Good morning everyone. If you saw the Governor's address yesterday, or read about it, or had a friend who did either of those things, you already know that although NC is moving to Phase Two of reopening, gyms are not included. Although I had been looking forwards to in person classes, even in a limited capacity, I have to admit that I think it's for the best. What really convinced me was reading this story about a church in Texas where the priest died of COVID-19 after they had resumed masses for just a couple weeks. It's not a criticism of the church: They operated at only about 20% capacity, and it sounds like they controlled the flow of people and mandated social distancing. Even still the priest died, and five other people (at least) tested positive. Those five people, if they have families or roommates, have very likely spread the virus further. Stories like this one are very easy to find, and although it's a larger group of people than we'd have at KMR, in the church I don't think they were running around breathing hard, sweating, and touching a bunch of equipment either.
There's a good chance you saw the article about the extremely fit guy who basically wasted away after six weeks in the hospital. It's just one person out of hundreds of thousands, but I guess the fitness angle makes me think of KMR. We focus a lot on deaths from COVID-19, but to paraphrase many B-movie villains, there are many stages between alive and dead. It would be terrible for any of the staff or members of KMR to go through that experience.
I think drunk driving is a good analogy here. Imagine these quotes: "I can handle it." "It's my choice to make." "I've been fine every time so far." I hope if your intoxicated friend said those words before trying to drive home, you would use all of your Krav Maga skills to take his keys from him. Much like drunk driving, there are two factors here: The ability to evaluate risk, and the willingness to spread that risk to others. Someone may be willing to take the risk of driving drunk upon themselves, but hat doesn't make it a good idea, and it's not their right to spread that risk to everyone else on the road. And much like COVID-19, most of the times someone drives drunk they don't harm themselves or others, but it's still incredibly reckless and foolish. It's our responsibility to protect not just ourselves, but other people as well, even people we don't know. And my responsibility not to open an environment that's a danger for the members, even if they would come in anyway and accept the risk.
It's not all bad though. I'm pretty sure we can hold outdoor classes, and will start with a few outdoor fitness classes this coming week. And by outdoor, I mean only outdoors with rigorous distancing protocols. I will be more detailed on that in the next email, but this one is long enough already! I don't want these classes to exclude members training from home, so we will start with just the Tuesday and Thursday 12:15pm fitness classes. I will try to set them up on Zoom as well, which probably just means I need an extension cord and a wi-fi booster, and ideally we can have the class in-person and Zoom at the same time. Attendance in these two classes has been small so it's the best group to experiment with. In the meantime the online training continues, and we will stay the course. I'm as always grateful to all the members who continue to support Krav Maga Raleigh, and look forwards to seeing you in class online, outdoors, or wherever we can gather!
