Will there be high school hockey for 2020-2021?

[cigar]

Looks to me that two out of three graphs also support mask wearing.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/images/19-0994-F2.jpg

you didn't see my post was also from CDC... which tells me you really have an agenda.... set in your opinion...
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/ ... XLhxMP_bXs

but this one is better:
https://www.sott.net/article/434796-The ... of-Viruses

physics also doesn't lie. but i saw someone on the internet try to explain why 2+2=5.. i guess that is where we are at...

Wear your mask so you can feel protected... that is fine.

And tgat is why we will not have things back to normal for a long time. Right there.

Get Your Mask in and we will be out of this thing in a month. Sports can go on then I quarantee!!!

we will be out of this in 3-4 weeks because of herd immunity. masks have nothing to do with it.

[The Exiled One]

Amazed that this is even a debate. Everybody keeps busting out cherry picked studies to prove DEFINITIVELY this or DEFINITIVELY that.

It's pretty simple really. This thing spreads because one person can give it to more than one person.

• Social distancing reduces that ratio
• Hand washing reduces that ratio
• Disinfecting reduces that ratio
• Contact tracing and isolation reduces that ratio
• Mask wearing reduces that ratio

Get the ratio to less than one to one and the disease starts to go away. Other than an effective vaccine or eventual herd immunity, there's no single solution. All the bulleted tactics are part of the solution.

[Hunters1993]

Exactly. And if everyone did those things for the next several weeks the sports would be on and things would start going back to normal. Herd immunity is not the solution by itself but is part of the solution.

The science is there for all who want to see it to see it.

[goldy313]

Read the article in the Star Tribune about what Education Minnesota thinks school should look like in the fall and beyond.

Hunters, you like to take the science road and there is a lot of logic to that approach, however this hasn’t been a science problem from the start. It’s been a political one. It is easy to second guess but the day after the National Guard put down the riots Walz should have gone back to square one and locked everything down for 3-4 weeks. Requirements for masks now isn’t going to help, it is too late.

The Star Tribune has been dribbling out articles here and there over the past week preparing us for no students in school. The ball will drop next week when Walz announces no in person school until such and such a date. Then he will push that date out too. I don’t see kids in school until January. No school means no sports. The teachers will not go back.

Florida can now be added to the list of states delaying or canceling fall sports. As Florida moved their start date to August 24 from July 27.

[Hunters1993]

I don’t see this at all as a political issue. I see this as doing what is right to keep the most safe. The science backs doing what we are doing and that is all there is to it. Do f leg politics get in the way of the right thing to do.

The only people to make it a political issue are those trying to justify not following the guidelines. Don’t think of it as a Walz thing or a trump thing or a republican or Democrat thing but a right thing to do!

[goldy313]

How can you not see it as a political thing? For 55 straight days there have been riots in Portland which in many ways break Oregon law. But businesses can’t open.

Everyday we run school age childcare at our school, run by para’s, not teachers. Come September when there is no teachers teaching, the school aged childcare will still be running....just like it was in May.

All the science says schools can open safely, the politics of it have already closed Minneapolis and St Paul public schools for the foreseeable future.

[MNHockeyFan]

How can you not see it as a political thing? For 55 straight days there have been riots in Portland which in many ways break Oregon law. But businesses can’t open.

Everyday we run school age childcare at our school, run by para’s, not teachers. Come September when there is no teachers teaching, the school aged childcare will still be running....just like it was in May.

All the science says schools can open safely, the politics of it have already closed Minneapolis and St Paul public schools for the foreseeable future.

Totally agree. The parameters of open/close have become political at the expense of science. To the extent private schools will chart their own course and determine they can play fall and winter sports as usual, to the extent possible, they will benefit from all the fear mongering.

[Wise Old Man]

Does anyone understand the term long term side effects? That would mean year down the road two years, five years. So no extra harm sustained or long term injury to organs have not showed up yet and they will!

Does anyone on this site understand what pandemic means? It implies world wide virus. Out little corner of the world does not represent the virus effects. Come out of the little community view and understand what is really happening!

Put your masks on for the next month or two and I gaurantee hockey this winter!

