Take it from me: COVID-19 is serious
My experience with the coronavirus began well before I became infected. Like many, I was caught off guard by the abrupt shift to sheltering in place. And like many, I worried about the impact on my family — especially due to the return of my college-aged children, one of them a senior deeply saddened that his collegiate experience had been cut short and that he had to say goodbye to his friends far sooner than expected.
I was also concerned about the need to balance our office’s responsibility to serve the public with protecting the health and wellness of employees. Throughout the pandemic, some employees have worked remotely. Others continue to report to our offices around the state.
We must now address concerns brought on by the pandemic, such as investigating price-gouging and employers not protecting employees from COVID-19, and defending Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s executive orders against lawsuits.
It has been extremely troubling that this pandemic has disproportionately affected communities of color. The protests for racial justice add to the urgency.
Then recently, I joined the more than 138,500 Illinois residents who have tested positive for COVID-19.
I want to strongly caution all Illinois residents: This virus is serious, and we are not out of the woods just yet.
It started with chills and chattering teeth, followed by a stubborn cough and sore throat. With the weather warming and the state moving into Phase 3, I didn’t immediately assume I had become infected. But as my cough persisted, and my chills became night sweats, I realized I needed medical advice. Upon the advice of my doctor, I took advantage of Northwestern Hospital’s walk-up testing. The next day, I was told I tested positive for COVID-19.
My attention immediately turned to the people I might have exposed. My first concern was for my family. My other concern was for my office and maintaining operations while making sure my staff sought medical advice and self-isolated and got tested if needed. We are following public health guidelines to clean and sterilize our Thompson Center offices while staff who have had regular, in-person contact with me work from home.
I also notified the organizers of events I attended, as well as some of the attendees so that they could self-isolate and seek medical advice.
As for myself, I have self-isolated in my bedroom and joined those working from home. I have been frustrated by my confinement and the exhaustion that makes phone calls or Zoom meetings feel like I just played a basketball game. My symptoms, while extremely uncomfortable at times, were mild, and I did not have to be hospitalized. I feel fortunate to not have experienced some of the severe symptoms. I want to issue a strong warning: COVID-19 is not gone.
We all need to listen to the experts to curb the spread of COVID-19 and prevent our loved ones and neighbors from getting sick. I understand and empathize with businesses that have had to close and the thousands of people who have been unable to work. Please know your tremendous sacrifice has helped prevent further loss of life in our state. My infection has reaffirmed for me that no matter how much I may desire to return to normal life, the precautions we’ve taken over the past few months have saved lives and prepared us to care for those suffering symptoms far more severe than mine. Take it from me: Even a taste of what this virus can do will persuade you not to let your guard down just yet.
The NCAA has just ruled that mandatory football practices can begin in July, anticipating a full season of college football. This is nuts. The pandemic isn’t going away; it’s surging in more than 29 states, with seven reporting new records for cases in a day. States that opened early without adequate safeguards — Texas, Florida, Arizona — now face a spread of the pandemic that may soon exhaust the supply of hospital beds. Deaths are now more than 125,000. Increasing numbers of young people are contracting the disease, presumably because of the lack of social distancing, the scorn for masks that has accompanied the reopening in many states — and, of course, in the White House itself.
The experience of Texas, Florida and Arizona in reopening suggests that it may not even be safe to reopen college campuses with thousands of students gathering together in dorms, classes, parties and bars, much less begin practices on a football field.
In the so-called “voluntary workouts” that some schools began in June, dozens of players have already tested positive. UNLV suspended on-campus workouts when four athletes tested positive for the virus. Texas Tech reports 23 players have tested positive; Clemson reports 37 football players and 47 cases in all among athletes. And now the NCAA says it’s time to open mandatory workouts.
Football is a physical contact sport. The coronavirus is transmittable through respiratory droplets. If an infected athlete wipes his nose or mouth between plays or takes out his mouth guard, he has the virus on his hands that will be in repeated contact with other players. Does anyone doubt that the virus will spread like wildfire once mandatory camps and contact drills begin?
To discount this reality, we hear a lot of gibberish. The athletes will be tested regularly, we’re told, and isolated, traced and quarantined if they have the disease. How regularly? Well, daily would be optimal — that is what wealthy professional teams are talking about doing — but few if any universities can afford that. So some will test weekly, some only if an athlete exhibits symptoms, even though young people are often asymptomatic. No wonder Ohio State University is forcing players and their parents to sign an “acknowledgment-of-risk waiver.”
The university is prepared to risk the lives of the players but not open itself up to liability.
We’re told: “College athletes in general are a young, healthy population in relation to the general public. They are usually well-equipped to fight off the infection physically unscathed.” Usually. But we’re learning that even those who survive the virus are often scarred with weak lungs or bad hearts.
The watchword, we’re told, is “flexibility.”
Second- and third-string players have to be ready to step in at any time. “This scenario,” one doctor wrote, ‘‘would be analogous to spraining an ankle or pulling a hamstring during warmups and suddenly needing to sit out the next one to three games.”
No, a sprained ankle does not put a life at risk. A pulled hamstring is painful but not as lasting as a damaged lung or weakened heart. Sprained ankles and pulled hamstrings aren’t contagious. We’re not talking about “flexibility’’; we’re talking about irresponsibility.
Many of the football players in Division I schools come from low-income families. Many depend on their scholarship to pay for their schooling. Now they are asked to risk their lives for their sport.
I believe that this college football season should be postponed. It can’t be played in a “bubble,” as Dr. Anthony Fauci suggests. And we’ve already got vivid proof of how vulnerable the players are to the virus.
But if the NCAA and the universities are intent on playing despite the risk — driven, no doubt, by the billions of dollars at risk if the season is called off — they should at the very minimum give the players and their parents a real choice. Every player should be given the choice of whether to play or not, with their scholarship sustained no matter what decision they make. Every player and their families should be guaranteed free health care if they contract the virus. No player should be extorted to put his or her life at risk in order to get the education that they have earned.
In this time of Black Lives Matter protests, the lives of these young athletes — Black, white, Brown and yellow, male and female — must matter. If the NCAA isn’t responsible enough to suspend the season, it should at the very least require that every athlete be given a choice about whether to take the risk, without losing the scholarship that has been promised to them.
EVERY PLAYER AND THEIR FAMILIES SHOULD BE GUARANTEED FREE HEALTH CARE IF THEY CONTRACT THE VIRUS. NO PLAYER SHOULD BE EXTORTED TO PUT HIS OR HER LIFE AT RISK IN ORDER TO GET THE EDUCATION THAT THEY HAVE EARNED.