George floyd. Officer Derek Chauvin faces Second Degree murder and former president barack obama addressed all of this. In a lot of ways, what has happened over the several weeks is challenges and and problems here in the United States that have been thrown into high gear. There are t they are the outcomes not just in the immediate moments of time, but the result of a long history of slavery and jim crow and red lining and institutionalized racism that too often have been the plague, original sin of our society. And ine a tragic a ewese past, scary and uncertain as theyve been, theyve also been an Incredible Opportunity for people to be awakened to some of these underlying trends. And they offer an opportunity for us to all Work Together to tackle them, to take them on, to change america and make it live up to its highest ideas. And part of whats made me so hopeful is the fact that so many young people had been galvanize mobilized because historically, so much of the progress that weve made in our society has been because of young people. Dr. King was a young man when he got involved. Ceasar chavez was a young man, malcolm x was a young man, that the leaders of the feminist movement were young people. Leaders of Union Movements were young people. And the movement to make sure that the Lbgt Community finally had a voice and was represented were young people. And so what i want when sometimes i feel despair, i just see whats happening with young people across the country and the talent and the voice and the sophistication that they are displaying. And it makes me feel optimistic. It makes me feel as if, you know, this country is going to get better. And thats former president obama speaking just in the past hour, offering comfort, hope, and saying there is a change in mindset taking place in this country. We can do better. He made three suggestions, including urging every mayor in this country to review their use of force policies. While he applauded people taking action to make things doctors a protests, being in large gatherings, so pose some risk at a time were battling covid19. Joining us now to help us understand the risk and best practices for protesters is university of San Franciscos s dr. Jeremy howard. Jeremy, good to see you again. Hello there. I want to make it clear doctors are not saying people should not protest. Many of you are committed to social equity, since inequity is a threat to health. Youve always said that. Yeah, absolutely. I want to understand the concerns from a Public Health stand point by these protests. Really, from a Public Health stand point, if a protest goes well, if theres no things like tear gas and jailings, it neednt be a huge problem. Outdoor transmission is much, much, much less common than indoor common. Sometimes between 20 times and 300 times less common. In the bay area, most everybody is wearing masks, which decreases the chance of transmission. So you shouldnt feel like going out to protest is putting you or your community in a necessarily unsafe position. Uhhuh. That is good that it is outdoors. And youre right, from the videos we have seen here in the bay area, cant say that for every city across the country, but we see mostly mask wearing. Talk about why thats extra important in a protest environment when you do have shouting going on, why you eally need that mask. Tho on. Emr is chanc tt yr going to infect somebody else in case youre sick and you dont no it is how many of your droplets of yours they end up with. You have a germ cloud around you and that increases in size if youre talking, even more if youre yelling. If you put a mask on, the size of that germ cloud dramatically decreases. So thats going to mean theres much less chance of people around you getting sick. Same idea, stay out of other peoples germ clouds. So keep your distance, especially if theyre not wearing a mask, and dont stand next to somebody you dont know for more than a few minutes. T i do see that happen, even here in the bay area, with people standing very close, certainly not the six feet. I want to ask you, though, when there is tear gas used, and thats happened in some of the cities here in the bay area even. What does that do . Because i would think that if people are tearing up, that could increase the chances that theyre touching the point of transmission, right . Right. Its not so much the touching, its the droplets. Tear gas is explicitly designed to mess up the respiratory system. It causes you to cough, its what its meant to do. When it comes to safety, its not about just respiratory safety. Youre not likely to die from tear gas, but you can get seriously injured if you get hit by one of those canisters. So eye protection for covid19 and one of those canisters. Theres a lot of great guides available on line to keep yourself asope its notoing to down to that, but good to be careful. Should goggles be worn for airborne virus, tear gas and rubber bullets . Certainly. If you dont have goggles, maybe you have a pair of sunglasses, something to cover your face. We have seen two journalists who have lost an eye in these protests. So, yeah, do what you can to keep away from projectiles, from gas, and cover yourself up as best you can. Saleena want tos to know whe do people need to social distance even people are rioting without a mask . Do you worry theres support fo large groups, and how does that look to the people who are saying just stay home . Well, i mean, a lot of protesters are doing a great job of social distancing. Not everybody is. So the fact that somebody are being less safe about this doesnt mean