1.7%, were in children.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-in-babies-and-children/art-20484405#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20US%20Centers,have%20had%20large%20outbreaks.

She is more likely to get hurt than to catch covid playing basketball.

it does make you wonder about the percentage of teens that are asymptomatic...

Sure wish we had a national leadership in this thing.

Could be quite a bit - depending on those that are allowed to run wild or even young adults in their 20s - those I worry about even more as in a sense they are no longer under their parents control.

My teen daughter is friends with this one girl that has two younger and two older siblings. Her parents are a bit more "free" with their kids. Fortunately this daughter is the more sensible of their children.

Here and there during this pandemic, this friend along with some other friends will bike over and they will sit in our front yard - distance wise and hang as teens do. My daughter has also done the opposite. I told her she is to make sure she stays a distance away of this girl and also when she goes over there - she does not go in the house. It is this girl's older siblings that are in their young 20s I worry about. My daughter confirmed - yep they go out with their friends all the time.

I have control over this because my daughter has a reason to be careful and it all stems from playing basketball. I let her know if she gets covid - she is out of basketball for a minimum of 2 weeks. Yeah that is enough incentive for her to be careful as she has been yearning to play for months.

I have read about 90 year olds who got through a Covid19 infection, but I have also read about middle-aged people who got permanent lung-scarring, blood clots, etc.

I have read that Covid19, while less widespread overall than the seasonal flu, is more contagious and more deadly than the flu, so I assume it is a more severe infection.

I, personally, don't want to be hospitalized with pneumonia, nor would I wish it on any of my family members; so why would I wish it for anyone else in the world either?

To do what? Arrest people for not staying home? We have a philosophy of liberty, so people have to make the right choices for themselves and their families.

At what point does a pandemic infection warrant trumping individual liberty?

Just can't control yourself, can you?

At least she's not cj/oralloy. Not quite.

Have to disagree. Oralloy mostly sticks to political threads, and I've have never seen him be such a spoilsport in a thread like this.

I play in an adult tennis league. It's a national program with a league season and championships at the state, regional and national level. We're starting back up. The normal spring season was put on hold, but come the middle of June matches are being rescheduled for an abbreviated season, endorsed by the USTA and the state tennis association. NC has also cleared high school sports to start summer training sessions next week.

Your not the old geezer I am. Watching tennis makes me ache and wheeze. I'd still play volleyball if they had a glassbone league.

Funny in MA youth sports can practice but not anyone over 18. And it must be supervised practices (I guess that leaves out high school captain practices).

Also different is that our high schools can not practice unless it is within so much time before they start playing. MIAA rules. They can have captain's practices earlier which means there are no high school coaches involved. But according to MA - youth sports in this phase need to be supervised.

Also - they cannot have more than 10 kids within so much distance and no contact. So they will likely break the team in half (I think there might be 11 or 12 on the team - not sure) and half do drills on one end of the court and the other half on the other end.

I think the rules are fair - I have no issue with them and a good way to get them started and together. Things like they need their own balls, their own water, sanitizer, etc. Considering the kids are the worry on this - what they have put in place seems reasonable.

I don't get the adult side though - maybe they cannot trust the adults to practice within the guidelines.

We've got a league for you! Over 60's, over 70's, tennis is a lifetime sport! When I was much younger and in the Navy, sometimes I would be off in the morning and would go to the local park to play "geezer ball". All these retired guys would meet every morning to play and welcomed any young pup who wandered in. One day they paired me up with this guy named Mike. Mike was in his seventies and apologized before we started playing. "I don't move very fast." The other guys were talking smack so I told Mike "you hit the ones that come to you, I'll run." Our opponents gave up running me (the guy in his 20's with a tennis star wife who ran him around every night) and started to "pick" on Mike. Big mistake because Mike was AWESOME! Every ball he touched was a winner. We won 6-0. My mother-in-law has a group of octogenarians she plays with a couple of times a week. You are never too old.

Its good they make the kids responsible, they need to be made part of the solution.

We're all playing by ear, there's no leadership being shown from the top.

I run OK, its the stopping part. It ends up face on the pavement or into a wall or fence. If I'm lucky its the surprised embrace of woman in a mixed league. Or a dude. I turn it into a bro-hug - with some back slapping and a high five.

Better I play volleyball - more opportunities for a surprised embrace.

And invitations to drum circles.

So you're implying that I should shut up about Covid19?

I hope you realize that Covid19 is still circulating and there is no reason it won't circulate through people playing sports together.

I have read many of the police and military personnel attending the demonstrations have tested positive for COVID19, so it is definitely spreading among the crowds.

Whose interest is it in to shut up about Covid19 besides the ego that wants to pretend it doesn't exist in order to justify re-opening economies, doing sports and other group activities, etc.?

When desire conflicts with what's good for you, you need to hear about the risk you're taking by following your desire, in this case Covid19.

That was not your intent, and you darn well know it.

Every individual making a bad choice is leading the nation and the world astray.

Liberty = a responsibility for every individual to choose their own actions as if they were the king of the world.

If you are being less than the best role model you can be for all of humanity, you are shirking the responsibility of liberty.

Since none of us are perfect, we are all shirking liberty in some ways; but we should not think that we are just sheep/minions waiting for a shepherd to lead us. God is our shepherd and He leads us with Holy Spirit, but that means we have to go through our own process of ascertaining what good/higher authority requires of us.

When we look around for guidance from other people, including the president, it is for input/advice/inspiration in a decision-making process that is ultimately our own. Remember in the Nuremburg trials where nazis said they were "just following orders" from the fuhrer? That's what we're not supposed to do; i.e. mindlessly follow orders/leadership without questioning it. We have to realize that we are ultimately responsible for our decisions, not the president, king, fuhrer, etc.

What do you think my intent was, then?

Each man the general of his own army is not a good thing in a pandemic.

We need to deal with the system we have whether we like it or not. We can't afford the luxury of what ifs until we nail down the the what is. In this system, like it or not we use a top down leadership to form policy to implement our will.

We have no leadership on this pandemic. Arguing anarchy is not productive right now. Its counterproductive, even to syndicalists like myself.