A CV particle is a sphere with a diameter of 0.125 microns.
N95 masks, ONLY WHEN RIGOROUSLY FITTED AND TESTED, stop approximately 95% of particles down to 0.300 microns. Anything smaller than 0.300 microns sails through an N95 mask, EVEN if it is rigorously custom-fitted.
0.125 microns is SMALLER than 0.300 microns. THEREFORE, N95 masks do very little to block CV, even when rigorously custom-fitted. Hence the unstoppable healthy spread of the virus and herd immunity.
Surgical masks are 60%-80% effective in blocking particles of 5.000 microns down to 0.300, depending on the type.
Cloth, like a cotton bandana, will block particles down to 200 microns when brand new. After washing, when the weave of the fabric softens and loosens, that increases to 400-600 microns.
Just to recapitulate for the sake of clarity, a CV particle is ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE THOUSANDTHS OF A MICRON in diameter. 0.125 microns.
Let's look at physics and mathematics folks.
We'll start with a single cough or sneeze.
Everyone "knows" that if you cover a cough or sneeze, and you should do it into your sleeve instead of your hand, this will reduce the risk of someone else getting a virus you may have, right?
Wrong.
It doesn't. So says the science! This is a myth, just like it is a myth that you can wear a mask and reduce transmission.
Wait -- you say! YUCK; that's obvious that it helps.
Well, no.
Here's why.
You sneeze and a huge green thing comes out your nose. Yuck! Nasty! Mucus, full of germs.
It goes, if uncovered...... downward, on the floor.
And harms nobody.
What? If I stop the loogie then how come that doesn't do anything?
Because in addition to the loogie out come a bunch of large drops, each also laden with virus. Maybe a few hundred drops. Yuck! Thus covering or physically blocking those will reduce transmission to other people, right?
Wrong again, statistically speaking.
Why?
Because in that same forceful exhale are an enormous number of sub-micron water droplets that are formed as the saturated vapor in your lungs (100% RH in expired air) cools slightly as it travels up from the lungs to the trachea and out the mouth or nose and comes into contact with the ambient air (well, unless it's over 98.6F in the air where you are anyway!)
Remember your basic physics: As any saturated vapor cools it condenses. Any saturated vapor that cools by even a tiny amount will condense -- that is, coalesce the individual vapor molecules into larger aggregates.
Ordinary "tidal volume" (that is, the amount of air you move in a resting condition with each inhalation) is about 500ml. For a cough or sneeze it is much larger; the maximum volume of air that can be inspired in adult human lungs typically is in the range of 4-6L, or eight to 12 times the "at rest" breathing amount.
When we breathe normally we produce very few or no large droplets. When we sing, play a wind instrument, yell, scream, cough or sneeze we produce a fairly large number of them.
But none of this matters at all, statistically, because with each breath we produce millions of small condensate drops, and all of them which do not aggregate beyond the pore size of the medium in a mask will go right through said mask in either direction, most of those condensed molecules are produced between the lungs and either before or just after exit from the body due to condensation of the 100% RH water vapor and each of them, if you are infected with a virus, carries enough virons to infect another person.
We've all "seen our breath" outside when it's cold.
That's aggregation and condensation to a great enough degree that the aggregates are visible; there are thousands to millions more said aggregates that are too small to see and when it's not cold outside none of them aggregate and condense sufficiently to be visible but they are all still there.
Note that during ordinary breathing the mean particle size is sub-micron. Statistically none of these are filtered in either direction by anything less than an N95.
This is why physics says that masks don't work against viruses and exactly zero RCTs show that they do. (https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/ ... XLhxMP_bXs)
(https://www.sott.net/article/434796-The ... of-Viruses)

Never mind the repeated attempts to do so including in 1918, which did nothing to prevent the spread.
Every single person that has ever "seen their breath" in the winter months knows, if they think about it for 30 seconds, why masks can't work and don't.
They can't work because blocking 1,000 pretty-large droplets sounds like it's great except hundreds of thousands or even millions of condensed water vapor molecule clusters were also expelled, they have enough virons on them to infect another person and very nearly zero of those are caught by the mask in either direction. The ones you see when you breathe out in the winter are >50um in size (the limit of visibility to the unaided eye); more than 50 times the size of the mean particle you actually exhale. Worse, every one of those tiny particles, unless condensed out or breathed in by someone else can remain in the air for hours since they are small enough to remain within the purview of brownian motion of air molecules; that is, they "float" so to speak because the energy of said molecular vibration and ordinary air currents, even indoors, is large compared to the pull of gravity toward the ground and thus they remain suspended in the air.
The reason we have a flu season is that the higher the absolute humidity, which tracks with temperature, the greater the odds that further agglomeration of these clusters of molecules will occur and once they get large enough gravity takes over as they are too heavy and they fall to the ground harmlessly.
So your mask stopped the nasty-looking and smelling loogie which can infect exactly one person, unless you wipe it around on people, and 1,000 of the 5,000 modest-size droplets you expelled. This is why the mask gets nasty all over the inside (which, by the way, if left on for any length of time or reused will breed bacteria on the inside surface which you can inhale, and it will be very bad for you if you do so.)
But it's worthless in terms of protecting anyone else because at the same time you expelled the 5,001 droplets and stopped 1,001, which sounds like a decent hazard reduction, you also expelled anywhere from thousands to several million micrometer-size drops, an effective none of which were stopped, all of which are infectious, and thus you actually caught materially less than 1% of the potential infections that can screw someone else!
1% is not statistically significant. Filtering out 0.1-1% of the infectious events out at the source DOES NOTHING.
The reason workers in a virus lab wear moon suits, go through multiple e sets of sealed doors with decontamination procedures before that suit is removed and breathe pressurized outside air while inside the lab is that these are facts and said virus -- any virus -- will go right through any "mask."
Further, Covid-19 isn't following the laws of physics on the agglomeration that occurs with absolute humidity is very strong evidence (but not proof), again on the science, that it is not predominantly being transmitted through the air but rather by contact with contaminated surfaces and since we know intact virus is found in feces fecal contamination is very likely involved (exactly as it is with polio, which also didn't follow the laws of physics on aerosol transmission because it wasn't, in the main, transmitted that way.)
We have known this since February.
Physics is not a list of suggestions folks.
It is a list of natural laws that nobody can violate.
Masks are worthless when it comes to viral transmission and in addition they are obviously also worthless against transmission that occurs due to contact with contaminated surfaces or objects. That's the physics of it and nobody has ever demonstrated an ability to modify the laws of physics.
Grow up, deal with the fact that masks are worthless, learn to live with the fact that this virus will not be responsive to voodoo or magical incantations by governors, mayors or anyone else. Manual removal of potential contamination from your hands by washing with soap and water will help, but there is no guarantee because as we know this virus can spread through multiple vectors. The sooner those who are not significantly harmed by this virus get it and thus inhibit transmission the sooner it will be equivalent in its impact to seasonal flu or less.
There is no other reality folks, and a vaccine is unlikely to work either. Don't get your hopes up for that as you are very likely to be disappointed.

