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Like everything else, it's an odds game. The bulk of cases in a normal season have occurrs by the end of February. For kids, that puts their viral-related cardiac risk window in the spring semester. We have no idea if Coovid-19 will impart more or less cardiac risk than other viruses. But the timing guarantees that we won't start finding out until June.

What I am about to say is in no way an attempt to minimize the current contagion: all natural viral infections can find their way to the heart weeks after recovery. The 2018-2019 flu vaccines got a bad rep for their lack of efficacy, and accordingly my brother-in-law and his wife passed on them -- swearing by the vitamin supplements. They got hit bad the week before Christmas and by March, his heart went into a-fib requiring hospitalization. One of the most significant benefits of influenza vaccines -- even when they don't knock out every strain of virus that comes our way --- is the dramatic reduction in subsequent cardiac complications. Most years, we don't think much of this by the time summer camp rolls around because most kids who weren't vaccinated will have had their infections 6 months earlier and are well past the window where, for some of them, the infection would rebound in myocardium. Basically, those heart attacks are more likely to happen in the school gym than on a weekend camp. Given that any given scout's coovid-19 infection would have been more recent, the cardiac risk window will fall in a very active outdoor season. This begs the question ... do we want our youth to be home alone, or around other scouts should one of them has a heart attack? On the other hand, how far away from major trauma centers do we want them to be?

Contact a counselor in your district and arrange for a meeting. It's front porch weather. A great way to earn a badge. (Actually, one of the old Cit. MBPs was written around the story of a scout meeting a local judge at his house.) Neither of those MBs have a requirement of being in online classes for so many hours.

@InquisitiveScouter , I'm laughing out loud. Prospective Parent: Is ___ in your crew? Me: Yes, ___ is our CC. Parent: Then my kids aren't joining it! Me: Well, would you like to be CC? Parent: No!!!!!! Me to Myself: (Dodged a bullet with that one.)

In general, I'm sufficiently free-market to understand that someone hast to pay the bills. I just wish: 1. Ads didn't drag on the presentation of pages. 2. Ads had the same format as forum posts. Maybe a slightly different color. 3. Ads were related to forum content. We can't dictate any of that. There's a firm belief among admen that sales are better if they read your cookies, etc ... before inserting ads and presenting a page. So, the best we can hope for is that Terry is negotiating well for the hit on performance.

I nixed a "two axe handle lengths apart" concept for the same reason.

Sweden's mortality rate is still climbing -- and that includes some pediatric deaths . Ranking higher than the US is sometimes a bad thing. S Korea just had a fresh outbreak in nightclub attendees. The US strategy has been and continues to be a middle ground between two extremes. Our hospitals are getting back to treating non-COVID patients. They aren't elective procedures any more, they are scheduled essential procedures.

Who wouldn't love another patch? Go for it!

E94's experience parallels the classic my-son-can't-do-more-pull-ups problem that scouters face. Did the scout grab at a pull-up bar EVERY DAY for a month? Did he at least hang there for 30 seconds? In a community of brutal honesty, the answer will be "No" to which the reply will be "That's okay, when he decides to try for 30 days straight, I'm sure he'll get a chin above the bar." In other communities the answer will be obtuse with varying levels of indignation. The reply remains the same. However, my impression viral spread among the home-bound hasn't increased, it's just the number of large gatherings has plummeted, and along with that so have new infections from that source.

Okay social distance warriors ... there's wisdom and there's zealotry. Now I am grateful that we brought Mrs. Q's mom up from FL last year. We were beyond done with long distance elder care, and the pandemic would have put the stress levels through the roof. So, I feel your pain @HashTagScouts. But, here in PA the "secured" nursing homes have been utter nightmares. Given the situation that you described, your dad's best bet is to get out with his buddies, hit the links or at least walk the course. Here's hoping that call never comes. You might be right @Sniktaw. As I mentioned earlier, some camps would be better operated with two week (or maybe even three week) sessions. My oldest Aunt remembered Campfire Girls camps in NY that extended through much of the summer. I wonder if that was part of it ... get any kids who might not have yet been exposed to flu through their first week so that they can enjoy the remaining four or five. Could an HA reconfigure to handle such extended adventures? Maybe. Would today's parents buy in? I doubt it.

The Egyptians really nailed it, didn't they?

Without denying the possibility of intentional obfuscation, there could be a receiver-operator thing going on here. Only a fool would look at any cadre of kids and say they are 100% safe -- as in zero accidents, injuries, or infections will occur every day they are at camp. One might with 100% confidence be able to say that they are safe relative to being at home for that week. That's no consolation to the parent who is 100% confident that their child is 100% safe at home over the same time. The entire framework of Bayesian statistics is built around a proposition that people have a different confidences for a range of values so that: Camp director is 100% confident that campers will be 80% safe, 90% confident that campers will be 85% safe, 20% confident that that they will be 90% safe, 10% confident that they will be 95% safe and 0% confident that they will be more than 99% safe. This is mainly because they've seen thousands of campers, talked to dozens of regulators. It's not because they've seen a slew of campers during a pandemic. Unit leader is 100% confident that campers will be 50% safe, 80% confident that they will be 75% safe, 10% confident that they will be 80% safe, and 0% confident that they will be more than 99% safe. This is mainly because he/she knows that one of those campers is going to pull out a Frisbee or a football, and things will go south fast (especially if the ASM emeritus picks up said toy after all the kids handled it). And he/she has parents that have experienced this from ground level. On the other hand ... It's not because they've seen a slew of kids at home in the summer during a pandemic. These are what we call prior probabilities of a utility function. (It's more complex than that because the root question is "safe from what?", and each calamity comes with a different distribution. But, I've over simplified to make a point.) If you are in a community who believes 20% unsafe is happening at home anyway, then your money is on the camp director. If you're in a community that doesn't even see 2% unsafe happening at home, you're money is on the unit leader. Those decision points, needless to say vary. I have 4 health care workers coming into my house every day (one sleeps here). Two more of us are essential workers with travel papers. Another is running our elder-care errands as needed (i.e., taking our elder to for drives that include a McD's shake and burger). I'm more confident that this bug will find me at home than at camp (which, as I've said, is patrol cooking). I don't expect anyone else to be running the same gambit. But, anyone who wants to pull the 100% confident rhetoric can talk to the hand. (Once I put my gloves on.)

