The financial fallout of covid-19 has pushed child hunger to record levels.

This article was published on Thursday, March 18, 2021 in Kaiser Health News. This story also ran on USA Today and GateHouse Media.

By Laura Ungar

Alexandra Sierra carried boxes of food to her kitchen counter, where her 7-year-old daughter, Rachell, stirred a pitcher of lemonade.

“Oh, my God, it smells so good!” Sierra, 39, said of the bounty she’d just picked up at a food pantry, pulling out a ready-made salad and a container of soup.

Sierra unpacked the donated food and planned lunch for Rachell and her siblings, ages 9 and 2, as a reporter watched through FaceTime. She said she doesn’t know what they’d do without the help.

The family lives in Bergen County, New Jersey, a dense grouping of 70 municipalities opposite Manhattan with about 950,000 people whose median household income ranks in the top 1% nationally. But Sierra and her husband, Aramon Morales, never earned a lot of money and are now out of work because of the pandemic.

The financial fallout of covid-19 has pushed child hunger to record levels. The need has been dire since the pandemic began and highlights the gaps in the nation’s safety net.

While every U.S. county has seen hunger rates rise, the steepest jumps have been in some of the wealthiest counties, where overall affluence obscures the tenuous finances of low-wage workers. Such sudden and unprecedented surges in hunger have overwhelmed many rich communities, which weren’t nearly as ready to cope as places that have long dealt with poverty and were already equipped with robust, organized charitable food networks.

Data from the anti-hunger advocacy group Feeding America and the U.S. Census Bureau shows that counties seeing the largest estimated increases in child food insecurity in 2020 compared with 2018 generally have much higher median household incomes than counties with the smallest increases. In Bergen, where the median household income is $101,144, child hunger is estimated to have risen by 136%, compared with 47% nationally.

That doesn’t mean affluent counties have the greatest portion of hungry kids. An estimated 17% of children in Bergen face hunger, compared with a national average of around 25%.

But help is often harder to find in wealthier places. Missouri’s affluent St. Charles County, north of St. Louis, population 402,000, has seen child hunger rise by 69% and has 20 sites distributing food from the St. Louis Area Foodbank. The city of St. Louis, pop. 311,000, has seen child hunger rise by 36% and has 100 sites.

“There’s a huge variation in how different places are prepared or not prepared to deal with this and how they’ve struggled to address it,” said Erica Kenney, assistant professor of public health nutrition at Harvard University. “The charitable food system has been very strained by this.”

Eleni Towns, associate director of the No Kid Hungry campaign, said the pandemic “undid a decade’s worth of progress” on reducing food insecurity, which last year threatened at least 15 million kids.

And while President Joe Biden’s covid relief plan, which he signed into law March 11, promises to help with anti-poverty measures such as monthly payments to families of up to $300 per child this year, it’s unclear how far the recently passed legislation will go toward addressing hunger.

“It’s definitely a step in the right direction,” said Marlene Schwartz, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut. “But it’s hard to know what the impact is going to be.”

Need Grows in Places of Plenty

After the pandemic struck, the federal government boosted benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and offered Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer cards to compensate for free or reduced-price school meals while children were schooled from home.

Sierra’s family saw their SNAP benefits of about $800 a month rise slightly and got two of those P-EBT payments, worth $434 each. But at the same time, they lost their main sources of income. Sierra had to leave her Amazon warehouse job when the kids’ school went remote, and Morales stopped driving for Uber when trips became scarce and he feared getting covid on top of his asthma.

Federal relief wasn’t enough for them and many others. So they flocked to food pantries.

In theory, pantries and the food banks that supply them are part of an emergency system designed for short-term crises, Schwartz said. “The problem is, they’ve actually become a standard source of food for a lot of people.”

In Bergen County, the Center for Food Action helped 40,500 households last year, up from 23,000 the year before. In Eagle County, Colorado, where the tony ski resort Vail is located, the Community Market food bank saw its client load nearly quadruple to 4,000. And outside Boston, in the affluent Massachusetts county of Norfolk — where Feeding America data shows child hunger jumped from an estimated 6% of kids to 16% — Dedham Food Pantry’s clients tripled to 1,800.

“This is just out of control compared to other times,” said Lynn Rogal, vice president of the Dedham pantry, which opened in 1990.