Cig...fairly impressive post although a large part of me wants to ask, "can you repeat the part of the stuff where you said all about the things"?

Actually, in all seriousness, let's assume that everything you said is completely accurate -- my B.S. detector is really going crazy so, my bet is most of it isn't accurate but... -- what is the motivation of the vast, vast, VAST majority of doctors, scientists, and researchers with expertise in virology, epidemiology, and infectious diseases to state that the wearing of masks will definitively reduce overall transmission? Along those lines, why is it that most of the Asian countries where 90% of the population has worn a mask from the outset of the virus have obviously had FAR greater success in controlling the virus and reducing deaths?

Also, I'll see your one article with interesting statistical jargon that supposedly proves your perspective, and I'll raise you with another article that states just the opposite...

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/06/41790 ... ks-prevent

From the article...

Still Confused About Masks? Here’s the Science Behind How Face Masks Prevent Coronavirus...

Both the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization now recommend cloth masks for the general public, but earlier in the pandemic, both organizations recommended just the opposite. These shifting guidelines may have sowed confusion among the public about the utility of masks.

But health experts say the evidence is clear that masks can help prevent the spread of COVID-19 and that the more people wearing masks, the better.

Why did the CDC change its guidance on wearing masks?
The original CDC guidance partly was based on what was thought to be low disease prevalence earlier in the pandemic, said Chin-Hong.

“So, of course, you’re preaching that the juice isn’t really worth the squeeze to have the whole population wear masks in the beginning – but that was really a reflection of not having enough testing, anyway,” he said. “We were getting a false sense of security.”

Rutherford was more blunt. The legitimate concern that the limited supply of surgical masks and N95 respirators should be saved for health care workers should not have prevented more nuanced messaging about the benefits of masking. “We should have told people to wear cloth masks right off the bat,” he said.

Another factor “is that culturally, the U.S. wasn’t really prepared to wear masks,” unlike some countries in Asia where the practice is more common, said Chin-Hong. Even now, some Americans are choosing to ignore CDC guidance and local mandates on masks, a hesitation that Chin-Hong says is “foolhardy.”

What evidence do we have that wearing a mask is effective in preventing COVID-19?
There are several strands of evidence supporting the efficacy of masks.

One category of evidence comes from laboratory studies of respiratory droplets and the ability of various masks to block them. An experiment using high-speed video found that hundreds of droplets ranging from 20 to 500 micrometers were generated when saying a simple phrase, but that nearly all these droplets were blocked when the mouth was covered by a damp washcloth. Another study of people who had influenza or the common cold found that wearing a surgical mask significantly reduced the amount of these respiratory viruses emitted in droplets and aerosols.

But the strongest evidence in favor of masks come from studies of real-world scenarios. “The most important thing are the epidemiologic data,” said Rutherford. Because it would be unethical to assign people to not wear a mask during a pandemic, the epidemiological evidence has come from so-called “experiments of nature.”

A recent study published in Health Affairs, for example, compared the COVID-19 growth rate before and after mask mandates in 15 states and the District of Columbia. It found that mask mandates led to a slowdown in daily COVID-19 growth rate, which became more apparent over time. The first five days after a mandate, the daily growth rate slowed by 0.9 percentage-points compared to the five days prior to the mandate; at three weeks, the daily growth rate had slowed by 2 percentage-points.

Another study looked at coronavirus deaths across 198 countries and found that those with cultural norms or government policies favoring mask-wearing had lower death rates.