I think that's how Venturing saved me. I was able to discover a few "happy places." BP's water colors "My House in the Woods" also gave an indication of where a scouter should aim. Applying that to advancement, I only advise the parents who ask me directly about how to help their son with a requirement. Doing more than that is a drag on everyone's time.

The best scout I ever knew aged out at 2nd Class. What made him the best? He invited me to join his troop! Get your scouts to be friendly ... that's a greater achievement than any rank.

We have a 14 boys signed up for camp (the week starting on Father's day) and yesterday one parent asked to add their scout to the list.

@Shameed79, welcome to the forums! Here's one that might fit the bill ... Click here to my reply to a discussion on working with post-modern nomads (that's my term that I recommend instead of the m-word or gen-whatever.) A lot of organizations and municipalities need some major help with archiving old materials, etc ... and doing so demands a lot of leadership and communication skills from a a scout. Best of luck in the idea search!

I remembered thinking this 12 years ago with my crew: "These folks now have tech that Star Trek would covet.* But they can't communicate any better than if they had semaphore flags." *I have a flip phone for lots of reasons. One is in hopes that someday I'll have a friend named Scottie.

Well, statistically, be it in terms of accidents, abuse, ignorance, or perpetual health disparities, the kids are most "at risk" from you, your spouse, your siblings, and each other on a per-hour-of-contact basis. By sending kids to school and scouts, music and sports, I am expecting some of those intrinsic risks to be mitigated. In slightly different terms, a century ago, that's the conversation the superintendent of schools had with my grandfather ... I think he'd be pleased with the results. It's like vaccines. Artificially Inducing herd immunity has intrinsic risks for which our nation compensates human victims. (A friend has someone in his household experienced the side effects - and the claim for compensation -- first hand.) I would never ask my fellow citizens to participate in it ... if it weren't for the dead and maimed harvested by naturally induced herd immunity. The jury is still out about how much two-deep engenders the accountability required to prevent abuse. Either 1) there were a few incidents where BSA felt that a general guideline was necessary or 2) risk managers sat in a room and took guesses at how harmful new tech could be (either to individual members or the organization as a whole). My bet is #2 is close to the real story.

One source of burn-out is asking adults to do a scout's job ... I have no idea why we think telling a parent how a scout can do a requirement helps the scout in any way. There's a handbook. Read it. Do what it says. That's all I said ... once. (in another thread, I posted the contents.) From there it's the SPL/PL's responsibility to show leadership. If they don't, come summer camp (as ASM) I'll be asking them why some of their patrol members aren't even Tenderfoot yet. (I'll do it politely, because we leaders are guests of the patrols for dinner. I'm not doing anything to mess with that gravy train!) The pandemic will not be an excuse. Lack of internet will not be excuse. Heck, if the phones get cut off, that will not be an excuse. And by all that is right and holy, parents not getting an E-mail will not be an excuse. Either they are Tenderfoot scouts or they are not. If they are, good. Time to plan for the next rank. If they are not, time to tell them (not their parents) to get cracking. If some MC whines about us losing JTE points (which, by the way, none have for the past 8 years), I will say that's proof of a great SM. Our troop? The boys evidently finally asked the SM to hold a zoom meeting to discuss O/A. We'll have one tonight. Will we have another one? i dunno, that's between the SM and the PLC. I sent one blurb out that camp will be rough if the patrols aren't getting in shape. It's now up to the boys to figure it out.

Mrs Q and I binge watched it last weekend. Cute show.

The persistent banner ads for Boy Scout compensation fund are getting old. Any way the forum can charge them double and send them to troubled camps?

@RichardB some of the points on the "Safety Moment" are more intuitive than others. Say, for example, avoiding recording. That is very hard not to do! I have had parents who review all of their kids' texts. I am certain we no have such parents who record every online session. Lacking incident reports, it's hard to tell which suggestions are reactions to actual abuse and which ones are defensive out of fear of hypothetical litigation.

Success in spite of drawing the short straw of a 1st ASM @ WSJ! His was the last ECoH I attended before lock-down.

On it. Well, except for the vax tat. Nowadays kids are all about stickers ... https://www.pittwire.pitt.edu/news/covid-19-vaccine-candidate-shows-promise-first-peer-reviewed-research Some who see a bevy of patients might be selected to give it a go. If you're interested and in the area, you've probably already seen announcements, but just in case ... https://www.upmc.com/coronavirus/vaccine

So, scouters, if your PL got with his buddies and, with parents approval, did this hike, would you sign them off on the 5 mile land navigation requirement?