No practices of any kind-a message from our district

[Bullseye]

At the risk of getting off the softball track — 100% yes. I have said that all along. The announcements of “new cases” is inaccurately labeled and is not indicative of viral spread. It is “new positive tests” and is indicative of our systemic testing failures. (What bothers me is the ability to manipulate this — want numbers to go down? Slow down testing.)

What alarms me is the death numbers in Illinois each day are not going down (beyond one day dips followed by large spikes). There will be far more recoveries than deaths, but recoveries take longer and wildly varying times. So, in my non-mathematical mind, deaths are a far more accurate number indicative of the current trends. The numbers are not going down here.

Another thing that I saw that puts me in the “we are not ready yet” camp ... the antibodies testing trial that was done in a single community in California. If their findings are representative of the population as a whole, only 5% of the population has been exposed. I thought it would be much larger.

To me, the antibodies testing is the important data for a re-opening plan. Expanding current testing for the virus allows us to play whack-a-mole when it pops up. It only tells us “NOW”. With antibodies testing, if we find out a significant % of the population already had it (in a milder form) we can devise better plans. Of course, that is assuming immunity is developed once you have had it ... and that is yet to be determined (and sounds less sure each time it is brought up).

SO ... at 14-day increments based on current data, I agree that the fall season, and maybe even starting school in the fall is conceivably on the bubble at this point. Plus, as I pointed out in the USSSA thread, there is a significant number of umpires who have already said they will NOT be back on the field as soon as an “all clear” is ordered. The demographic for umpires skews toward old dudes.

And to make sure I tie it back to softball ...

It is like a lightning delay. Every time one more happens (in this case, the numbers don’t decrease or go up), the clock resets. Doesn’t matter if there was just a few minutes before reaching the 30-minute wait period, the clock resets. 14-day phases are great, unless you cannot get to the next one. Then somebody turns into THAT coach or THAT tournament director ...

The testing in california was also only in a local region. The infected testing pool small area. Other examples show 50 to 60 percent infected asymptomatic infected with no symptoms. Suggest a much larger degree of population infected. Agree testing has been erratic at best. The testing numbers and unfortunately failure of all models being used to calculate this virus have under minded all efforts. Including the trust of much of the population.