Two compelling case reports also suggest that masks can prevent transmission in high-risk scenarios, said Chin-Hong and Rutherford. In one case, a man flew from China to Toronto and subsequently tested positive for COVID-19. He had a dry cough and wore a mask on the flight, and all 25 people closest to him on the flight tested negative for COVID-19. In another case, in late May, two hair stylists in Missouri had close contact with 140 clients while sick with COVID-19. Everyone wore a mask and none of the clients

[Wise Old Man]

you didn't see my post was also from CDC... which tells me you really have an agenda.... set in your opinion...
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/ ... XLhxMP_bXs

but this one is better:
https://www.sott.net/article/434796-The ... of-Viruses

physics also doesn't lie. but i saw someone on the internet try to explain why 2+2=5.. i guess that is where we are at...

Wear your mask so you can feel protected... that is fine.

And tgat is why we will not have things back to normal for a long time. Right there.

Get Your Mask in and we will be out of this thing in a month. Sports can go on then I quarantee!!!

we will be out of this in 3-4 weeks because of herd immunity. masks have nothing to do with it.

Ummmm, so Cig, why does Olsterholm, Fauci, and others who are tops in infectious disease say that we need to have at least 60-70% of the population be "infected" -- either via the actual virus or thru vaccination -- to reach "herd immunity"? And, if that's true, those same experts are currently saying that only about 7-10% of our population has been infected to this point. Soooooo, since it's taken almost 8 months to infect 10% of the population, I'm just curious, can you please explain how we can infect the other 50-60% in just three to four weeks?!? Now THAT would be one heckuva "surge".

Also, IF in your answer you attempt to push back on what people like Olsterholm and Fauci are saying, are you therefore telling me you possess greater knowledge and experience than those two individuals? Just asking for a friend...

Finally, if what you say about masks is accurate, then the only recourse we have as a society to control the spread is via another significant lock down, probably until we have a vaccine.

[goldy313]

Masks only work if everyone always wears the proper ones and always wear them properly. That is not practical or probable. So at best we are slowing the spread with mask mandates. Nothing is wrong with wearing masks and slowing the spread but it will not stop it. California has the strictest mask mandates but is in no better shape than Georgia, Florida, or Texas.

Europe is seeing a resurgence of the disease as well now.

Almanac, the PBS program, had an interview with a DFL member from Hopkins on who said about opening schools that the Governor needs to work with Education Minnesota and the Department of Health to open the schools. The GOP member was from Little Falls and said it should be up to each district. Everyday the MSM pushes how dangerous school opening will be, two weeks ago it was just the opposite. The science never changed.

You all need to accept that there will be no in person school in Minnesota until after the November election at the soonest. More kids died from H1N1 than this virus......the thing to watch for next week is twofold; will Walz ban private schools from in person learning and what will he do about high school sports. My guess, the same crap he said last spring......I feel sorry for the kids but I am following the science (the DNC tells me too.) The Mayo Clinic and University of Minnesota may feel different but......political science is a true science isn’t it?

Lastly....Could you imagine the destruction if the Unions that represents the nurses, meatpackers, truckers, etc. acted like the teachers union does? Education is among the most essential workers. The S@it they spew about the education gap is only that..... an issue that gets them more pay.

[greybeard58]

Take Coronavirus More Seriously, Say Olympic Rowers Who Got It

A physical therapist brought the virus to rowers who were training to make the U.S. Olympic team, and one gold medalist said it “knocked us down pretty hard.”


Emily Regan begins a morning practice at Mercer Lake in New Jersey. “Look what the virus still did to us,” she said. “It knocked us down pretty hard.”


The women on the United States national rowing team think that young, healthy people need to take the coronavirus more seriously. They learned that the hard way.

More than one-third of the team was infected with Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, in March and April, during the initial swell of the virus in New Jersey, according to Dr. Peter Wenger, the team doctor for its training center in Princeton, N.J.

At least 12 women had the virus, he said, based on various test results of athletes and observations he had made of rowers who were not tested but showed symptoms of infection. During that first wave of infections, testing wasn’t yet widely available.

In late March, several days after New Jersey instituted a stay-at-home order as the coronavirus began to ravage parts of the state, Marc Nowak, the team’s physical therapist, tested positive for the virus after experiencing minor cold-like symptoms and promptly reporting them to U.S. Rowing.

In the previous two weeks, Nowak said, he had come into direct contact with “pretty much the whole team” of 33 women during 30-minute physical therapy sessions of hands-on stretching and muscle and joint manipulation. Out of caution — and fortunately for the team — Wenger used one of his office’s limited coronavirus tests to check on his colleague.

One by one, starting four or five days after exposure, rowers began to show symptoms of infection.

“In that first wave of things happening, everything was really sketchy and there weren’t really directives about wearing masks,” said Nowak, who has worked with the national team for 18 years. “We just didn’t have the information we needed to take the right precautions.”

Nowak said his wife, who is an operating room nurse, and two adult children living with them also contracted the virus, though his daughter did not become ill and later tested positive for antibodies.

“Now the message is, learn from us and what we’ve gone through,” Nowak said.

