Bobref

Gov. Pritzker in Illinois issued an order making masking mandatory. Police were empowered to arrest for non-compliance, and charge offenders with a misdemeanor, although I don’t think anyone actually got arrested.

Statistics show that masking works to reduce the spread of the virus.

I think you’ve stated the issues very well. My only disagreement with what you said is the part about “I still think we let the parents, coaches, kids, and fans decide.“ As we have discussed in other contexts, the freedom to decide is largely a fable in kids that age. Peer pressure makes the notion of free choice illusory.

Check your math. According to your post “In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work.” That’s $3.7 million from 2019-2025. “The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019.” That’s 2 programs, $7.4 million, from 2014 to 2025. 11 years. As I said, chump change. And neither Dr. Fauci nor anyone else “developed” the corona virus. https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-not-human-made-in-lab.html. The coronavirus was not engineered in a lab. Here's how we know. By Jeanna Bryner - Live Science Editor-in-Chief March 21, 2020 The persistent myth can be put to bed. Editor's note: On April 16, news came out that the U.S. government said it was investigating the possibility that the novel coronavirus may have somehow escaped from a lab, though experts still think the possibility that it was engineered is unlikely. This Live Science report explores the origin of SARS-CoV-2. As the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 spreads across the globe, with cases surpassing 284,000 worldwide today (March 20), misinformation is spreading almost as fast. One persistent myth is that this virus, called SARS-CoV-2, was made by scientists and escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, where the outbreak began. A new analysis of SARS-CoV-2 may finally put that latter idea to bed. A group of researchers compared the genome of this novel coronavirus with the seven other coronaviruses known to infect humans: SARS, MERS and SARS-CoV-2, which can cause severe disease; along with HKU1, NL63, OC43 and 229E, which typically cause just mild symptoms, the researchers wrote March 17 in the journal Nature Medicine. "Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus," they write in the journal article. Kristian Andersen, an associate professor of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research, and his colleagues looked at the genetic template for the spike proteins that protrude from the surface of the virus. The coronavirus uses these spikes to grab the outer walls of its host's cells and then enter those cells. They specifically looked at the gene sequences responsible for two key features of these spike proteins: the grabber, called the receptor-binding domain, that hooks onto host cells; and the so-called cleavage site that allows the virus to open and enter those cells. That analysis showed that the "hook" part of the spike had evolved to target a receptor on the outside of human cells called ACE2, which is involved in blood pressure regulation. It is so effective at attaching to human cells that the researchers said the spike proteins were the result of natural selection and not genetic engineering. Here's why: SARS-CoV-2 is very closely related to the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which fanned across the globe nearly 20 years ago. Scientists have studied how SARS-CoV differs from SARS-CoV-2 — with several key letter changes in the genetic code. Yet in computer simulations, the mutations in SARS-CoV-2 don't seem to work very well at helping the virus bind to human cells. If scientists had deliberately engineered this virus, they wouldn't have chosen mutations that computer models suggest won't work. But it turns out, nature is smarter than scientists, and the novel coronavirus found a way to mutate that was better — and completely different— from anything scientists could have created, the study found. Another nail in the "escaped from evil lab" theory? The overall molecular structure of this virus is distinct from the known coronaviruses and instead most closely resembles viruses found in bats and pangolins that had been little studied and never known to cause humans any harm. "If someone were seeking to engineer a new coronavirus as a pathogen, they would have constructed it from the backbone of a virus known to cause illness," according to a statement from Scripps. Where did the virus come from? The research group came up with two possible scenarios for the origin of SARS-CoV-2 in humans. One scenario follows the origin stories for a few other recent coronaviruses that have wreaked havoc in human populations. In that scenario, we contracted the virus directly from an animal — civets in the case of SARS and camels in the case of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). In the case of SARS-CoV-2, the researchers suggest that animal was a bat, which transmitted the virus to another intermediate animal (possibly a pangolin, some scientists have said) that brought the virus to humans. In that possible scenario, the genetic features that make the new coronavirus so effective at infecting human cells (its pathogenic powers) would have been in place before hopping to humans. In the other scenario, those pathogenic features would have evolved only after the virus jumped from its animal host to humans. Some coronaviruses that originated in pangolins have a "hook structure" (that receptor binding domain) similar to that of SARS-CoV-2. In that way, a pangolin either directly or indirectly passed its virus onto a human host. Then, once inside a human host, the virus could have evolved to have its other stealth feature — the cleavage site that lets it easily break into human cells. Once it developed that capacity, the researchers said, the coronavirus would be even more capable of spreading between people. All of this technical detail could help scientists forecast the future of this pandemic. If the virus did enter human cells in a pathogenic form, that raises the probability of future outbreaks. The virus could still be circulating in the animal population and might again jump to humans, ready to cause an outbreak. But the chances of such future outbreaks are lower if the virus must first enter the human population and then evolve the pathogenic properties, the researchers said.

