Breaking down today’s press conference, 2 things are clear. Wolf wants kids in school, and fall sports can go on. Wolf also backed off his “strong recommendation

Tagged under: News

Billy Splain | August 13, 2020

“I’m sorry, that’s my recommendation. You do what you want, and school districts are going to do what they want.”  That was the main take away in today’s press conference from Governor Wolf in the front of a Central York YMCA (more on this location below**) when asked about his recommendation that no sports should happen until Jan 1, 2021. Well, not really, there’s more. But today’s press conference seemed like a big win for high school sports to continue in Pennsylvania.  Let’s break it down:

After today’s press conference, there were several items noticed. One was very evident, the world “strongly” which Governor Wolf used after that press conference has now been replaced with basically “my” recommendation, which we’ll identify with bold blue text and our observations green.

Another thing to notice is the amount of times he said we need to get our kids back to school…we’ll use red for that

Sports is still the biggest thing we’re hearing about right now. We had viewers ask why Georgia is an example and not another state as to why we are we not having sports.?

Wolf: “I’m not sure that Georgia was on my mind Pennsylvania has not made any recommendations. I was asked at the last press conference on the last question what I thought about fall sports and I said I would recommend that we don’t have them. My daughter went to Northeastern York County school, and they were athletes, their sport was cross country and you’d think Cross country is one of those sports least likely to have a spread but all of us parents would congregate at the finish line and spectators and that’s a place for the virus to spread.

At this point we have to note that the PIAA has said they would be willing to hold sports without spectators.  As far as the finish line, parents are smart and can follow guidelines and I’m sure would. 

Wolf continued

“But we have to be focused on is trying to get our kids back to learning. And to get an education. Anything we do that interferes with that in the short run we ought to be careful about doing it and so transporting people for whatever reason across county boundaries or for whatever reason to the extent that we do those things whether it’s a recommendation or a direct order, as we do those things we make it harder and harder and harder for our kids to get an education. We NEED them to be IN SCHOOL. We need them to get back to learning. And every time we do something that interferes with that we’re doing all of Pennsylvania a disservice. That’s where that come from.”

We’ll stop here again because as a sports enthusiast and someone who believes in education, I’m not sure where he’s going here.  In all my years I’ve always known sports to enhance education, give kids a purpose, reason to study and do good.  After all, how many times have we heard that “get those grades up or you’re sitting line” be effective? But again, get them in school was apparent. 

Wolf:

“I also want to get back to something else. All of Pennsylvania has had a resurgence. That’s why were doing it we’re doing right now. We were down to three 400 cases a day and now were back up to eight 900 cases a day. There’s a resurgence in the summer.  So I took steps lake with restaurants and bar to restrict access to those things. They have had an impact so we are having fewer and fewer cases all this was caused by an uptick.”  (we’ll come back to that).

“The guidance that we gave for schools again were recommendations. We will use all the information and again we categorize all counties and three different tears is low medium and substantial risk. Right now most of the counties are in moderate risk there’s a big chunk, like 20, that are in lower risk and there’s only one in the substantial risk. We are looking to counties and we’re trying to help guide those counties to make the decisions they can at the local level.”

The Letter from the PIAA:

Wolf:

“I think it I haven’t seen it but I think I did get the letter and we are in touch with the PIAA but again we’re trying to do everything we can to get our kids back to learning and I don’t see how transporting kids that age back-and-forth across county borders is going to help mitigate the disease. So let’s put that on pause and  focus should be on learning and anything that interferes with that we have to be careful. Now again what I did was just give a recommendation. I’m a parent. My kids went to school my kids, were PIAA athletes. This is my recommendation (laughing) I also recommended central Pennsylvanians avoid going to the Jersey shore. Again, you know what you want, and I know what I want.  This is MY recommendation. It was then and still is.”

PIAA and what can they present?

Wolf

“I’m not sure what they could say that would make me change of what my sense of what I believe is right, now again they have their right to make the decision on their own, I recognize that Maybe I’m governor, but I’m one person that has an opinion on what we ought to do here.” but I think that we have to stage just re-opening, and to do that I think it’s going to require really robust testing regime, where we can get results quickly and we could apply the test easily and contact tracing. We’re building capacity in both those areas right now. We’re not there yet. New Zealand has made a big deal that they’re back to normal there, dancing and going to movie theaters not wearing masks which is great, but they’re an island can isolate themselves we can’t do that here.”

