Riverstone Health President & CEO, John Felton held a press conference to address the concerns that have been raised in relation to the banning of fans and attendees to school sports and activities. However, his answers to the questions he was asked left much of the public dissatisfied.
“One thing that we need to recognize is that, nine months ago, this virus was discovered,” stated Felton. “We don’t have the experience that we do with other diseases. We’ve not done school in the COVID-19 world. We’ve not done athletic activities in the COVID-19 world. Right now we find ourselves at some of the highest levels of cases in regards to cases per day. That has a lot to do with testing and the like, but things are not going well in terms of numbers.”
“One of the things that seems to be quite frustrating to people is that these changes and plans seem to be being made very rapidly,” Felton added. “We at Riverstone Health suggested that we bring all the districts together and let’s see if we can come up with a plan for the county. So on August 4th we had a meeting with everyone, and we talked about what we wanted to accomplish. We were in complete agreement that we wanted only one plan.
“The issue that seems to be particularly distressing is the fan situations.” He said that they considered multiple options including only having household members come, solutions that were found in other counties, having only family members come and more. However, in the meeting there was one question that needed to be answered, and that was how many tickets would be available during the coming seasons? “Two thirds of the people in attendance at the meeting was to say that there would be no people allowed at the game,” Felton said.
“The big concern is, the more we put people together, the higher risk we have of spreading the disease,” he said. “The top priority is finding out how we can allow kids to play, and how we can have kids go to school. The solution was to limit the amount of people attending the sporting events and activities.”
In response to the question of why people were allowed at various events over the summer, but now they cannot during the school season, he attempted to draw a distinction between groups of strangers and groups of friends via the likelihood of people who know each other breaking social distancing more often as opposed to strangers who are less likely to. “If we make it through a few weeks and we actually have teams intact, and we’re not seeing mass groups of cases, then we will consider going to a small number of tickets,” said Felton. “The greatest hope is that we get into school, we keep kids in school, and we start opening things up. Nobody likes not being able to do what we want to do.
Concerns about families missing their seniors’ years and if kids are injured were brought up to which Felton’s response was best summed up with, “we are really just trying to keep our kids in school. Our decision with the athletic directors was to not allow spectators at first and to incrementally allow spectators to attend. Our goal is to keep the degree of spread to the lowest degree possible.” However, as the year goes on, at what point will the restrictions be loosened? Felton’s answer was vague. “With COVID-19 we work in two-week blocks. What does that look like with sports? If we get through three weeks of school with practice, and we are fielding teams and aren’t see any outbreaks with COVID, then we will re-address it.”
That being said, many parents also had questions in regards to the timing of the plan and why was it announced so late. “We had all the athletic directors present, and it was so late because of how late we received word from the MHSA. They had a lot of decisions to make. It took several drafts (from us) that had to be approved (by the schools) to make sure we got to something that we all got on board with. To clarify ‘being on board with’ and thinking it’s great are not the same. No one thought it was great, but we had to ‘be on board’ with it. It was a very busy time and it took some time. I think that there is a general misunderstanding about how uncertain life in the COVID-19 world is. It can change in a moment.”
He continued to explain that the sponsors of earlier summer events as opposed to the school events dictated how those events would play out. “We’ve never done any sports with COVID-19, scholastic sports. If things go well, we will re-address the decision (to allow fans to attend).”
When questioned about the petition that received over 26,000 signatures, he responded by reiterating the numbers. “I was told that only eight thousand of those votes were actually from Yellowstone County. What’s most critical is are we keeping schools open and are we keeping kids safe?”
“Different states have different public health systems, just like different states have different laws,” stated Felton. “We’ve seen differences in how the 50 person maximum rules is interpreted, what think we also need to remember is that Bighorn County also said no sports at all. There are counties that are more restrictive and more that are less restrictive.” He clarified that each county is able to make decisions at a local level. Other states do not have that health system.”
On the issue of masking, “we know what masks do and what masks don’t do. Masks are number 2 line of defense, not number one,” which he said was social distancing. “The risk of the transmission of disease drops by about 80% with the wearing of masks. When and if we can put people in the stands, they need to be wearing masks. We are dealing with a disease that is spread through droplets.”
When posed with the challenging question of why masks don’t seem to be working as well as they were anticipated, his response was once again ambiguous. “If there was a perfect world and everyone social distanced and wore a mask, I believe we would see a dramatic drop in case numbers.”
“The answer to this problem would be to have no sports at all,” added Felton, “but we don’t want to do that. We have no idea what things will be like in three weeks. If things go badly and schools close, we can’t say ‘kids can’t go to school, but they can still play sports.’ There’s a significant risk if we’re not careful that there will be no sports at all. We don’t want to be there. I think that the challenge with this virus is that for many people is it’s not personal. The question is what will it take to make this personal? Will 1,000 people have to die? Will your grandmother have to die?”
“We need to take a look at the big picture,” he added. “If we can’t keep schools open, then we can’t have sports at all. We just need a little more time. The bottom line is that we are living in a world that none of us have experience in. I think with what we have seen in our nation and community is the background level of social stress is extraordinarily high. There’s a lot of issues that have resulted because of this level of stress. Every one of us have been touched by this stress. We have to retain some civility in this. I know that the people who work in public healthcare and the schools are really trying to do the right thing, I know that a lot of people don’t agree with that.” He wrapped up by stating that he has to be concerned with keeping schools open for kids, keeping businesses open, maintaining economic stability, etc. “We have to address all of them (the issues). We can’t let civility leave the building. There are going to be things that we disagree on, but we need to maintain our civility as a community. We have tremendous strength to deal with upcoming issues,
However, fans, parents and sports fanatics are still not happy about the response from their county health officer and responses they have received.
