Daily Archives: June 19, 2020

Clemson University, college football, health issues, public health

3x UPDATED: BREAKING: 21 Clemson football players reportedly have coronavirus

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3rd UPDATE: 9:40 p.m. EDT: CNN has a list that as of this afternoon included 13 total schools where student-athletes are dealing with coronavirus.

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2nd UPDATE: 9:36 p.m. EDT: Multiple athletes at the University of Mississippi remain in quarantine.

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UPDATE: 9:28 p.m. EDT: Keep your updates coming! I’ve added Texas Tech, SMU, Kansas State, Michigan State, and Arkansas State to the list. These schools report that more than just football players have either symptoms of coronavirus or have been diagnosed with it.

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ORIGINAL POST: ESPN reported on Friday evening that 21 Clemson University football players have come down with coronavirus.

Work your way down the story and you find this:

While the state of South Carolina reported its highest number of total positive tests and highest percentage of positive tests to date on Friday, the rate of positive tests at Clemson in the past week is nearly double the national average.

I’m trying to keep track of all reported coronavirus outbreaks during this period in which college football players were allowed to return to campus for voluntary workouts.

My (incomplete?) list now includes Houston, Central Florida, Texas, and the University of Texas-San Antonio.

Have I missed any? If so, please post a link in the reply box.

Florida, health issues, Major League Baseball, National Hockey League, public health

UPDATED: BREAKING: 13 members of MLB and NHL teams contract coronavirus

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UPDATE: 3:12 pm. EDT: The Toronto Blue Jays have closed their spring training camp in Dunedin, which is less than three miles from the Phillies’ location in Clearwater, FL.

ORIGINAL POST: The Tampa Bay Lightning and the Philadelphia Phillies — both of which had camps open in Florida — are in shut down mode after a combined 13 members of their organizations came down wit coronavirus.

The Lightning reported five cases, three players and two staff. The Phillies reported eight cases, five players and three staff.

The Lightning’s camp is in Tampa, while the Phillies were at the spring training location in nearby Clearwater.

African Americans, America, culture, racism, United States

Addressing racial inequality

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Getting rid of Aunt Jemima on the label.

Making Juneteenth a holiday.

Posting BLM on your website.

Taking down statues honoring Confederate or racist “heroes.”

Symbolic gestures that address the racial inequality that exists in the United States.

Don’t misunderstand me: symbolic gestures make a statement, but they must backed by meaningful policy, hiring or legislative changes. To borrow a cliche, if you are going to talk the talk (symbolic acts), then you’d better walk the walk (meaningful acts).

When systemic racism is chipped away, one policy, hiring practice or legislative decision at a time, then real change will start happening.

Consider data I gathered from the June 13th edition of the Economist:

-Four of the Fortune 500 CEOs are Black

-Median Black family income is 60% lower than Whites’

-Whites have ten times the net worth of Blacks

-Black unemployment consistently is double that for Whites

-Research suggests 75% of Whites have no Blacks in their social circle

-79% of Black professionals in the Midwest say they’ve been victimized by prejudice at work

When meaningful changes occur — one after another, like the freight train that seems to go on forever as it rolls down the track with one full car after another — then we can be confident the day will come that systemic racism will collapse upon itself.

We are nowhere near that point.