Emily Regan, an Olympic gold medalist from Williamsville, N.Y., who was among those infected, wrote a post on Facebook this month highlighting how debilitating the disease could be, even for some of the world’s best athletes who have incredibly powerful and efficient lungs. Most women at the training center are vying to make the eight-oared boat for the Tokyo Games next summer, when the United States will try to win its fourth straight gold medal in that marquee event.

“The narrative that has been going around in some places is that you won’t get the virus if you’re young and strong, or if you get it, it won’t be bad, but we’re perfect examples of how that is totally not true,” Regan said. She added: “Look what the virus still did to us. It knocked us down pretty hard.”


Regan said it took her a month to feel back to normal and more than three months later, she’s still trying to get back into competitive shape.

The rowers infected ranged in age from 23 to 37, Regan said, and many battled symptoms for weeks. The cases were categorized as mild, though some athletes dealt with complications for as many as 40 days, according to Wenger. None of the rowers required hospitalization, he said..

Regan, 32, said it took her a month to feel back to normal after she fell ill. More than three months later, she is still trying to get back into competitive shape, she said. That level of fitness was extremely high: Regan is a four-time world champion in her ninth year on the national team.

“I’ve never struggled like that before,” she said.

Early in the year, before the spread of the virus was well known in the United States, Regan and her teammates weren’t worried about getting infected. They were preoccupied with making the team for the Tokyo Olympics and were anxious that the pandemic would affect the Games. Many could not bear the idea of the Olympics being postponed or canceled and enduring another year of grueling training because of it. But their priorities changed in a matter of a few chaotic days.

By mid-March, the pandemic disrupted the team’s training routine as sports leagues widely canceled competitions and other operations. The rowers had to move their team boats out of Princeton University’s boathouse, at the university’s request, and onto trailers in the adjacent parking lot.

New Jersey’s stay-at-home order on March 21 then sparked a rush for the rowers to each grab a rowing machine, called an ergometer, and some weights from their indoor training facility to bring home so they could train while gyms were closed. Three days later, the Games were postponed until 2021 and their collective mood was as low as they thought it could be — until U.S. Rowing delivered some alarming news.

The team practices on single sculls and spaces ergometers 12 feet apart indoors to facilitate social distancing.
The team practices on single sculls and spaces ergometers 12 feet apart indoors to facilitate social distancing.Credit...Benjamin Norman for The New York Times
The federation emailed each of them to say that Nowak, their therapist, was likely positive for Covid-19, and that the rowers might have been exposed to the coronavirus.

The athletes were told to quarantine for 14 days and pay close attention to how they were feeling and alert the host families many of them were living with.

Mass testing stations were not widely available, and Wenger, the team doctor, was left to figure out which rowers might have been infected by using contact tracing and by closely monitoring them for symptoms.

Five athletes reported varied symptoms the day Nowak tested positive, including fatigue, headaches, coughing and congestion, Wenger said.

Two athletes said they had lost their sense of smell, so Wenger subsequently asked other athletes to do what he called “the bacon test” — to fry bacon and sniff it. If they didn’t smell anything, it could mean they were infected.

Kendall Chase, a rower from Evergreen, Colo., smelled nothing when she took a whiff of a jar of strongly scented eucalyptus essential oils. Chase, 25, had written off a sore throat as a cold because she didn’t have a fever or a cough. But then she came down with a searing headache that lasted for six days. She described feeling congested, “like my brain was being destroyed by my sinuses.”


Kendall Chase said she had trouble going for a walk while she suffered from Covid-19.

For more than a week, Chase was sidelined in her host family’s house, barely able to even leave her bedroom. She said she couldn’t remember the last time she went eight days without working out. The team usually trains for four to seven hours a day, including two or three separate sessions.

“One day I tried to go for a walk and I made it maybe 30 seconds out the door before turning around,” she said. “I just couldn’t do it. The sun hurt my eyes so much that I couldn’t take it.”

