Want Sports to Come Fully Back? Stop Testing Healthy Kids
Gov. Pritzker and absurd public health guidelines continue to obstruct #ReturnToPlay.
(Photo Credit: Chicago Sun-Times)
A few minutes after her field hockey team lost to New Trier Monday night, Lake Forest High School coach Catherine Catanzaro was tasked with another responsibility.
Also the school’s lacrosse coach, practice for the lacrosse team was scheduled to begin right after the conclusion of the field hockey game.
Catanzaro had to clear the field.
She walked towards the field’s entrance gate where field hockey players had placed their gear prior to the game. On the other side of the fence, a group of parents gathered to greet their daughters coming off the field.
“Everyone off the field!” Catanzaro said, waving her arms back and forth. “I don’t want to have to contact trace you!”
It was one of those “only in 2021” type moments.
Catanzaro’s plea took on a tone of desperation, not of a coach attempting to start her next team’s practice but that of a coach trying to save the season of the other team she leads.
Because what she said about ‘contact trace’ is real. And its ruining the #ReturnToPlay momentum in Illinois. That and the out of control amount of COVID-19 testing.
Monday, the Illinois High School Association held its monthly board of directors meeting.
The news from the meeting included a positive development confirming state tournament finals for spring sports like baseball, softball, track and field and lacrosse. A year ago, all of those sports were wiped out. All athletes in those sports will play their seasons knowing they have a shot to compete for a state championship. That is super cool.
(Not so lucky are sports labeled ‘moderate or high’ risk like boys volleyball, boys lacrosse or wrestling. Because of the risk classification, they will not be allowed to compete in a state series.)
In the IHSA press release Monday, and in the corresponding adjustment made in the Illinois Department of Public Health’s “Sports Safety Guidance” document, is where things go astray, the long arm of Springfield infecting all good will.
According to the document, “all individuals that come into contact with participants, coaches, trainers and other individuals should be tested for COVID-19 prior to competition and no less than twice per week if playing a higher-risk sport.”
The document goes on to list more “minimum guidelines” under the “Health Monitoring” category. And several involve testing procedures for higher-risk sports (according to the IDPH are basketball, football, hockey, wrestling, boys lacrosse, rugby, boxing and martial arts).
I won’t bore readers of this newsletter by re-printing all of the language here. If interested, the document is available online.
A one-line summation—the IDPH wants all higher-risk sport athletes to be tested basically around the clock. Before competition and after competition. The document recommends athletes should be tested “no less than twice per week” but then states “participants should receive a negative test for COVID-19 prior to competition within 72 hours of play if receiving a PCR test or within 24 hours of play if receiving an antigen test.
Huh? The health monitoring portion of this document reads like a COVID-19 testing white paper. The ghostwriter may as well have been the content marketing director at Abbott. IDPH wants schools to now become testing labs and health care providers. What about education? Where does that fall in level of importance?
Apparently after PCR’s and POC’s.
It’s obvious what Pritzker is doing here.
It’s not a coincidence the sports updates happened on the day the state expanded availability for the COVID-19 vaccine. Everyone over the age of 16 is currently eligible for dosing.
In the youth sports document, there is a provision erasing all testing requirements for those “fully vaccinated from COVID-19: i.e., two weeks after the second dose in a two-dose series (e.g. Pfizer or Moderna) or two weeks after a single-dose vaccine (e.g. Johnson & Johnson.”
I have no objection to the advocacy of the vaccine. I will get vaccinated as soon as I can get an appointment (not easy right now). I plan on attending large gatherings this summer and if getting vaccinated allows me admission to said large gatherings, I will do so.
But what is written in the “Sports Safety Guidance” document put out by IDPH is troubling. Because if school’s adopt the guidelines as written, and many already are this spring, we are destined for more cancellations and another absurdity in the current climate of public health, more quarantines.
I wrote about the LFHS field hockey team last week. About their three shutdowns in six months due to positive tests and those results triggering a 14-day quarantine for those exposed. The 14 days is an IDPH protocol but adopted by the Lake County Department of Public Health.
The Scouts field hockey team was able to get back on the field last week after LCHD revised its initial 14-day ruling. It required a significant amount of effort from all involved—school athletic administrators and Catanzaro.
Here is a portion of an interview I did with Catanzaro about the Covid case and proceeding investigation by LCHD:
I got a call from me Health Department Wednesday afternoon for my contribution to the quarantining situations. They started reaching out to parents. Wednesday afternoon, Wednesday evening. I got a call just asking me more questions and gave the information to the lady we worked with. It’s hard as a coach because you are remembering something that happened four days ago and what you remember in your mind and what ‘yeah, what might have taken 30 seconds’ in your brain and really you’re just remembering snippets not actual gameplay. ‘Oh, yeah I'm by the goal and they were all there’ and (the LCHD case worker) she said, ‘well if you guys had film we could really do a lot better job of contact tracing’ and I’m like, ‘I do have film.’
