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MLB player says COVID-19 pandemic ‘has made this baseball season … a risk I am not comfortable taking’
Colorado Rockies outfielder Ian Desmond plans to sit out this season to be with his family and help grow youth baseball in his hometown in Florida.
The 34-year-old Desmond wrote Monday night on Instagram that the “COVID-19 pandemic has made this baseball season one that is a risk I am not comfortable taking.” But the biracial slugger also mentioned a myriad of issues within baseball, including racism, sexism, homophobia and socioeconomic concerns.
“With a pregnant wife and four young children who have lots of questions about what’s going on in the world, home is where I need to be right now,” Desmond wrote on Instagram. “Home for my wife, Chelsey. Home to help. Home to guide. Home to answer my older three boys’ questions about Coronavirus and Civil Rights and life. Home to be their Dad.”
News
10:08 a.m. Nets’ DeAndre Jordan says he has coronavirus, won’t join team in Florida
DeAndre Jordan says he has tested positive for the coronavirus and won’t be joining the Brooklyn Nets in Florida when the NBA season resumes.
Jordan announced his status on Twitter, hours after fellow Nets player Spencer Dinwiddie told The Athletic that he had tested positive and was experiencing symptoms.
They give the Nets at least six players who have tested positive for the virus. The other four were back in March, when Kevin Durant said he was one of them.
Jordan wrote that he had learned of his diagnosis Sunday night after returning to New York and it was confirmed again Monday.
Read the full report here.
9:10 a.m. COVID-19 cases climbing in Texas where top cop went to visit sickened mom
As gun violence gripped Chicago on another summer weekend, Chicago Police Department Supt. David Brown took an impromptu trip to Texas to visit with his mother after she tested positive Friday for COVID-19.
Police spokesman Howard Ludwig said Brown spent a little more than a day in his hometown of Dallas, where he visited his mother through a window.
“The superintendent has complete faith in the leadership team that handles the day-to-day operations of the Chicago Police Department,” Ludwig said.
COVID-19 cases recently have spiked in Texas and other states that have eased restrictions related to the virus, leading officials in that state and others to reverse course. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has acknowledged the state’s rate of infection has taken a “very swift and a very dangerous turn,” noting Sunday that in just weeks ‘‘the daily number of cases [has] gone from an average of about 2,000 to more than 5,000 per day.”
Read the full story from Tom Schuba here.
8:02 a.m. Troubled nursing home tried to boot woman whose daughter criticized facility, suit says
A west suburban nursing home where 12 residents have died of the coronavirus plotted to kick out an elderly woman because her daughter criticized the troubled facility, according to a lawsuit the daughter has filed in Cook County circuit court.
Lottie Smith, 82, was in the Westchester Health and Rehabilitation Center in Westchester in late March when she appeared to be suffering from COVID-19 symptoms, according to the suit her daughter Loretta Brady filed against the nursing home.
“The administrator should have been more attentive to the residents,” according to Brady, who said her mother was diagnosed with the coronavirus, ultimately recovered and remains in the same facility. “Our complaints fell on deaf ears.”
On March 25, Smith was sent to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood with a high fever and difficulty breathing, according to the suit. She returned to the nursing home but again was hospitalized April 26 after falling and having seizures, the lawsuit said, and she fell four more times in May.
Reporter Frank Main has the full story.
New cases
Analysis & Commentary
10:07 a.m. Mandatory college football practices at time of pandemic are nuts
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 over 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.
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?
The university is prepared to risk the lives of the players, but not open itself up to liability.
Read the full op-ed from Jesse Jackson here.
7:48 a.m. Take it from me: COVID-19 is serious
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.
Read the full column from Illinois attorney general Kwame Raoul.
