TSN’S WESTHEAD A RARE EARLY VOICE OF WARNING ON COVID-19

Rick Westhead was far ahead of the curve and its eventual flattening.

TSN’S senior correspondent was uncannily prescient while projecting the weeks and months ahead during a March 6 guest appearance on CKRM’S Sportscage.

I recall listening to the

COVID -19-related segment, during which Westhead spoke with Mitchell Blair and Luc Mullinder, while I was walking around the track at Regina’s downtown YMCA.

Within a fortnight, the downtown YMCA was closed. The facility is still inaccessible to the public.

We are now three months into our new world.

With that in mind, I replayed the aforementioned interview, which pretty much describes the three months that have ensued since.

“Today we’re up to 51 cases in Canada that we know about, and just over 250 in the United

States,” Westhead said nearly 100 days ago. “But the experts that I talk to think that those numbers are going to explode.

“One expert I talked to — an epidemiologist today at the Ottawa Hospital — thinks that we’re going to follow in the same pattern that happened in South Korea. And in that country, they went from roughly 31 documented cases to 4,300 in about two weeks’ time.”

The night before Westhead spoke with CKRM, the NHL and the San Jose Sharks proceeded with a game against the visiting Minnesota Wild.

Santa Clara County’s department of health had recommended that the game be delayed, with the objective of slowing the spread of the virus, but team and league management types opted to put bags over their heads.

“If we look back years ago at 2003 when the SARS outbreak happened, the World Health Organization put a travel advisory on Toronto,” Westhead recalled.

“We had about 44 people die in the city of Toronto. After there were three deaths in Toronto, and roughly 29 suspected cases, that is when the Ontario government declared an emergency and started looking at measures such as limiting large gatherings.

“I think that’s what will happen this time.”

Large gatherings are now out of the question for an undetermined period.

■ Queen City Ex. Cancelled.

■ Country Thunder Saskatchewan. See you in 2021.

■Regina Folk Festival. Same thing.

■ Questions swirl around whether the CFL will be able to hold a 2020 season.

■ The NHL and NBA are making plans to resume their seasons, but in hub cities, and without fans. Neither league has held a game since March 11.

Westhead saw it coming, as did the experts with whom he spoke.

“United Airlines is cutting 10 per cent of its flights and 20 per cent of its international flights,” he told CKRM. “Who does that affect? Everybody.

“It’s going to affect the hotel industry. It’s going to affect the restaurant industry. You’re going to start seeing issues with Uber Eats and people handling food. Tim Hortons and Starbucks are not accepting reusable cups anymore.

“This is only going to get more severe, the issues that we’re facing.”

Worldwide, COVID -19 has resulted in more than 400,000 deaths — including nearly 8,000 in Canada and 115,000 in the United States.

And it makes you wonder:

What if more people had emulated Westhead and various health experts by grasping the severity of the pandemic at an earlier juncture?

The sporting world, in particular, was slow to respond.

“On one hand, you have teams saying, ‘Well, if you have underlying conditions or if you’re an elderly person, maybe it’s best if you stay home,’ ” Westhead told the Sportscage.

“To me, that’s almost an abdication of responsibility, because the truth is that even though, with this virus so far, young people are not getting sick and dying, that does not mean they are not carrying the disease, this virus. It serves the public well to remind people of that.

“Even though young people might not be falling ill, they can still be carriers. What better way to spread a virus than to go into an arena where there’s 18,000 people packed, shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow? Everyone is screaming, eating, touching each other to get past each other as you go in and out of aisles.

“I’m not a public-health expert, but the ones I’ve talked to say that this is a real issue and that leagues need to maybe do a little more consulting than they’ve done with public-health officials.”

Or, maybe they could have simply consulted with Rick Westhead.