Lets stop here for a moment. Remember this line from above? There’s a resurgence in the summer.  So I took steps lake with restaurants and bar to restrict access to those things. They have had an impact so we are having fewer and fewer cases all this was caused by an uptick.”  We’ll, in the next line he deflects blame for the resurgence to , you guessed it, other states:

Wolf”

“The resurgence didn’t happen here in Pennsylvania because of something we did or didn’t do, it happened because people are coming in and bringing stuff with them from the south and the southwest. So when I do when I make a recommendation I’m always trying to do the best thing I can. But I’m using my experience as a father here that I’m not sure that I am setting up my priorities family here, I put education up there above cross country.”

Controlled atmosphere in school vs club:

Wolf:

“I think we can develop a hierarchy of what’s safer and what’s perfectly safe is  isolating yourself at home we don’t want to do that. we want to get back to school. We want to get back to all the things that are really essential for citizens, our kids and ourselves. I think as we develop a hierarchy we have to put the most important things at the top of the hierarchy to make difficult decisions of what might be less important.”

Levine on data. What are you hearing about data and kids being stuck at home and how dangerous that can be.

Levine: “The issue in Georgia that you mentioned is a specific article on the CDC about a specific camp in Georgia where there was a lot of activities and there was widespread transmission and many kids got sick and lots of kids were quarantined. The government recommendation included those recreational sports. It wasn’t just a recommendation for PIAA it was also a recommendation for all leagues to suspend until January 1 so it was comprehensive.”

So we’ve actually found a study of what happened at that camp. They aren’t really sure of how many were infected before arriving but didn’t show symptoms and how many were infected after the camp was abruptly stopped and they were sent home.  Levine’s data is incorrect here because several articles state that most were asymptomatic and the most they saw was a few sore throats or “documented” fever.  https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6931e1.htm What the investigation concluded with was that basically “Relatively large cohorts sleeping in the same cabin and engaging in regular singing and cheering likely contributed to transmission” hardly the definition of what high school sports teams go through.

More Levine:
“We don’t have a lot of granular data. Or quantitative data from the contact tracing. There hasn’t been that much activity but there has been some but not like we see in the fall. And so kids are not back in school and they’re not in school sports. So I can’t have the data about that until that would happen.” 

Ok, at this point it’s glaringly obvious that this administration hasn’t stepped outside of their homes except to attend press conferences at a **YMCA** that has hosted MANY club activities throughout the summer. At this point, we’ve got sports teams from all three seasons playing on a regular basis (softball, baseball, running, 7v7, basketball, nearly every football team working out together, club soccer, wrestling tournaments, all travelling throughout the state, by the 100’s of thousands.  There are races with packed stands, demolition derby’s, and many more events being held with huge crowds.  If we’re going to follow the scientific data, should it not say that we should be seeing thousands of new cases daily according to the tracing, which Levine says they haven’t seen?

Then, after that revelation, we once again hear that they aren’t using data from PA to make recommendations, it’s coming from elsewhere, which, was literally decided in the last couple days so how this comes into play with last weeks recommendation I’m still trying to piece together.

Levine again: “There is data from some other states but also we’re making the same recommendation that the governor or based upon  the same evidence that Penn State just canceled sports until January 1 , the Big Ten just canceled all sports until January 1 but the PAC 12 just canceled all sports until January 1 and so it’s the same data about the contagiousness of the virus about the impact on children which we are seeing more and more states. The idea that children do not get sick from this is untrue but some have gotten very sick. the idea. That children do not get sick from this is untrue. that they can’t have a serious side effects is untrue. Also children can come back to adults who can get very sick and then they have contact with other adults.” 

Again, most data on most sites, including the CDC, shows that the overall majority of children are rarely affected by covid-19. Yes, they do get infected, but hospitalizations of children during the entire pandemic are less than 1% of all hospitalizations due to covid-19, with only 19 children under the age of 18 dying from the virus, most had other health issues

Wolf: “When my daughters ran there were clusters of runners. The priority is education it’s not sports. I made a recommendation to my wife about my two daughters but I think that’s how we are to be thinking as Pennsylvanians.”

That’s my break down with comments and opinions. I’m extremely baffled at the flip flop of this administration at the expense of the mental well being of our youth. What IS apparent to us is that Governor Wolf was backing off his “strong” recommendation from a week ago and now is calling it what HE would recommend.  My opinion of the data being used by Levine to make determinations is, well, non existent.

To this point, I hope the PIAA comes out strong and recommends schools continue to use the plans they created for fall sports, recommends to all those schools who have cancelled or postponed fall sports awaiting further clearance from the governor, to return to sports for the mental well being and overall safety of many athletes and continues to fight to get this administration to allow fans in the stadiums.  The data they’re NOT using, i.e. what really IS taking place in the youth sports world right now, would show them it can be done.

Follow PA Football News on Twitter @PaFootballNews