its okay for you to be unsafe, as well. It doesnt mean that they dont have a right to protest. So what were saying is, be as safe as you can to yourself and people around you. Try to stay away from people you dont know. Right. And unfortunately, not everybody is going to follow that advice. Can i ask you, what are the things people should consider when they decide whether or not to go to a protest, in terms of their own circumstance and who they were within their Health Conditions . It depends on where you are. In the bay area, weve been extremely fortunate and had a lot of good planning and good implementation, which means in the bay area, the number of people that are sick with covid19 is much, much lower than many other parts of the country. So the basic risk profile isnt that high, but if you or your family has comorbidities, if youre looking after older people, obviously youll be putting them a lot more at risk if youre going to be out in public, close to other people that are yelling, potentially tear gas and so forth. So in the end, its a personal decision that you have to make. Look, you know, if there are more transmissions, more cases because of the protests, how long before we see that bump in numbers . Generally speaking, its a couple of weeks in terms of cases, and about four weeks in terms of deaths. I think, you know, really the things that can be done to avoid that happening, though, theres a lot the police can do. So in particular, dont arrest people and throw them in jail overnight. Youll have a lot of people in close quarters. Lots of people started throwing back from europe and got thrown into these immigration areas for three hours, and there was a lot of super spreading events happening there. So if the police and the powers that can be avoid using tear gas, avoid putting people in jail, allow people to protest peacefully, with distancing, with masks on, then hopefully, you know, we can all get through this reasonably safely. Jeremy howard, appreciate that. Were going to have another conversation now, one i want to bring you back to later on, so hang tight. Well take a short break on the air. When we come back, well talk about sports, specifically the future of High School Sports. Well show you a ranking of the sports, the different runs, and talk to a local athleti all right. Welcome back. Many of you have wondered whether High School Sports are going to happen this fall. This week, it moves in that direction. The governing body of california High School Sports is finalizing goidlines for the return of sports. Meantime, some schools in San Mateo County are getting ready to start workouts next week. Jining us to talk about sit the football coach and Athletic Director in san mateo, steve sow. Hey, steve. Hi, kristen, how are you . Good. You appreciate the color im wearing today . Absolutely. My alma mater, our colors are read and black. You were the quarterback of the Football Team when i was there. So we werent friends then because you were too cool for me, but were friends now. I think now you are the person that is by far the big shot right now. I dont know about big shot. Im happy to be in this position, be able to share with you and have you share with us your insights. And youre also Vice President of the Central Coast section, so you help shape policy for all sports, from San Francisco down to santa cruz county. So im curious to find out, right, if there are plans to have spectators, for example, when you guys do start in the fall whatever sport might be. What do you think . I would say right now, the spectators are not high on the list of priorities. If talking with the Athletic Directors and superintendent and other people in the section, the main focus is on the student athletes and getting kids out there participating. If we could have athletes participating in the fall, even without spectators that we would consider that a win. Right. After all, it is about the kids first and foremost. So youre part to have San Mateo High School district, which announced athletes could start workouts next week. So is it just football, or are other kids coming back to do workout workouts, too . Its all the sports. We had a meeting yesterday with coaching. Most of us in our School District have strength and conditioning programs. One of the greatest developments since we went to high school is the prevalence of girls doing Power Lifting right along with the boys. So the strength and conditioning programs in our district are focused all across the sports and we have we have, you know, not equal number. I cant speak for the other schools, but its for all sports and both boys and girls. Tell me about for example the football drills. How will that work . Nothing face to face, no touching . Yeah. So we will and were following the county guidelines that you have to work in pods or cohorts, their terminology, of 12 or fewer athletes with one coach. And they will be separated six feet apart. And there is just body weight type lifts that they can do. They can squat, they can do pushups, situps, a variety of exercises that will get them in shape to dpeet compete in athle. And that can be done across. So thats what were looking at doing, at least for the first couple of weeks of that section. All right. Steve, i want to talk more about those practices in the summer coming up. But first, this is really interesting, so i want to show this to our viewers. You, and not just you, but really a lot of the Athletic Directors have come up and worked out a chart that gives a risk ranking to each High School Sport through what a score 4, 