Tara Kirk Sell left Stanford in 2004 as one of the most decorated swimmers in the school’s rich aquatic history. She won 11 NCAA titles and a silver medal in the 400-meter medley relay at the Athens Olympics.
After retiring from swimming in 2009, she focused on public health, earning a doctorate in 2016. She is an assistant professor of Environmental Health and Engineering and a Senior Associate at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
Sell focuses on biosecurity and biodefense, public health preparedness, as well as emerging infectious disease.
The mother of a 6-year-old and 4-year-old, Sell also has been addressing the pros and cons of youth sports during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“They’re trying to do a good job,” she said of public health officers. “Sometimes it makes sense and sometimes more input could help.”
In a 70-minute conversation with the Bay Area News Group, Sell discussed the hot-button issues around permitting youth and high school sports during a pandemic.
The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Question: Tara, as an Olympian and public health academic you have a perspective on the high school sports debate that few others have. Who is right here?
Answer: It’s not like this is a situation where one side is right and the other side is wrong. Everyone has goals they are trying to reach, whether it is athletic or whether it is trying to protect the health of the public. Trying to get through all of that and make choices in that very difficult decision-making environment is hard.
As a public health person, I’m trying to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed and get us out of this pandemic. As an athlete, I certainly can see why coaches, athletes, parents, athletic directors want to get going and pursue their dreams.
Q: What needs to be done to provide better scientific explanations when creating public policy for reopening sports?
A: The science is hard here because you can never find what you’re not looking for. Cases that you find in a youth athletic situation are confounded by what’s happening in the community. Does someone get COVID because they are doing a sport? Or do they get the virus because they are part of a community that has a high rate of COVID?
Sports are inherently both social and competitive activities. You may be very careful with what is happening in the pool or on the playing field but this needs to extend to what is happening in the parking lot and social circles outside of the athletic arena.
Q: People in California don’t feel public health officials are hearing their concerns.
A: We need to put together some sustainable ways to move forward. I don’t think it works to bounce back and forth between lockdown and free-for-all.
That might mean doing some things and not doing other things. I think wrestling is going to be a hard sport to get going because of the nature of such close contact. But swimming and cross country can be done very safely. We need to be thoughtful about these things. Instill in our athletes an attitude that what I do outside of my practice matters to my team.
Q: What can we say about data telling us it is safe for kids or it is unsafe?
A: It’s very clear COVID-19 does not affect young people in the same way as it affects older people. But the part of the story that is not told by the statistics (death rates and case rates) is that we still don’t know how well kids can transmit the disease to others. The science has been very mixed. It is hard to make a clear statement there. That is why there is this concern about doing things that are risky in environments that cannot be controlled with masking or distancing. Especially in situations where people are living in close quarters with others, or maybe multigenerational households that might cause an increase in disease in a community…
I do think that sports that are distanced and occur outside are less of a concern to me than indoor close-contact sports.
Q: So many families are asking us about football. They saw many states have high school seasons. They just don’t understand why California is being so cautious.
A: Here is the thing about football: Yeah, they are in close quarters on the field. But it is outside. The amount of time they are in contact is not a large amount. The real concern here is what is happening in the weight room, what is happening in team meetings, what is happening when everyone goes out to dinner after the games? All these related activities that we don’t think about when we think of football are where you could have transmission opportunities.
Q: College cases tell a different story with COVID. What should we take away from all the cancellations and postponements?
A: We can learn lessons from the colleges and realize when you get a case on a team you have to deal with everyone with whom that case has been in contact. It is often many, many people. You might have a plan that is going to work for a bubble, but when you have a case and have to track down everyone that person has been in contact with you realize you have to quarantine the whole team and maybe the other team. When people think of their mitigation plans they also have to make sure there are firewalls to stop a case from turning into an outbreak.
Q: Are there sports we should hold off on playing until the pandemic is under control?
A: That depends on the resources that are put in place to prevent onward transmission when you get a case. If you are trying to do sports without all those measures to identify cases, to stop cases to protect people from transmission in those side activities it is more questionable whether it should be done. Especially in this moment when we don’t know what is happening with this variant. We’re just coming down from this peak. We’re nowhere near where we should be.
Being able to put these controls in place is really the most important thing that can determine whether you could move forward safely. But there are some immovable things in the world we live in and sometimes you can’t do something.
Q: Those who want to play say we’re facing a mental health crisis for kids.
A: The mental health problem is no small problem. It is certainly a reason why we’ve got to get kids who are used to being active back out and doing activities, with the caveat of being thoughtful about those activities.
We have to acknowledge the social needs of kids and how to satisfy them. It is not something where you can say, “Just be patient.” Things are starting to unravel. And that certainly is something that should be addressed.
Thank goodness I have an indoor treadmill. I don’t know what I would have done. I need to be active. It’s part of the way I am and who I am.
Q: Physicians have told me they are concerned about what the virus might do to kids in the future even if they are asymptomatic cases.
A: There needs to be more thought on the long-term effect COVID has on kids. Not just mental health but if you have COVID what types of health checks are needed afterward? That is one thing that has concerned me.
Q: What have officials gotten wrong in their messaging?
A: I study risk communication and dealing with and managing misinformation and disinformation. First of all, right now there is a basic disagreement of the underlying facts of the situation. That is really hard to have a discussion and come to an agreement about what to do if you disagree about the basic facts. That is a real problem. I hope it is resolved with greater transparency.
The gray area in the middle where there is the misrepresentation of factual information is where it is very difficult. It is especially difficult when you have different goals and different needs. If your business depends on being open you are going to read disinformation in different ways.
I am sometimes concerned that public health people try to communicate as if they are communicating to other public health people. To them, all the facts are obvious. So there is this lack of explanation of what really is going on. Why these regulations are in place. And exactly what the logic is behind them, what the science is behind them. That sometimes is missing. And we can end up with people just screaming at each other.
Q: Have you talked to friends about their kids playing sports?
A: I let my son play soccer in the fall. They wore masks the whole time. I felt like it was worth it. Friends wanted to have their kids play basketball. I told them I wasn’t sure because it’s indoor. It depends on the sport, it depends on the situation, it depends on the time it was happening, the epidemiological situation. All these things go together. There is not a blanket recommendation for any of these situations.