The Coronavirus Outbreak ›
Frequently Asked Questions
Updated July 23, 2020

What is school going to look like in September?
It is unlikely that many schools will return to a normal schedule this fall, requiring the grind of online learning, makeshift child care and stunted workdays to continue. California’s two largest public school districts — Los Angeles and San Diego — said on July 13, that instruction will be remote-only in the fall, citing concerns that surging coronavirus infections in their areas pose too dire a risk for students and teachers. Together, the two districts enroll some 825,000 students. They are the largest in the country so far to abandon plans for even a partial physical return to classrooms when they reopen in August. For other districts, the solution won’t be an all-or-nothing approach. Many systems, including the nation’s largest, New York City, are devising hybrid plans that involve spending some days in classrooms and other days online. There’s no national policy on this yet, so check with your municipal school system regularly to see what is happening in your community.
Is the coronavirus airborne?
The coronavirus can stay aloft for hours in tiny droplets in stagnant air, infecting people as they inhale, mounting scientific evidence suggests. This risk is highest in crowded indoor spaces with poor ventilation, and may help explain super-spreading events reported in meatpacking plants, churches and restaurants. It’s unclear how often the virus is spread via these tiny droplets, or aerosols, compared with larger droplets that are expelled when a sick person coughs or sneezes, or transmitted through contact with contaminated surfaces, said Linsey Marr, an aerosol expert at Virginia Tech. Aerosols are released even when a person without symptoms exhales, talks or sings, according to Dr. Marr and more than 200 other experts, who have outlined the evidence in an open letter to the World Health Organization.
What are the symptoms of coronavirus?
Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.
What’s the best material for a mask?
Scientists around the country have tried to identify everyday materials that do a good job of filtering microscopic particles. In recent tests, HEPA furnace filters scored high, as did vacuum cleaner bags, fabric similar to flannel pajamas and those of 600-count pillowcases. Other materials tested included layered coffee filters and scarves and bandannas. These scored lower, but still captured a small percentage of particles.
Does asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19 happen?
So far, the evidence seems to show it does. A widely cited paper published in April suggests that people are most infectious about two days before the onset of coronavirus symptoms and estimated that 44 percent of new infections were a result of transmission from people who were not yet showing symptoms. Recently, a top expert at the World Health Organization stated that transmission of the coronavirus by people who did not have symptoms was “very rare,” but she later walked back that statement.

Some host families asked rowers to move out of their homes, even if they had no symptoms. Chase’s hosts were nice enough to let her stay as long as she wore a mask and gloves and promised not to breathe on anyone or “lick any doorknobs,” she said with a laugh.

As Chase recovered, Regan was living in her condominium in Princeton, N.J., and thought she had avoided getting the virus. The day the Olympics were postponed, she felt uncharacteristically short of breath while rowing on the ergometer on her porch, but she blamed it on the cold weather and her disappointment about the Games.

It wasn’t until a full 12 days after the team had been exposed that unmistakable symptoms hit her. First it was exhaustion and a slight fever. Two days later, breathing became painful and her entire body hurt. Her fever rose to 101.7 degrees.

For two days, Regan was in agony, unable to move and struggling to breathe. She tried to go for a light jog once she felt a little better a few days later, but didn’t last 20 minutes, even when walking, because her heart rate was so high and she felt like she was walking through water. She felt a sense of panic: she was used to training up to two hours straight and now she couldn’t even walk 20 feet without feeling like she would collapse.

As she ramped up her workouts, Regan continued to feel faint and shaky and described her performance on the ergometer as “the pace of an average high school girl.” After a month of feeling like she was dragging around a 50-pound weight wherever she went, she felt like herself again.

Regan spent some time with her family outside Buffalo before returning to Princeton this month to join about a dozen other rowers on the team. Many other rowers, though, have remained with their families in their hometowns. Matt Imes, the director of high performance at U.S. Rowing, said the athletes have been encouraged to return to training with the team whenever they feel comfortable. They are rowing out of a boathouse on Mercer Lake in West Windsor, N.J., the team’s second home in the Princeton area. No one on the team has shown serious lingering effects from the virus, Wenger said.

To return, the rowers must quarantine for two weeks or quarantine for three days and then test negative for the virus for two consecutive days before joining training sessions. They must wear masks as soon as they step out of their cars for practice, but they don’t have to wear them while rowing. They also fill out a questionnaire each day about how they are feeling, so the doctors and training staff can keep tabs on their health.

At practices on Mercer Lake, they train in single sculls because those one-person boats allow for easy social distancing. During indoor workouts on ergometers, the machines are spaced 12 feet apart, unusually far and more than the six feet of social distance recommended by health officials.

Physical therapy sessions are now limited to rowers working through injuries, Nowak said, with no general sessions geared toward maintaining peak performance. And, of course, Nowak and the rowers wear masks.

While so much has changed, the rowers know they must remain vigilant about their well-being to avoid another raft of infections cutting through the team. Wenger often reminds them that their Olympic success is at stake.

“I told them that the people that stay uninfected and get four-to-five training blocks in before Tokyo are the ones who will walk away with the medals,” Wenger said. “So that’s one big reason for them to take precautions extremely seriously, and they do"

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/24/spor ... 4651b1e626

[Stang5280]

MIAC football season, along with several other fall sports, delayed until spring (if it actually happens).

Star Tribune article

[ClassAGuy]

Work of restarting fall sports in Minnesota gets down to the tough stuff

By Paul Klauda JULY 23, 2020 — 7:06PM

The push to restart high school sports next month in Minnesota is getting down to the nitty gritty.

For example, how to adhere to Gov. Tim Walz’s new mask mandate during practice, where reaching the critical “level of exertion’’ that exempts mask use will vary from drill to drill and player to player. Or even within the same drill, such as an extended volleyball rally that gets the cardio going for a team of six athletes.

About 300 people, representing high schools across Minnesota, made it clear in a virtual weekly meeting Thursday with Minnesota State High School League officials that they would like more clarity on the mask policy brought about to help stem the coronavirus pandemic.

League officials said they would seek more guidance on that as school representatives, who have met as the league’s “L.E.A.D. network’’ weekly since the pandemic began, offered up some of the biggest challenges ahead for their communities: Travel between games, positive COVID tests, athlete safety, spectators.