5, 6, 7, can you tell whaus that means . Just for clarification, the ahletic directors in our district have been corroborating on some different models. This is something i put together with my trainer based on some nhfs guidelines and other information. Now, i shared it with the Athletic Directors, and in our district, and shared it with my own coaches. This has been this is just myself trying to get out ahead of this and trying to come up with a plan and some numbers that would hopefully give our superintendents some solid training when they go to their School Boards and ask if they have some type of athletics next school year. I want to mention to folks, the lower the number, the higher the risk. When you see a high number like cross country, swimming, those are the safer sports. And steve, you based it on a few things. I know one is elimination of droplets. The other is elimination of surface transfer. This is where i want to bring jeremy in. Hes a researcher and can help in terms of offering guidance on drop lets and such. So why is football, for example, or wrestling in terms of eliminating droplets, how does that worry you and how do you contain that . If you looked at the chart, we talk about the ability to eliminate or reduce it. It would be hard, for instance, to without changing the complete nature of the game, to eliminate the potential of exchanging droplets how close they are. Wrestling is a prime example, versus a sport like swimming, where you have teams alternating like they do now in a meet, a team could have lanes one through three, lanes four and five and so on. So that, you know, that calculation was, you know, what sports have the ability, what sports have the ability to reduce the droplet exchange. Uhhuh. The spread of the droplets. I would love to hear what jeremy has to say, because we could all the information we can get. Were going to take a short break all right. And were bringing back steve sow and dr. Jeremy howard to engage in an eye opening conversation and share ideas for how different sports can be done safely in the fall and why some are tougher than others. Steve, during a break on the facebook platform, you asked an interesting question. If you could pose that again and have jeremy answer that. My question is, as were talking about the exchange of droplets, which from what jeremy has said and what ive read also is that the focus is more on the droplets being transmitted more so than the surface. And we were, you know, in discussions where we are making a big difference between indoor and outdoor sports, especially when it comes to transfer on the surface. But if were focused on drop lets, if there is a couple 800 meter runners or 1600 meter runners, neck and neck, fighting for position, breathing very close to each other, do the fact that they might be outside, that different than two basketball players or two wrestlers who are right up in each others face guarding each other . I would think so, right . What do you think, jeremy . I would be very careful about indoors, for sure. Indoors transmission rates are between 20 times and 300 times higher than outdoor transmission rates. So i would be nervous about any kind of sport indoors. Of course, things like a big gym where you play basketball or badminton, theyre huge, but they dont necessarily have that air flow going through thatsge ou t of the y. Ld be cautious about that. In general, the studies youre seeing about the efficacy about things hike mask tend to assume people are talking, not that theyre yelling at teammates and doing heavy breathing. But if people are running around a track and field venue, theyre right next to each other for three minutes. Theres no breeze. They have a germ cloud going on dwod be problematic. If something is inside, as much ventilation as possible. Any amount of air flow helps a lot. If youre outside, you know, try to be thoughtful about how to minimize the spacofe. If you are doing badminton, maybe dont change ends. Keep people separated. One of the things we talk about is badminton, those doubles people are right next to each other. Okay. Steve, ive got to ask you, a there evenre discussions on temporarily this year changing some of the rules of the dont banish my from saying, but what if you have flag football instead of tackle, is there talk of that . Everything is on the erodbly and the asusumption was if we still Distance Learning in the fall, we cant have sports. I would argue the opposite. If there are some sports that we can do as jeremy mentioned also, we are do soez safely, i would encourage that we do the sports that we can. All right. Steve, ive got to say, i know you well enough to know that you wouldnt bring the kids back and say go ahead and do it unless you thought it was safe. And i know youre racking your brain to come up with safes ay l pr thanketremy. Sti t. Gentlemen. Great conversation. E rwegog and welcome. Ckba 7 is hngt at 4 00 p. M. Watch abc 7 listens from anger conversation about race, equality and the path forward. Expert panel tomorrow attion 4 00 right here on abc 7. Moderated by eric thomas. Thank you for joining us on this interactive show. Very day at 3 00 answering your questions. So see you tomorrow. Inhelingf fcuody, f of areows agaie otminnes muoyds neck, to second degrrde. And this evening, the three other exofficers are now charged with aiding and abetting. Ne forearlnineinut. sydn flo as floyd could be heard saying, i cant breathe. Owl oyd onto his side. N chauvin saying no. Tonight, George Floyds son and family visiting the site where. And what his 6yearold daughte. The n