So I'm like, ‘do you want a roster?’ She said ‘yes.’ I said, ‘do you want me to break (film) down?’ You tell me to break it down, I'll get it broken down the best I can and I'll submit you all the data from that page. So that's what we did. We broke it down and two kids contact by the second every time they were within each other (six feet) for a certain amount of time. I submitted that to the health department.
All of the data requested and collected by LCHD served one purpose—for contact tracing.
Was an athlete within close contact of the infected person for a long enough time to trigger a 14-day quarantine?
LCHD investigated all of the information compiled by LFHS, adjusted it’s ruling and cleared the majority of players to return to the field. Monday night, they were able to play rival New Trier in a de facto state title game (won by the Trevians 2-0). But for the players cleared, it came at a cost—they had to get tested (of course). LFHS provided drive by surveillance testing for athletes cleared by LCHD and there will be more testing before the season concludes Saturday.
Although Scouts players will have finality to their high school careers, the whole exercise will have lingering hard feelings.
There were a handful of players not cleared for the New Trier game and remained in quarantine while the game was played.
Catanzaro said:
Obviously parents were very upset because their kids might not have been cleared and they believe they didn't have contact. But again it's just hard to justify without the film and once I was able to look at the film I submitted what I believe to be the contact tracing. I also submitted the film to the health department and they went ahead and evaluated all the additional information including all the negative tests from on Thursday morning
Based on District 115 school board meeting documents, LFHS will spend nearly half a million dollars on surveillance testing by the end of May. They are a school district with resources and they have chosen to invest those resources in Covid testing.
But does the circumstance around the field hockey case sound sustainable? If it happens to another sport or multiple sports, are we talking about a rinse and repeat situation?
I don’t think so.
Over this past weekend, a player on the Highland Park High School football team tested positive for COVID-19. The result triggered LCHD to install a 14-day quarantine for all close contact athletes.
The ruling wipes out the remainder of the Giants season as spring football ends April 24.
As we learned from the LFHS field hockey case and Vernon Hills football earlier in the season, 14 days are not final. LCHD investigates and revises.
Dr. Sana Ahmed, epidemiologist with LCHD said the following to The Kerr Report in response to an email inquiring about the movableness of the 14-day quarantine recommendation:
Every case is different and thus every investigation is different. We have been seeing increased incidence of cases in our young adult population with sports teams being the main drivers.
Cooperation of students, parents, and school staff in interviews, veracity of information provided, prevention strategies implemented by the school athletics team to limit transmission, and reduction of high-risk behavior among students (i.e., gatherings and travel) are important factors considered when conducting a COVID-19 investigation. If infected persons or close contacts are linked to outbreaks, or there are high-risk behaviors leading to multiple exposures placing person(s) at risk for COVID-19, or unable to obtain accurate information from infected persons or close contacts, LCHD may continue to recommend a 14-day quarantine for the entire sports team to limit spread
Sources tell The Kerr Report athletic officials and Giants coaches are working with LCHD in providing data in hopes the investigation will lead to an adjusted quarantine timeframe.
A reduction to 10 days (recommended by the CDC) is the only reasonable conclusion LCHD can come to here. Let them finish their season on the field, not have the lasting memory of Giants senior football players be that of Covid tests, quarantines and school administrators boasting of how their shutdown efforts “kept everyone safe and saved lives.”
What utter nonsense.
But we are headed for more absurdity if schools don’t take a stand against Pritzker.
How do they do that?
(Photo Credit: Eater Chicago)
Reject testing recommendations. This is where schools have a choice. They are required to obey public health protocols. But testing? That’s an opt in, opt out proposition.
Time to opt out.
Because the more tests, the most positive results, the more quarantines. The more coaches are asked to be contact tracing researchers than mentors to children. The more school officials are given decision-making responsibilities they are not capable of handling.
(Lawsuits are an option for parents. There is pending litigation in Michigan over testing/quarantine rules.)
More and more people are getting vaccinated. A recent CDC study projects 500 million doses will be administered by July 1. Over 31 million people have already gotten COVID-19. Kids are not at risk. We are headed towards herd immunity.
Do not give Pritzker and his public health overlords more power than they already have.
Handing them a positive test result is like helping the executioner carve the guillotine.
How do we put an end to unnecessary and harmful quarantines?
Stop testing healthy kids.