Camp Lobby, CDC and Health Officials Enable COVID-19 Spread

August 14, 2020 Doug Forbes

"We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." Romans 5:3-5

Those were the words of Sharon Suiter Reyes whose husband Fred was in a life and death battle with COVID-19 in their Nashville-adjacent city. Fred Reyes was one of three dozen staffers from Deer Run Camps who contracted the virus shortly after commencing summer camp training in May.

Deer Run Camp Founder/CEO David Gibson soon thereafter established a GoFundMe page asking for $1.5 million dollars to sustain his Christian camp after the rampant outbreak.

In a presentation titled “Mid-Summer Question and Answer Session with Environmental Health & Engineering,” principals from the American Camp Association (ACA) discussed how the media has reported on between 80-100 camps that “have experienced some type of activity with respect to COVID-19.”

That was a month ago.

The coronavirus has since ravaged camps from an Oregon bible camp to a Georgia YMCA camp where more than 260 cases swiftly ripped through the operation.

At 17:10 in the ACA presentation, Dr. Laura Blaisdell said, “I am really excited to share some of the stories that are coming out of camps this summer. I think the media presents one view of the camp experience.” According to Blaisdell’s website, she has “extensive consulting experience in the camp community” having been a Medical Director at Maine’s Camp Winnebago. She is currently a medical advisor to the ACA where she has assisted with “interpretation and operationalization of CDC and state guidance for camps.

While the ACA’s Blaisdell might be “excited” on one hand to promote camps that have operated during a pandemic and not excited about the media’s coverage of considerable virus outbreaks at camps nationwide, the reality is that camps are highly communal child-centric business models where children are wholly capable of contracting the virus and being conductors for community spread.

The consequence of this spread are far-reaching. Quarantined families forgo income at at time when jobs are disappearing at a speed-of-sound clip. Health consequences can be chronic or deadly.

Despite these consequences, however, Blaisdell and the ACA have coordinated with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) since the coronavirus spread its wings in early spring. ACA President Tom Rosenberg has vigorously promoted and defended camp openings going so far as to say that closing camps is an “existential threat.”

In May, Rosenberg pushed his mission all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue when he and other ACA gatekeepers and lobbyists met with Vice President Mike Pence, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx and nearly 40 camp insiders. The group discussed its needs and advocated for a green light. Weeks later, top officials, including the likes of California Governor Gavin Newsom, gave Rosenberg and camps the answer they were looking for, replete with a colorful document titled “COVID-19 Industry Guidance: Day Camps.”

Meow Meow Foundation cited numerous issues with the guidance and repeatedly contacted Giannina Perez, a senior advisor from Newsom’s office—with whom the foundation has met. Perez acknowledged the quandary but not much more.

As camps from California to Georgia welcomed kids within weeks of the CDC’s blessing, they also welcomed the virus. In fact, a city-run camp in Pasadena, two miles from MMF, reported an outbreak within one week of opening. The popular Tom Sawyer Camp, also in Pasadena, operated with children and counselors sitting in very close proximity to one another, eating, talking and breaching protocol. When notified, city officials turned a blind eye.

Rosenberg and the ACA all but turned a blind eye to one report after another of camps suffering COVID-19 outbreaks. Following the massive outbreak at the Georgia YMCA Camp High Harbour, the CDC issued a report which concluded:

“SARS-CoV-2 spread efficiently in a youth-centric overnight setting, resulting in high attack rates among persons in all age groups. This investigation adds to the body of evidence demonstrating that children of all ages are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection and, contrary to early reports, might play an important role in transmission. The multiple measures adopted by the camp were not sufficient to prevent an outbreak in the context of substantial community transmission.”

Rosenberg responded:

“Today’s Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) study of a single summer camp’s Covid-19 infections tells an incomplete story. We have so many success stories, from overnight camps who have not had a single infection, to day camps who have safely managed large groups of children every day, ”

In general, managing children every day amidst a pandemic is an monumental challenge. And for months, children have also been denied the opportunity to do what they are accustomed to do, which is to closely commune with peers. However, America is in the midst of the world’s worst health emergency in one hundred years—in addition to leading the world’s worst response.

The ACA, CDC, government and health officials and parents have responded by sending children to highly communal summer camps while a disease with no discretion and no end in sight does what it does best. Florida pediatrician Dr. Annette Nielson said:

"Summer camp started and we’ve got kids at soccer camp, we’ve got kids at community camps. They’re getting it. We’ve seen a 15-year-old who had a stroke. I don’t think the kids should be the pawn in this game."