Pantry managers said a disproportionate number of clients are from minority groups. Many lost jobs in the eviscerated service sector that undergirds the wealthier parts of their counties. Julie Yurko, CEO of the Northern Illinois Food Bank, said up to half of her current clients have never sought help before.

“In early January, we had a white minivan pull up with three kids, 5 and younger. It ran out of gas sitting there,” Yurko said. “The mom was sobbing, and her beautiful children were sitting there watching her.”

Kelly Sirimoglu, spokesperson for New Jersey’s Center for Food Action, said the stigma around seeking help can be worse in wealthy areas. She said some people tell her, “I never thought I would be in line for food.”

Advocates said the reluctance to seek help means the need is likely even larger than it appears.

Katie Wilson of St. Charles, Missouri, said she heard about a food pantry run by the Sts. Joachim & Ann Care Service from a friend of a friend. She almost didn’t go. The single mom of two children, 11 and 9, lost her job as a hotel auditor in June and tried to squeak by without her income for two months.

“We found ourselves in a situation where it was a ‘heat or eat’ kind of thing,” said Wilson, 42, describing having to choose between heating her home or buying food. “It took me looking around and saying, ‘There is nothing to eat.’”

Struggling to Meet the Need

As hunger has become more visible, donations to food charities have risen. But they don’t address the core problem of an infrastructure that doesn’t match the new need. Some pantries are open just a few hours a week in church basements, a far cry from those that operate regularly and look like supermarkets. Many small pantries struggled to shift to outdoor food distribution during the pandemic or find new helpers when the few, often senior, volunteers felt unsafe doing the work.

“It definitely is harder in these places,” said Yurko, whose food bank distributes to Kendall County, Illinois, which has just three pantries for its population of 129,000. “The safety nets are not as robust.”

A strong safety net also requires pantries to cooperate with one another and the broader array of local social services. That’s been happening for years in Flint, Michigan, said Denise Diller, executive director of Crossover Downtown Outreach Ministry, which runs a pantry. Agencies and community leaders banded together in 2014 when lead poisoned the drinking water.

“When covid occurred, we were already kind of ready,” Diller said.

So was Atlanta. As in Flint, hunger was never hidden there; 15% of children in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, faced hunger before the pandemic. After covid suspended volunteer shifts, the Atlanta Community Food Bank asked the Georgia National Guard to help sort, pack, warehouse and deliver food to help meet the needs of the estimated 22% of kids experiencing hunger. The food bank also partnered with seven school districts on more than 30 mobile pantries.

Such coordination and connections were lacking in Bergen County, where 80 pantries worked mostly in isolation when the pandemic hit, County Commissioner Tracy Zur said. “They weren’t collaborating. They were going along the same path they had for decades,” she said. “There was this need to break out of the old way of doing things and work together to be more impactful.”

Zur spearheaded the creation of a food security task force in July, reaching out to municipal and faith leaders. Goals include feeding people, connecting them to other services and turning some emergency food programs into full-fledged pantries. “Building an infrastructure is painstaking and ongoing,” she said.

Now, Zur said, pantries are starting to share with one another when one gets a large donation of perishable items such as eggs or milk.

With the need so widespread, residents do much the same.

During a recent pantry trip, Sierra, the New Jersey mom, opened the trunk of her 1999 Toyota and rummaged through the two big boxes volunteers had just placed there. She pointed to eggs, chicken, bread, butter, cheese and apples, observing, “I have more than I need.”

But she said it would never go to waste. Any extra would go to neighbors and their hungry children.

At a time when millions of Californians were trolling websites for hours to find vaccination slots, Long Beach, which has its own health department separate from the rest of Los Angeles County, aimed to simplify the process.

This article was published on Thursday, March 18, 2021 in Kaiser Health News.

By Lori Basheda

LONG BEACH, Calif. — Cristina Davila wasn't used to being happy about waiting in line.

As a server at the Navy Proof Restaurant and Bar, the specter of COVID has weighed heavily on her mind for the past several months. Davila has been especially worried about the possibility of bringing the virus home to her young son and diabetic mother.

And here she was, standing outside the Long Beach Convention Center with hundreds of other Long Beach residents and workers, about to receive a coveted COVID vaccine — even though she's only 31.