Lots of “risky“ research going on, whether you’re talking about chemicals, viruses, nuclear materials, etc. That’s sort of the nature of scientific research, depending on the focus of the research. And $7.4 million for research over 11 years is chump change. I don’t see what the big deal is.

My wife is a pediatric nurse practitioner at a hospital in Chicago.

Could you possibly be any more cryptic? A little amplification would be nice.

Good for you. I wish all officials would be studying game film in June. i look forward to hearing how you reconcile mandatory vaccinations with “my body, my choice.”

Would it be prudent instead for the IHSAA to take some measures to try and increase attendance at Regionals and Semistates? If there’s no opportunity for growth at the Finals, that would seem to be an alternative.

For clarity, the DE you refer to is @DannEllenwood, not @DanteEstonia, yes?

[crickets]🦗

You might find this interesting, but I am not one of those that is against a return to competition. I would just like to hear someone in authority tell it like it really is. Something like this: ”Yes, we have a plan for return to competition. We understand that by resuming high school football we will almost certainly experience increasing positives, despite the fact that our return to competition guidelines attempt to minimize that.Some kids will get sick. Some will transmit the virus to others, including the vulnerable and, as a result, some people will be hospitalized, and the odds are that some will die. However, we believe on balance that a return to high school football provides value to society that exceeds the likely downside. Therefore, we will be playing this Fall.” Isn’t that what’s really happening?

It is now a virtual lock that we will have high school football this Fall. Post your comments, observations, hopes, fears, etc., as we try to find the “new normal.” Observation: there is no possible way the high school football season can proceed safely. The pros and NCAA make a better case for the return to competition, since the cornerstone of their guidance is frequent and thorough testing of even asymptomatic individuals coupled with isolation protocols. Yet several colleges have already suspended their summer programs because of large numbers of positives. There won’t be any such testing at the high school level. If you doubt it, read this article by former Munster High School Trainer John Doherty. https://www.nwitimes.com/sports/sports-medicine-even-athletes-must-be-vigilant-to-ravages-of-covid-19/article_1c678744-361d-5ce9-8baa-e37e76a39f63.html He quotes Dan Slotar, a fellowship-trained infectious disease specialist, as follows: “I’ve been an advocate for reentry and reopening of society in general but with certain caveats,” he said. “Some sports are easier to contemplate restarting without the need for as aggressive testing as professional athletes have the luxury of access to. So there is obviously going to be a spectrum. Cross country and golf are one extreme and wrestling would be the other extreme. I would be hesitant about contact sports like football or even basketball without testing. I don’t how that can be addressed on the high school level.” (emphasis supplied) Comment: the return to competition is driven almost wholly by economics. The IHSAA got no revenue from the boy’s basketball tournament. They miss the boy’s football tournament and they’re going to be bankrupt. Schools are in the same boat. Without that revenue, athletic departments are simply unable to function. So, I hope we have a great season. But don’t kid yourself. People are going to die who would not have died otherwise. I hope it’s worth it.

Unless it was Robert Faulkens or Bobby Cox your information is likely going to be superseded this week.

I find your response disconcerting. 😜

The observers have been advised that we will receive officiating guidelines this week. It has been emphasized that these are “guidelines,” subject to a lot of fine tuning before August. Stay tuned. By the way, there were plenty of times when I was officiating when I wished I had been wearing a mask! 🤣

I would think it would be very difficult to attempt to draw any valid conclusions from the data, since the only real endpoint is who won the game at the finals. And there’s always going to be the issue of who is the better team. Assuming the statistics that show a disproportionate percentage of wins by Indy area schools over the years, who is to say that the Indy teams aren’t just better?

Let’s see if your “analysis” can stand up to a little cross-examination, just for the heck of it. Do you have any kids attending public schools? Did you know that a public school student in Indiana, by the time he hits the 6th grade, is required to show proof of multiple vaccinations against diseases like pertussis, polio, measles, varicella (chicken pox), mumps, rubella, Hepatitis A and B, diphtheria, tetanus, etc.? That’s a lot of needle sticks. Your body, your choice. How do you feel about that?

You couldn’t be more wrong, and your analogy to abortion could not be farther off the mark.

I like it, too. It makes a lot of sense. One thing they’re going to do is shuffle the schedule to attempt to maximize attendance. For example if 2 Ft. Wayne teams make it to the finals in different classes, they will schedule those games back to back to draw as many Ft. Wayne fans as possible.

This has now officially gone too far.