Those hurdles will quickly become real assuming plans for learning in schools will allow for at least some, if not all, fall sports to start as scheduled Aug. 17.

The path to getting there has wound down to this:

Walz is expected to announce his decision on reopening schools next Thursday. Options are said to include fully opening schools, continuing distance learning and invoking a mix of both approaches.

That plan will be taken into account by a league task force charged with making recommendations for returning to high school sports and activities. The group, formed last week, held its second meeting on Wednesday. Its work is expected to be finished on or around July 31.

The task force report goes to the high school league board, which convenes for a workshop on Aug. 3, followed by a full board meeting to vote on the plan Aug. 4.

If that sounds like cutting it close, consider this: At least a few football teams, owing to scheduling peculiarities, are set to start practice just six days later.

Moves by some states to delay fall sports drew as close as Wisconsin on Thursday when the state body that oversees high school sports recommended pushing back the start for some to September. It also asked its staff to to put together a plan that would allow schools that opt out of fall competition to offer those sports in the spring.

Bob Madison, associate director of Minnesota’s high school league, told the school officials group Thursday that the 12-member task force is getting into the work of creating options for fall sports, and “sports in general this year.’’ He said flipping seasons for sports “is not an option we’re looking at.’’

“We want to provide as much of a season as possible,’’ he said, knowing it will face interruptions caused by the pandemic.

In response to questions about the new state mandate to wear masks, league associate director Craig Perry cited one of the Minnesota Department of Health guidelines governing when a face covering can be temporarily removed: “When participating in indoor physical exercise — such as in a gym or fitness center — where the level of exertion makes wearing a face covering difficult, as long as social distancing can be maintained at all times.’’

Questions from the group sought for more guidance for practice situations in which an athlete’s exertion level goes up, such as in a volleyball rally or five-on-five basketball drill.

Perry said as a default, “Always practice safe social distancing, wear a mask whenever possible.’’

League Executive Director Erich Martens said he was in a Zoom call on Wednesday with officials with other midwestern state high school groups, most like Minnesota in their hope to restart fall sports on schedule. But he acknowledged that "things can change really, really quickly.''

He told the group that in Iowa, six percent of schools encountered two-week quarantines from time to time during its summer baseball season.

In Minnesota, where youth sports began play this summer with social distancing and other practice restrictions in place, Martens said Tarek Tomes, who is overseeing youth sports for the state during the pandemic, told him there had been some COVID-19 transmissions but with no major outbreaks. He credited keeping kids separated into smaller pods for helping those programs continue.

Martens told those in the meeting, "You're asking all the same questions'' that the league's task force is working to answer.

Said Perry as the meeting concluded, “I’m the optimist here, gang. We’re doing everything we can to make it safe.’’

Good Article here.

Local angle on whats happening here not out east or in the south or out West.

Here is how the Next Two Weeks will go:

July 30th- Gov Walz will announce Hybrid for Schools

July 31st- MSHSL Task force will submit plan for Fall Sports

Aug 4th- Fall Sports announced as HAPPENING

Aug 17th- Practice Begins

Nov 10th- Hockey starts in MN.... LET's ROLL!

[Stang5280]

Local angle on whats happening here not out east or in the south or out West.

Here is how the Next Two Weeks will go:

July 30th- Gov Walz will announce Hybrid for Schools

July 31st- MSHSL Task force will submit plan for Fall Sports

Aug 4th- Fall Sports announced as HAPPENING

Aug 17th- Practice Begins

Nov 10th- Hockey starts in MN.... LET's ROLL!

Let’s hope. This is assuming no complications arise between now and hockey season, which I am not particularly confident about happening.

[Stang5280]

Here is a list of college hockey programs that will not be competing during fall semester and/or until January 1. I know this information has no direct bearing on any decision the MSHSL may make. That said, we are starting to reach critical mass, particularly at the DIII level, with nearly half of the participating institutions delaying their start date.

Division I
Brown
Cornell
Dartmouth
Harvard
Princeton
Yale
Clarkson
RIT
RPI
St. Lawrence
Union

Division II
Assumption
Franklin Pierce
Post
Saint Anselm
Saint Michael's
Stonehill
So. New Hampshire
Post

Division III
Curry
Nichols
Salve Regina
Suffolk
University of New England
Wentworth
Western New England
Skidmore
Mass-Boston
Southern Maine
Amherst
Bowdoin
Chatham
Elmira
King's
Lebanon Valley
Manhattanville
Nazareth
Neumann
Stevenson
Utica
Wilkes
Brockport
Buffalo State
Cortland
Fredonia
Geneseo
Morrisville
Oswego
Plattsburgh
Potsdam

[ClassAGuy]

Here is a list of college hockey programs that will not be competing during fall semester and/or until January 1. I know this information has no direct bearing on any decision the MSHSL may make. That said, we are starting to reach critical mass, particularly at the DIII level, with nearly half of the participating institutions delaying their start date.