"It's like a relief, I would say," she said. "I'm excited."

The occasion: a super-sized vaccine clinic just for food workers. The March 5 date offered 3,000 slots to restaurant workers, bodega and market employees, cooks or anyone else in the city's food business.

The vaccine clinic that day, which the city has followed by dedicating more shots to food and other essential workers, was an attempt to help safely reopen Long Beach restaurants while providing a giant thank-you to people who've been risking illness to keep the city fed, said Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia.

At a time when millions of Californians were trolling websites for hours to find vaccination slots, Long Beach, which has its own health department separate from the rest of Los Angeles County, aimed to simplify the process, at least for a few vulnerable groups.

"Food workers have been working nonstop since the start of this pandemic and they deserve to feel safe when they go to work to serve their community," said Garcia, whose mother and stepfather died of COVID in July.

Jennifer Rice Epstein, a spokesperson for the city health department, encouraged Long Beach residents and workers to register at longbeach.gov/vaxLB for one of 3,000 vaccine appointments the city is offering daily to employees in these sectors: food service, healthcare, agriculture, emergency response, education, janitorial services — and anyone 65 or older.

In addition to the 3,000 appointments, the city holds an additional 500 spots open each day for city residents and workers without appointments — as long as they show a pay stub or other proof they are in a priority tier.

Long Beach's century-old health department has established relationships with schools, nonprofit partners and businesses that have built up a level of trust that makes it easier to organize such campaigns, Rice Epstein said.

The city of 466,000 was also one of the first in the state to send mobile clinics to vaccinate residents with physical and mental disabilities, she said. The city also offered to send a vaccinating team out to any qualified person who can't physically reach the convention center. As of March 15, the roughly 20% of city residents who'd gotten at least one shot was similar to the overall rate in the state.

Online registration for vaccination for the food service clinic at the convention center filled quickly. By the time the event opened at 11 a.m., a line of hundreds snaked around one side of the convention center's Terrace Theater, where the shots were administered.

"I feel lucky," said Eric Bohay, 28, who has asthma and works at the grocery pickup counter at a Target store. "I'm in close contact with customers on a daily basis. I take as many precautions as I can, but you never really know what's out there."

Food service workers have been plagued by COVID during the pandemic. One study conducted at the University of California-San Francisco found that deaths of food workers in restaurants, food production and agriculture jumped 39% from March to October 2020. Adults with COVID were twice as likely to have dined out in a restaurant in the two weeks before they showed signs of illness, according to a CDC study, suggesting that the virus lingers in the air where servers, cooks and bussers spend many hours a day.

Those in line expressed some nervousness about the vaccine. "People are saying different things about how they feel after" getting the shot, said Sydney Tripoli.

The 21-year-old photographed rock bands in Orange County and Los Angeles before the pandemic shut down live events. Then she took a job at Ahimsa Vegan Cafe on Fourth Street in Long Beach. She was hoping a vaccination would bring her a step closer to returning to photo gigs.

City officials had phoned and emailed managers and owners of food enterprises — from grocery stores to bars and restaurants — encouraging them to invite their employees to sign up.

That's how Andrew Anderson found out. Anderson, 37, owns the Spicy Kitchen, which makes hot sauces, rubs and pickles for restaurants and markets.

"I was super excited because I do work with a lot of grocery stores and vendors, so I am exposed to a lot of people," he said. He ended up chatting with an industry friend who was also in the vaccination line.

"I feel like I won the lottery," said his friend Lance Todd, a 52-year-old bartender at The Brit, an LGBTQ bar in Long Beach. "My husband can't get a shot yet, so at least this is better than neither one of us having it."

This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Healthcare Foundation.

There's sharp debate among physicians about whether wide use of heparin is effective, worth the cost and safe, since it carries the risk of bleeding

This article was published on Wednesday, March 17, 2021 in Kaiser Health News.

By Harris Meyer

Nearly all women who deliver babies through cesarean section at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City receive injections of the blood thinner heparin for weeks after the procedure, to prevent potentially life-threatening blood clots.

