New Guidelines For The Team ~ What will your team do? What to expect.

[_MIA_]

Education is more important than softball, and schools are also a key component of our country’s economy. Schools are the number one daycare provider in America for working parents. Once we have started back to school, there are fewer reasons to not allow youth sports. That is why I have believed since the lockdowns began that startup of school and youth sports would likely be linked. We played softball continually from Feb 2019 to March 2020 so this break is not completely unwelcome.

Was this in response to something I actually said or could it have been posted without quoting me....

 

[Chris8]

I am not sure anyone argued against risk mitigation. Of course there should and will be new guidelines everyone must follow, in every aspect of our lives.

I think where some disagree is to the extent of those guidelines. To me a spotter at practice monitoring face touching is a bit much. That person could be better served cleaning/disinfecting equipment.

To the point of a child carrying something they picked up at practice back to a friend of a friend that knows someone who is at risk, well I am not sure on that one. You need to evaluate your own situation and decide accordingly. Life is still life, you never know where or when. Risk mitigation yes, fear of every situation no. I know your point is those who do not follow guidelines but how can you control every families decisions. You just have to make the decisions you feel are best for your family. If that means your daughter doesn’t play or play on a certain team because you don’t feel their risk mitigation is not sufficient, then that is your decision.

And that's the thing. You can have all the mitigation you want at the field. but you also can't control sally who had 3 sleep overs in the last week and comes to practice.

Do we ban children who's parents work in healthcare because they might have contracted Covid at work and given it to their DD and she brings it to practice? How far do you or are you willing to take this?

We're in a race between safetyism and facts.

The player sliding into home with the catcher making a tag and umpire right there....not gonna be the case where the virus is transferred.

On field play, even the dugouts are not going to be the likely transfer locations. Hanging out under tents, sitting next to someone in the bleachers for 1.5 hours those are more likely.

Driving in you car you will not "Catch" the virus, yet we see drivers everywhere with masks on. Walking past someone on the sidewqlk you won't "catch" the virus but we see people with masks on outdoors jumping 6-10 feet away to not get "to close".

Much of what is being implemented seems to be about optics not true disease spread mitigation. Fear has to be replaced with rationale reasonable common sense and then get back to life.

Ultimately you have to make the best decision for your family. That's your responsibility and right. But if you go to the fields you have to accept the choices that others make as well. If you can't accept the personal decisions others make then you shouldn't go to the fields. But that also probably would apply going to the grocery store too...or anywhere in public. (herman1202 -not a comment towards you adding to your post)

 

[Chris8]

What mitigation activities would you need to see to resume play?

Hand sanitizer in every dugout?
5 porta pottys instead of 4?
mask required for all people in the park, including coaches and players?
masks required for all spectators?
a face touching "spotter"?

At what point are dealing with optics vs something that truly mitigates risk. And the key there is RISK. Risk is everywhere. You're presumed to take risk when you go out the door in the morning. We are not going to git rid of all risk.

The question at hand, and it's individually determined, what level of risk is acceptable to me and my family.

We may see team/families with similar levels of acceptable risk at ball fields and others choosing to to resume play yet.

This may reduce tournament size or eliminate tournaments all together.

I'm already seeing teams forming "leagues" or setting up DH's/friendlies when play resumes Presumably those folks are on board and have accepted a similar level of risk.

 

[julray]

The point of social distancing was never -- NEVER -- to try to prevent any/everyone from getting infected. That's a fool's errand. The disease is in cats, which means it's in squirrels and rats. it's not going away, and we simply can't prevent people from coming in contact with it. The point was to prevent the hospital system from getting overrun with too many cases at once. When we -- us, politicians, celebrities, everyone -- was thinking rationally abut this, that was a good plan. it's morphed into this general idea of trying to stop an invisible, sometimes airborne disease from ever touching anyone.

But the idea that we can prevent a microscopic organism that is already in the ecosystem from spreading is ludicrous. It's scientifically impossible. If the concern is going to be "because someone might catch it", then we really do need to call it quits for the society we know and figure out what we do next.

Shutting down softball won't stop it. Keeping schools closed won't stop it. Lines to get into the grocery store wont' stop it. If you don't get it this summer, you'll likely get it in the fall. And if not in the fall, then in the winter or maybe next spring. It's going to take a LONG time to develop a vaccine or an anti-viral, and nobody wants to be the first batch of those.

So if your idea is that we should wait until the danger passes, the danger is not passing. I'm a sailor -- when bad weather is coming at seas, you shorten your sails, you get ready to heave to. But you eventually have to ride out the storm. We keep thinking that if we wait long enough or wear masks or stay away from each other the virus will just go away.

It won't. We need to stop thinking it will.