Division I
Brown
Cornell
Dartmouth
Harvard
Princeton
Yale
Clarkson
RIT
RPI
St. Lawrence
Union

Division II
Assumption
Franklin Pierce
Post
Saint Anselm
Saint Michael's
Stonehill
So. New Hampshire
Post

Division III
Curry
Nichols
Salve Regina
Suffolk
University of New England
Wentworth
Western New England
Skidmore
Mass-Boston
Southern Maine
Amherst
Bowdoin
Chatham
Elmira
King's
Lebanon Valley
Manhattanville
Nazareth
Neumann
Stevenson
Utica
Wilkes
Brockport
Buffalo State
Cortland
Fredonia
Geneseo
Morrisville
Oswego
Plattsburgh
Potsdam

Have heard from many sources NCAA Hockey will be pushed back until Jan 1.

However, USHL is gonna go ahead and NAHL if they can afford it will push forward.

NCAA actually has standards to live up to with testing why they will be moving back the 72 hour rule is gonna be messy.

Junior hockey will be dealing with filling rinks with fans and that revenue.

MSHSL seems to not have standards like the NCAA to live up to. Seems like a the local level the new emerging theory is kid's will get Covid but they are not gonna die and some think its an outright scam... Its scary because no one knows the long term effect and in a cold rink it seems to be a bad deal... I hope for hockey I see both sides... I think they play in November!

Fall sports will start on time I have been told that's a no doubter just waiting for Walz to make the hybrid announcement.

[goldy313]

^^^^^^

While I honestly hope you are right, do you really think Walz will go against Education Minnesota and allow a hybrid or in person school at all? Let alone allow individual districts to decide what to do? He hasn’t yet deferred decisions to others including the Mayo Clinic. I do not see a way he goes against the teachers union and allows in person school.

[Wise Old Man]

First to Cig... I posed a couple of questions to you in response to your post about masks. Would be interested to hear your response. I also posted a link to an article that explains the science behind why wearing a mask makes sense. What's your response? Also, what about my point regarding herd immunity?

Goldy, please explain to me what Walz's specific political advantage is for keeping schools closed. Also, what exactly do you think the date of the election and it's possible results will have to do with anything that Walz is doing or will do in regards to his decisions about public health in relation to the pandemic?

Next, you said the science behind kids and their ability to catch or transmit Covid hasn't changed. I mentioned this in a previous post but just last week there was a new study out of S. Korea whose results indicated that, unlike what was thought previously, kids aged 10-19 were shown to be just as susceptible to being infected and could infect others at the same levels as adults. That information completely changes the dynamic regarding being in school for kids and teachers compared to what was believed previously.

You also keep saying that all the science says schools can open safely....I'm sorry but that's simply not true. You also keep emphasizing that kids very likely won't get significantly ill or die. While simultaneously saying that you're frustrated with teachers and their unions because they don't want to take what you think is an acceptable amount of risk and, you compare their situations to that of doctors and nurses. I've responded to you previously about this specific point as you've made it a couple times now but, I'll try it one more time. Don't you think that the level of PPE that healthcare workers have access to and can wear to protect themselves is on a completely different level than what teachers will have access to? Pretty much an apples to hockey sticks comparison, don't you think? If not, why not?

Finally Goldy, a few posts back you made another veiled attempt at indicating there had been some kind of surge in cases caused by the protests -- this time something along the lines of Walz should've gone back to Phase 1 after the protests. Again I ask -- I think this is the 3rd time -- please provide a link to an article that definitively identifies any significant increase in cases attributable to the protests.

To MNHockeyFan.... why is it you think that if the governor tells schools to do on-line learning or, even a hybrid model, that somehow private schools could choose to do full in-person learning AND play sports? The governor is acting under the Emergency Powers Act and, if he says all schools will operate in a certain fashion, that will include literally every type of K-12 school.

I spoke with an influential person affiliated with the NCHA Div. III hockey conference a couple days ago and their expectation is that they too will go to a conference only schedule that won't start until Jan. 1 at the earliest.

Also, I've raised this next point at least two or three times in the last two months on this thread but, none of you who are saying we should be playing sports have addressed it. Considering the CDC and the state health department both say that any person who tests positive, along with anyone deemed to have had recent "close contact" with that person, must quarantine for 14 days. My scenario is -- and this has happened a number of times this summer in Iowa High School baseball and softball -- if a player tests positive, he and the rest of his teammates, coaches, and managers, will need to quarantine for 14 days. Obviously, that means no practices or games for two weeks. And, according to info I received from the Minnesota Department of Health last week, if that team had played a game( in the previous 7-10 days, that team(s) would be required to quarantine for two weeks as well. It's not a very long season to begin with. The amount of scheduling chaos this would cause would be completely unmanageable.

[east hockey]

This crap has gone on long enough. Karl was nice about it. I won't be. And anyone who takes this to any other topic will be done here. Smarten the hell up.

Lee