Obstetric leaders there say that's good medical practice because the formation of those clots, called venous thromboembolism or VTE, though uncommon, is a leading cause of maternal death after delivery, particularly C-section delivery. Broad use of heparin has been shown to be effective and safe in the United Kingdom in reducing that risk and should be adopted in the U.S., they argue.

But there's sharp debate among physicians about whether wide use of heparin is effective, worth the cost and safe, since it carries the risk of bleeding. Last year, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine recommended heparin only for women at elevated risk of VTE, citing a lack of evidence supporting near-universal use.

The controversy illustrates a classic dilemma for physicians: whether and how to adopt promising new treatments before studies have proven their safety and effectiveness. There also are questions about keeping drug company funding from influencing clinical recommendations around the drug.

The Columbia doctors were lead authors of 2016 guidelines from the National Partnership for Maternal Safety — a multidisciplinary group of medical experts — encouraging doctors to give heparin shots to all women after C-sections, except patients with specific risks. Previously, only a small percentage of mothers received them. Nearly 1.2 million U.S. women deliver via C-section each year.

Other U.S. physician groups generally promote heparin use only for women with a personal or family history of deep vein thrombosis or blood clots in the lungs, called pulmonary embolism, or other high-risk factors. They are estimated to make up less than 5% of pregnant or postpartum women.

Despite gaps in evidence, experts said, the use of heparin has increased across the U.S. since the 2016 guidelines came out, though practices vary widely among doctors and hospitals. One reason for the rise is that more women giving birth have risk factors for VTE, such as obesity and older age.

"We have to make sure we're doing everything possible to reduce preventable maternal death," said Dr. Mary D'Alton, chairperson of obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University and lead author of the 2016 guidelines. She called heparin treatment "very reasonable" after a cesarean delivery.

One of her co-authors has had second thoughts, however.

"I'd have to agree with some of the critics that there isn't solid evidence we should be giving heparin to as many patients as we do here at Columbia," said Dr. Richard Smiley, an anesthesiologist. "I'd probably want to take a step back. But physicians are willing to be a little more aggressive on this because maternal death is so traumatizing."

The deputy editor of BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology scathingly compared widespread use of heparin for post-delivery patients to debunked obstetric practices of the past like enemas and pubic hair shaving. In a 2018 editorial, he suggested that obstetricians deserved a "booby prize" for adopting this practice without adequate scientific evidence.

One big reason for the lack of evidence is that it's a difficult issue to study, because VTE is relatively rare in women during pregnancy and after delivery, with an estimated incidence of 1 in 1,500 patients. A 2014 study found that out of 466,000 women who delivered through C-section and received the standard nondrug therapy of pneumatic compression devices applied to the legs to reduce clotting risk, just one woman died from pulmonary embolism.

"If those data are valid, and heparin were 50% effective in preventing fatal embolism, we'd have to treat almost 1 million women with heparin to prevent a single maternal death from embolism," said Dr. Dwight Rouse, a professor at Brown University and editor-in-chief of Obstetrics & Gynecology, ACOG's journal.

The cost of preventing that one death? A 2016 editorial he co-authored estimated the minimum national cost associated with widespread use of heparin after C-sections would be $52 million to $130 million annually, not counting the cost of treating serious bleeding complications caused by the drug.

Rouse and other critics say there have been no solid studies either of how effective heparin is at preventing clots or of how many women suffer adverse effects from heparin such as hemorrhage or problems in wound healing. Without those numbers, it's impossible to determine how effective and safe heparin is, they argue. There's also a lack of research on how to best calculate patients' clotting risk based on various individual factors.

While D'Alton and her co-authors claim U.K. data show that maternal deaths from VTE have dropped since British obstetricians recommended broad use of heparin in 2004, critics note that deaths actually have ticked up slightly in recent years to the same level as in the 1980s and '90s.

From 2007 to 2017, the death rate in Britain increased from less than 1 per 100,000 births to about 1.5, according to an analysis by Dr. Andrew Kotaska, an adjunct professor of epidemiology at the University of British Columbia who wrote a 2018 BJOG article arguing that broad heparin use may cause more harm than good.

"The basic rule in evidence-based medicine is you don't implement large-scale interventions that have side effects without first demonstrating net benefit over harm," Kotaska said in an interview. "And this is being done to women without discussing it with them and getting their informed consent."

