Sorry, We Have to Cancel: The Great Hysteria Strikes Again
A football rivalry game gets flushed as Covid anxieties rear their ugly head
We are almost 18 months into the Great Hysteria and the Covid hamsters keep running along on their spinner wheels.
Round and round they go. When it stops, nobody knows.
Wednesday, it was announced that Carmel Catholic High School (Mundelein, IL) would cancel its Friday (August 27) football game vs. Libertyville High School. A once-cherished rivalry game between two historical Illinois Lake County powerhouses gets flushed, athletes/fans on both sides to miss out on a lifetime experience never to be replaced.
Here’s a brief timeline of how the game got cancelled:
Earlier this week, a few football players showed up to school not feeling well. A flu bug (or allergies) has been floating around apparently. The players were instructed by school staffers to see the school nurse, Kathryn Hunter.
One of the players, an underclassmen, ran a temperature over 100 degrees.
Ms. Hunter suggested he take a rapid COVID-19 test.
He did, and tested positive.
A few other players also agreed to rapid tests. They also tested positive.
By late Wednesday afternoon, with multiple players testing positive and resulting contract tracing wiping out more, Carmel Catholic announced it could not field enough players to play Friday night, and it cancelled the game.
Thursday morning, I called Carmel Athletic Director Nate Brill. I had a few questions beyond what the statement said.
He took my call and politely declined to answer any questions.
Here’s what I planned to ask him:
*why did positive cases and precautionary quarantines cause the game to be cancelled?
*does Carmel require COVID-19 testing for athletes?
*how do you define a positive case? A precautionary quarantine?
*what is the vaccination rate amongst players on the team?
*did the nurse get parental consent before giving a COVID-19 test to a student?
Brill said the statement is all the school would say on the matter.
Administrators will talk all day long about program culture and talk up their coaches and athletes. Almost always, I’m happy to listen. But when there’s a crack or the slightest obstacle getting in the way of achieving that ideal culture they morph into Governor Pritzker, unable to answer simple inquiries on a subject top of mind by members of all local communities the last Friday in August—football and Covid-related shutdowns.
I’m not a public relations specialist but the stiff upper lip isn’t going to work here.
Good reporters will find the information elsewhere.
So I called a few people close to the school I thought could shed more light on the situation.
(TKR will not publish names of sources in this article due the sensitive nature of the information.)
Here’s what I could piece together from those conversations and interactions:
Sometime late Tuesday, a message was sent out by Carmel Catholic to staffers informing them of the circumstance with the football team (I don’t know the identification of the employee who sent the message but the author is an administrator at the school).
Here is a portion of that message:
We are working through two Covid cases that we became aware of this afternoon. Detailed contact tracing is ongoing and we should have an email out to everyone impacted tonight.
As we work though these cases, we are finding that many of our students are vaccinated. We have no breakthrough cases yet and are hoping to see an increased trend of vaccination rates. That, and masks, will hopefully prevent the spread on campus
This is interesting and provides insight on how much information school administrators do or don’t know.
Let’s break down a few specific comments from the message:
“As we work though these cases, we are finding that many of our students are vaccinated.”
This implies the school does not know the percentage of students that are vaccinated. Contact tracing and quarantine guidelines for schools by Illinois Department of Public Health are much different for the vaccinated and unvaccinated. It makes sense that vaccination status would be useful information to know for school officials in order to determine how to proceed with quarantine protocols.
“We have no breakthrough cases yet and are hoping to see an increased trend of vaccination rates.”
An obvious question here is this: why is the administrator referring to ‘breakthrough cases?’ The tracking of that data is wildly inaccurate and in Illinois, the state only logs infections of vaccinated people involving hospitalization or death. The only way a school would know about breakthrough infections amongst students is through contact tracing, learning whom is vaccinated and then tests positive. Is the school keeping their own data on this? If so, for what purpose? I’d have questions if I were a student or parent about the school’s interest in ‘breakthrough’ cases.
“That, and masks, will hopefully prevent the spread on campus.”
Masks are not proven to prevent the spread of Covid and vaccines, while minimizing severe illness from Covid, clearly do not work at preventing the rate of infection initially promised by the Biden Administration and his chief health propagandist, Dr. Fauci.
But this Carmel administrator, in a leadership position, appears to believe in masking and the vaccine to keep the students and faculty out of harm’s way.
(I don’t know if the administrator is aware of the mortality rate of Covid and how students are more in danger driving to school or suicide than of the virus. I wonder if the admin sent a similar alarmist message to staffers warning about those dangers?
I did learn the Covid cases at Carmel Catholic were mostly isolated to members of the football team.
One of the sources I spoke with said the number of varsity players on the roster is in the high 30’s-to-low 40’s. The total number of players in the program is around 60-70.
Of the varsity players, I was told 10 or less are vaccinated.
10 or less.
When asked to explain, or more appropriately, speculate, why so few are vaccinated, this is what the source said:
“Everyone has their own opinion about the vaccine. There’s not enough research on the long term effects.”
This is a common reason for vaccine hesitancy. Health care workers in droves are not getting vaccinated. Young and older citizens don’t like being told what to do, preferring to make up their own minds rather than be coerced by autocratic messaging, and now across the country, with mandates.
But after the circumstances of this week, the source, a student at Carmel Catholic, is re-thinking initial aversion to getting the jab:
“I know a lot of (us) are going to consider getting the vaccine so we don’t have to get quarantined and contact traced.”
The football team resumed practice Thursday with a limited roster. The status of the Corsairs next game, scheduled for Sept. 3 at Lake Forest, is unknown.
Did the Carmel Catholic make the right call in cancelling the game?
Based on the Covid Hysteria climate we are in, the school acted like willing participants in the frenzy. Abundance of caution remains the preferred default moniker of education officials.
But there is some personal accountability to be noted here.
Why did the infected student show up to school? Even with the mildest of symptoms, stay home. Then it should be up to the parent to determine if testing is warranted. By showing up to school, the family gave up the right to choose.
Once the student entered school property, they proxied bodily control right into the hands of school officials.
Stuffy nose, light-headed…we know what happens next. Step right up. Your Rapid Test Table is ready.
Thursday’s indoor mask mandate, courtesy of the Dark Lord of Lockdowns, should be yet another warning sign to Illinoisans.
We are losing ground in the fight for personal freedoms. Orthodoxy grounded in anecdotes, not data, has become our country’s new Battle Hymn Of The Republic.
As minor as one high football game may seem, when stripped away, it deflates the sense of worth and purpose for all involved.
And for what? Health and safety? Of whom?
Eighteen months into the Great Hysteria, we are healthy. We are safe.
Trust our own resolve, resourcefulness and rational understanding that Covid is here to stay. We press on and things will be just fine.
That’s all we can count on.
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