Recent editorials from West Virginia newspapers:
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Dec. 1
The Herald-Dispatch on this year’s high school football season in West Virginia and the difficult choices schools might be facing after the coronavirus pandemic:
The 2020 high school football season has ended in West Virginia with the meekest of whimpers. Champions were decided not on the playing field but by the state Department of Education’s color-coded map.
The result is the Secondary Schools Activities Commission pronounced South Charleston as the champion of Class AAA, Fairmont Senior in Class AA and St. Marys in Class A. Athletes in Cabell, Wayne and other counties weren’t allowed to compete for titles for reasons having nothing to do with their abilities on the field, while athletes in other counties were.
Athletes, coaches, fans and sports writers can argue about whether this action by the SSAC was justified. The bigger picture here is that it exemplifies the sometimes organized, sometimes chaotic situation that West Virginia’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been and what may be yet to come.
Here’s the thing: The number of known incidences of people testing positive for the novel coronavirus has been increasing for a while. There’s a lot of wiggle room in that statement - “known” and “testing positive” among them - but it’s the fact we have to work with. How many of us know someone who has spent time in a hospital in the past six weeks because of a COVID-19 infection? How many of us know someone who has lost a friend or relative to the disease? The chances are that number has spiked upward in the past month and a half.
COVID-19 is not something to panic over, as some simple steps should be able to slow its spread. But it’s nothing to ignore or treat as a hoax, either. Professional sports leagues can put their teams in bubbles to protect them during their postseasons. Some universities might be able to do that, but high schools certainly don’t have the financial resources to do so.
It goes beyond athletics, of course. Soon we should know whether West Virginia’s school children have suffered a lost year because remote learning is not for them. Many children may have to do the school year over. The former term was “failing a year.” Then it was “held back.” A new term might be “reset” or something similar to remove the stigma of having to repeat a year of school once classes return to normal.
There’s a lot to talk about the lessons we as a society have learned from this pandemic - preparedness, trust in institutions and protection of basic rights during an emergency that never seems to end. That discussion will come later.
It’s important to not get sidetracked. Losing a year of sports is one thing. Losing a year of education is another. School officials are doing their best, but that might not be enough for some children for reasons out of the schools’ control. Difficult and unpopular decisions could be coming. We might as well brace ourselves for them now.
Online: https://www.herald-dispatch.com/
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Nov. 30
The Journal on West Virginia’s COVID-19 data:
We have been critical at times of online efforts in West Virginia to keep the public informed about the situation regarding COVID-19. Sometimes, statistics posted on the state websites lag significantly behind what actually has happened, we pointed out.
Those in charge of updating the COVID-19 website need help. In West Virginia, some critical data - namely, how hard the virus is hitting nursing homes - is being updated only once a week.
That will not do.
We mean that not as criticism of the men and women in both states who are working hard to keep up with the epidemic numbers. Instead, it is recognition that through no fault of their own, they are in over their heads.
They need help.
Public health agencies throughout the nation are in similar straits. They were structured and staffed to deal with well-baby clinics, vaccinations for childhood diseases, restaurant inspections and other normal-times tasks. Their warnings that the nation was not prepared for a full-scale epidemic were ignored for years.
Now the enemy is not just at the gates, it has breached them.
West Virginians are being given the information we need regarding the coronavirus epidemic.
Clearly, those who are collecting, processing and posting important statistics online need assistance. That may require paying some temporary employees to provide help. It may mean reaching into agencies not normally involved in public health for expertise in dealing with data.
It will require treating the information gap as the serious challenge it is. Gov. Jim Justice should issue whatever orders are needed to bring the process of keeping the public informed up to the speed to which COVID-19 has accelerated. Public health agencies throughout the nation are in similar straits. They were structured and staffed to deal with well-baby clinics, vaccinations for childhood diseases, restaurant inspections and other normal-times tasks. Their warnings that the nation was not prepared for a full-scale epidemic were ignored for years.
Online: https://www.journal-news.net/
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Nov. 27
The Charleston Gazette-Mail on the college football season:
As college football is now deep into its coronavirus-shortened season, it’s too late to put on the brakes. Handling a sport that involves large groups of players and coaches in close quarters, traveling and physically colliding with each other has been something of a roller coaster.
West Virginia University’s football program is the latest to be affected by COVID-19. The Mountaineers’ highly anticipated matchup with the Oklahoma Sooners was pushed from this weekend to Dec. 12, after Oklahoma paused football operations because of COVID-19 cases detected in its program.
The Mountaineers were hardly the first team to have scheduling issues because of the pandemic that, as of Friday, had killed more than 263,000 Americans.
In the Big 10, Wisconsin missed games earlier in the season when more than 20 players and coaches tested positive. Clemson quarterback, Heisman candidate and likely top NFL prospect Trevor Lawrence missed crucial games after testing positive and suffering some symptoms of the virus.
Nick Saban, head coach of the top-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide, tested positive for the virus early in the season, but managed to coach a game that weekend. This week, Saban contracted COVID-19 and is reportedly suffering from mild symptoms. The Southeastern Conference has had weekends where only about half of the games scheduled were played because of the virus.
These things were bound to happen once the decision to play was made, even with no or limited numbers of fans permitted at the games. Similar, although more isolated, delays have occurred in the NFL, and high school football in West Virginia has seen forfeits in the state playoffs because of outbreaks in a given county.
Certainly, things could have been worse. Of course, with more than a month of college football to go and two months of NFL games remaining, the worst could still happen.
And more sports are starting to enter the mix. While West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice delayed the start of high school winter sports such as basketball until Jan. 11, college hoops has tipped off. It’s a dangerous time in the Mountain State, as the virus is now accelerating at an alarming rate, with about 1,000 new cases a day and record-high active cases and hospitalizations.
The question remains whether playing football - at any level - was the right thing to do. No one will really know until all the seasons have wrapped, and there’s been some time to get perspective and look at the situation as a whole. It’s doubtful it could’ve been handled any better than it has at the collegiate and professional levels. Whether the health risk was acceptable to justify play in the first place is moot right now, and ultimately will be judged by history.
Online: https://www.wvgazettemail.com/
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