Obstetricians followed other medical specialties in using heparin after surgical procedures. But the American College of Chest Physicians, whose previous guidelines had strongly advocated giving heparin to post-surgical patients, softened its support in 2012 by saying the evidence for net benefit over harm wasn't clear.

The ACCP also acknowledged that the authors of its previous guidelines promoting heparin use had "highly problematic" financial and intellectual conflicts of interest, including financial relationships with major drug companies that produce anti-clotting drugs. To eliminate such conflicts, the ACCP sharply revised its process for choosing the experts who write its guidelines.

A controversy over drug company funding also arose in connection with the 2016 National Partnership for Maternal Safety guidelines on VTE prevention. In 2019, the editors of Obstetrics & Gynecology, which published the guidelines, disclosed that the National Partnership's guidelines effort received funding from industry groups, including three companies that produce anticoagulant drugs — though the journal said none of the authors received any of those funds.

"We didn't disclose the funding originally because we had no knowledge of it," D'Alton said.

Some critics say funding from drugmakers and other health industry players casts doubt on the credibility of this and other guidelines from physician groups.

"It's a toxic problem for medicine and the care of women," said Dr. Adam Urato, chief of maternal and fetal medicine at MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham, Massachusetts, who pressed Obstetrics & Gynecology to disclose the partnership's drug company funding. "Corporate cash will push guidelines toward things that are good for corporate profits, not for patients."

Meanwhile, Canadian researchers are planning to test an alternative drug that may be equally effective, safer and cheaper in preventing VTE in women after delivery — aspirin.

Orthopedic surgeons have reported that aspirin is as effective as injectable blood thinners at preventing clots.

"I'm not against heparin, but we don't know the best way to prevent clots," said Dr. Leslie Skeith, an assistant professor of hematology at the University of Calgary who launched a five-nation study. "We just need better evidence."

Harris Meyer: @Meyer_HM

Since fall, many parents have rallied for their kids to be allowed to play sports and objected to some safety policies, such as limits on spectators.

This article was published on Tuesday, March 16, 2021 in Kaiser Health News. This story also ran on USA Today. 

By Laura Ungar

This spring, high school senior Nathan Kassis will play baseball in the shadow of covid-19 — wearing a neck gaiter under his catcher’s mask, sitting 6 feet from teammates in the dugout and trading elbow bumps for hugs after wins.

“We’re looking forward to having a season,” said the 18-year-old catcher for Dublin Coffman High School, outside Columbus, Ohio. “This game is something we really love.”

Kassis, whose team has started practices, is one of the millions of young people getting back onto ballfields, tennis courts and golf courses amid a decline in covid cases as spring approaches. But pandemic precautions portend a very different season this year, and some school districts still are delaying play — spurring spats among parents, coaches and public health experts across the nation.

Since fall, many parents have rallied for their kids to be allowed to play sports and objected to some safety policies, such as limits on spectators. Doctors, meanwhile, haven’t reached a consensus on whether contact sports are safe enough, especially indoors. While children are less likely than adults to become seriously ill from covid, they can still spread it, and those under 16 can’t be vaccinated yet.

Less was known about the virus early in the pandemic, so high school sports basically stopped last spring, starting up again in fits and spurts over the fall and winter in some places. Some kids turned to recreational leagues when their school teams weren’t an option.

But now, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations, public high school sports are underway in every state, though not every district. Schedules in many places are being changed and condensed to allow as many sports as possible, including those not usually played in the spring, to make up for earlier cancellations.

Coaches and doctors agree that playing sports during a pandemic requires balancing the risk of covid with benefits such as improved cardiovascular fitness, strength and mental health. School sports can lead to college scholarships for the most elite student athletes, but even for those who end competitive athletics with high school, the rewards of playing can be extensive. Decisions about resuming sports, however, involve weighing the importance of academics against athletics, since adding covid risks from sports could jeopardize in-person learning during the pandemic.

Tim Saunders, executive director of the National High School Baseball Coaches Association and coach at Dublin Coffman, said the pandemic has taken a significant mental and social toll on players. In a May survey of more than 3,000 teen athletes in Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin researchers found that about two-thirds reported symptoms of anxiety and the same portion reported symptoms of depression. Other studies have shown similar problems for students generally.