Mitigation is necessary because the same risk of overrunning the healthcare system still exists. Society will not get back to normal until a vaccine is developed, might as well for people to get use to it. If a sailor has a choice he will not sail directly into a storm.. if he has to, he will mitigate(shorten the sails).

 

[Rolling Hard]

If the definition of safe is zero risk, then nothing you do in life is safe. Heck I could die from drinking a glass of water

With regards to school, being in a closed in school would likely carry more risk then playing softball but education is more important than softball so the "reward" is higher. Not having in-person classes lessons the reward for some (for depressing/heartbreaking reasons in some cases) but reduces the risk, at least in terms of catching the virus.

When people try to make reasonable decisions that is all they are doing, evaluating the risk/reward ratio of a certain action and then deciding based upon their own criteria of what that ratio should be. The caveat is that in order to evaluate risk, information is needed and the uncertainty of all of this is what is making the decisions so difficult for some. Nobody has issues playing during flu season because we have a good idea of what the risk is..

Says who?

 

[BT3100]

In our county in PA 85% of deaths occurred in nursing homes. This is absolutely tragic and could have been prevented if sick patients were not allowed back into the homes. But that wasn't allowed.
The average age of death in PA due to Covid is 81 years of age.
The legislature asked the governor to seperate nursing home deaths in the state from totals and he refused.
Softball in PA will not be allowed until the state is in the green phase. Late August

 

[Chris8]

In our county in PA 85% of deaths occurred in nursing homes. This is absolutely tragic and could have been prevented if sick patients were not allowed back into the homes. But that wasn't allowed.
The average age of death in PA due to Covid is 81 years of age.
The legislature asked the governor to seperate nursing home deaths in the state from totals and he refused.
Softball in PA will not be allowed until the state is in the green phase. Late August

Isn't that part of the problem? People need information to make informed decisions for themselves and their family.

Would societal decisions be different if this was separated out? Would you feel more comfortable being "out" in society or resuming softball with this information?

In our state 50% of deaths are from nursing homes. 8 weeks in our state health agency just now were able to tell us by zipcode the infection and death numbers. You'd think that's info they'd have sorted out pretty quickly. That's helpful information in the decision making process.

Factual information helps individuals make decisions.

 

[JayW]

in sweden, which has been heavily criticized for their approach, half of the deaths are also in nursing homes. schools other than universities have remained open.

 

[whiporee]

Mitigation is necessary because the same risk of overrunning the healthcare system still exists. Society will not get back to normal until a vaccine is developed, might as well for people to get use to it. If a sailor has a choice he will not sail directly into a storm.. if he has to, he will mitigate(shorten the sails).

A sailor will sail into the storm if there's nowhere else to go and you've got to get through it.

While your point makes sense, you're not looking at the big picture. So lets zoom out a tad from the idea of "safety." We can start with schools. Most districts have reported 85 percent inclusion in their remote programs. That sounds great, until you realize that it means 15 percent of students are participating. A sixth of our kids have totally lost a third of a year of schooling. In addition, because of the lack of sales tax and other revenue, they are projecting laying off 277,000 teachers. Eight percent of the national total. So in order to mitigate, we’ve let education take a large hit. And that’s not even factoring other governmental sacrifices, like road work, inspections, permits, whatever. Hell, in Georgia and Wisconsin they’re waiving driving tests. It seems like the easy thing is to say mitigate; the overall impact is much larger.

like, for example, the food supply. Farmers are tilling under crops because they can’t find workers or buyers. Ranchers are doing the same. Imagine waiting in lines not for toilet paper, but actual life staples. The food supply chain is in jeopardy. So we can mitigate. Not stop, not prevent, not cure. Mitigate. Delay.

have you thought about what happens when people stop paying bills?Renters have alreadydone that; mortgages have as well. What about when your biggest client decides that they’d rather stay liquid and have you go after them in court than give up the money? Or when hospitals and general practices go broke because of this kind of distancing? Or when the people we consider essential — the ones who provide us convenience — start realizing how little we value their health compared to our own? We’re letting the class divide get even larger.

If you’re talking about waiting this out until there’s a vaccine, you’re talking about the destruction of our society as we know it. To go back to the sailing metaphor, when you have to get somewhere you sail through the storm. We can’t avoid this one.

 

[BT3100]

Isn't that part of the problem? People need information to make informed decisions for themselves and their family.

Would societal decisions be different if this was separated out? Would you feel more comfortable being "out" in society or resuming softball with this information?

In our state 50% of deaths are from nursing homes. 8 weeks in our state health agency just now were able to tell us by zipcode the infection and death numbers. You'd think that's info they'd have sorted out pretty quickly. That's helpful information in the decision making process.

Factual information helps individuals make decisions.

Our governor said point blank that he wouldn't separate nursing home deaths as it would cause people to want to open the state sooner. Softball should be allowed now with reasonable safety measures in place.