“You have to look at the kids and their depression,” Saunders said. “They need to be outside. They need to be with their friends.”

Before letting kids play sports, though, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, coaches and school administrators should consider things like students’ underlying health conditions, the physical closeness of players in the specific sport and how widely covid is spreading locally.

Karissa Niehoff, executive director of the high school federation, has argued that spring sports should be available to all students after last year’s cancellations. She said covid spread among student athletes — and the adults who live and work with them — is correlated to transmission rates in the community.

“Sports themselves are not spreaders when proper precautions are in place,” she said.

Still, outbreaks have occurred. A January report by CDC researchers pointed to a high school wrestling tournament in Florida after which 38 of 130 participants were diagnosed with covid. (Fewer than half were tested.) The report’s authors said outbreaks linked to youth sports suggest that close contact during practices, competitions and related social gatherings all raise the risk of the disease and “could jeopardize the safe operation of in-person education.”

Dr. Kevin Kavanagh, an infection control expert in Kentucky who runs the national patient safety group Health Watch USA, said contact sports are “very problematic,” especially those played indoors. He said heavy breathing during exertion could raise the risk of covid even if students wear cloth masks. Ideally, he said, indoor contact sports should not be played until after the pandemic.

“These are not professional athletes,” Kavanagh said. “They’re children.”

A study released in January by University of Wisconsin researchers, who surveyed high school athletic directors representing more than 150,000 athletes nationally, bolsters the idea that indoor contact sports carry greater risks, finding a lower incidence of covid among athletes playing outdoor, non-contact sports such as golf and tennis.

Overall, “there’s not much evidence of transmission between players outdoors,” said Dr. Andrew Watson, lead author of the study, which he is submitting for peer-reviewed publication.

Dr. Jason Newland, a pediatrics professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said all sorts of youth sports, including indoor contact sports such as basketball, can be safe with the right prevention measures. He supported his daughter playing basketball while wearing a mask at her Kirkwood, Missouri, high school.

Doctors also pointed to other safety measures, such as forgoing locker rooms, keeping kids 6 feet apart when they’re not playing and requiring kids to bring their own water to games.

“The reality is, from a safety standpoint, sports can be played,” Newland said. “It’s the team dinner, the sleepover with the team — that’s where the issue shows up. It’s not the actual games.”

In Nevada’s Clark County School District, administrators said they’d restart sports only after students in grades 6-12 trickle back for in-person instruction as part of a hybrid model starting in late March. Cases in the county have dropped precipitously in recent weeks, from a seven-day average of 1,924 cases a day on Jan. 10 to about 64 on March 3.

In early April, practices for spring sports such as track, swimming, golf and volleyball are scheduled to begin, with intramural fall sports held in April and May. No spectators will be allowed.

Parents who wanted sports to start much earlier created Let Them Play Nevada, one of many groups that popped up to protest the suspension of youth athletics. The Nevada group rallied late last month outside the Clark County school district’s offices shortly before the superintendent announced the reopening of schools to in-person learning.

Let Them Play Nevada organizer Dennis Goughnour said his son, Trey, a senior football player who also runs track, was “very, very distraught” this fall and winter about not playing.

With the reopening, he said, Trey will be able to run track, but the intramural football that will soon be allowed is “a joke,” essentially just practice with a scrimmage game.

“Basically, his senior year of football is a done deal. We are fighting for maybe one game, like a bowl game for the varsity squad at least,” he said. “They have done something, but too little, too late.”

Goughnour said Let Them Play is also fighting to have spectators at games. Limits on the numbers of spectators have riled parents across the nation, provoking “a ton of pushback,” said Niehoff, of the high school federation.

Parents have also objected to travel restrictions, quarantine rules and differing mask requirements. In Orange County, Florida, hundreds of parents signed a petition last fall against mandatory covid testing for football players.

Students, for their part, have quickly adjusted to pandemic requirements, including rules about masks, distancing and locker rooms, said Matt Troha, assistant executive director of the Illinois High School Association.

Kassis, the Ohio baseball player, said doing what’s required to stay safe is a small price to pay to get back in the game.

“We didn’t get to play at all last spring. I didn’t touch a baseball this summer,” he said. “It’s my senior year. I want to have a season and I’ll be devastated if we don’t.”