A nurse at Northwestern Memorial Hospital who wore a more protective face mask than the one issued to her by the hospital — and warned coworkers to do the same — said Tuesday she suspects she was fired because such a warning could spur protests or even walkouts by nurses who didn’t have the same level of protection.
Lauri Mazurkiewicz — who filed suit against the hospital Monday — wore an N95 face mask she bought herself to work this month at the hospital. On March 18 she emailed about 50 coworkers suggesting they, too, wear the extra-protective mask in place of the standard hospital-issued surgical masks her and her colleagues had been instructed to wear.
The very next day, Mazurkiewicz learned she’d been fired when she received a call from the nursing staffing agency that placed her at the hospital.
“I had a box of my own,” she said of the N95 masks, noting her concern about airborne transmission of the virus and the additional protection the masks offer.
“Most nurses get (N95 masks) from the hospital, but they weren’t around. I don’t know why they weren’t around, maybe they didn’t have them, maybe they were low … but I can speculate they didn’t have enough for all the workers to go around,” she said Tuesday during a Skype call with reporters.
“It could have caused a movement where nurses would demand N95s from the hospital and then potentially they could have walked out or protested, and then they wouldn’t have any nurses,” Mazurkiewicz said.
The hospital also prohibited employees from wearing N95 masks, instead instructing them to wear standard surgical masks, said Mazurkiewicz, who worked in an observation section of the hospital near the emergency room where patients, after a couple days, are either admitted or sent home.
“They told her at the hospital not to wear it, and she said ‘That’s not OK. I’m not going to follow your instruction,'” her attorney, Blake Horwitz, said Tuesday.
Mazurkiewicz said she was not allowed to wear the N95 mask under the one issued by the hospital.
In an emailed statement, hospital spokesman Christopher King said, “As Northwestern Medicine continues to respond to this unprecedented health care pandemic, the health and well-being of our patients, our staff and our employees is our highest priority. We take these matters seriously and we are currently reviewing the complaint. At this time, we will not be commenting further.”
Mazurkiewicz’s lawsuit was filed in Cook County Circuity Court and names the hospital and several employees as defendants. The suit seeks a jury trial and more than $50,000 in damages.
The ChicagoBlackhawks have a very good defenseman in Adam Boqvist but they need to make sure he develops properly over the next few seasons.
The Chicago Blackhawks have been a bit thin on the blue line in the past few seasons. They once had a top-four that included Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook, Niklas Hjalmarsson, and Johnny Oduya. In their prime, it was arguably the best top-four group in the league. That group led them to multiple deep playoff runs but after a while, it started to thin out. The Blackhawks are hoping that a new young group will eventually come into the fold.
Adam Boqvist might be the leader of that bunch. The Blackhawks took him with the eighth overall pick in the 2018 NHL Draft. He made his NHL debut in 2019-20 and had some ups and downs. He only managed to get into 41 games where he had four goals and nine assists for 13 points. His offensive game is something that is going to be his major strength but he won’t reach his max potential until his defensive game is better.
It will come as he gets more experience. He has all of the potentials in the world to be one of the better defensemen on the team. The Blackhawks are probably still looking for a true number one defenseman to defend but Boqvist can lead the offense from the blue line one day. If he reaches that potential within the next few seasons, the Blackhawks will have a great young defenseman on their hands which is the hardest thing in the world.
The Blackhawks made some less than ideal decisions over the years with their defenseman. They traded away Nicklas Hjalmarsson and Henri Jokiharju for players who haven’t been as good as they were going to be. Boqvist has a chance to help out with those mistakes as long as he is put in the proper position to succeed.
They are hoping that he becomes a part of the next young core to take over when Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, and Duncan Keith move on. This could even be the same group that helps those guys out as they look to end their careers on a positive note. They have a long way to go before they have a defense good enough to make a deep run in the playoffs but Boqvist is a nice start. Hopefully, the Blackhawks are able to develop him nicely over the next few seasons.
The ChicagoBears are hoping to score big on a couple of bargain-basement deals.
We are now fully immersed in the second phase of NFL free agency and the Chicago Bears have taken a couple of swings that, if they connect, could be looked back upon as terrific signings. Unfortunately, fans may not see the value in them at this time, but perhaps your patience will be rewarded in time.
At the start of free agency, the Bears had some clear needs. In no particular order, they had to shore up their quarterback room, as well as find another tight end, right guard, cornerback, strong safety, and depth at edge rusher.
Unfortunately, the Bears needs seem to have outpaced their financial resources, and with the somewhat costly additions of Nick Foles, Robert Quinn, and Jimmy Graham, it does not leave a lot of cash lying around to fill the other needs. To date, they have not made any additions to the offensive line.
As it relates to their cornerback and edge-rushing depth, the Bears seem to be rolling the dice on a couple of former highly-touted first-round draft picks.
Barkevious Mingo, drafted sixth overall in the 2013 draft, will boost the edge, while the twenty-fifth overall pick in 2016, Artie Burns, will compete for the second starting quarterback position.
While neither has lived up to their draft-day expectations, they, at one time, had the pedigree to be selected that high. So while the talent is there, for whatever reason, it has failed to translate on the field.
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With respect to Mingo, it’s very unlikely he’ll have a breakout in year eight, but as a depth piece and a special-teams contributor, he’ll be a pretty valuable piece that the Bears picked up for peanuts. He’ll likely be asked to replace the production of Aaron Lynch, which shouldn’t be hard to do so long as he can stay onsides. He also has familiarity playing for defensive coordinator Chuck Pagano, so perhaps Chuck can extract some value out of him on a one-year deal. It should also help to play on a line with Khalil Mack, Robert Quinn, and Akiem Hicks.
Burns, on the other hand, is a little more intriguing as he is only three years removed from being a pretty highly-touted cornerback coming out of the University of Miami. Maybe a change of scenery will do him good and he can tap into the talent that led to him being a first-round pick.
Again, one-year deals have a tendency to motivate a player and could result in the Bears catching lightning in a bottle.
While fans may want to see the team sign more high-profile names, these are the types of players (at the type of cost) who are necessary to fill out a roster. They are also the ones who could potentially fetch the team compensatory draft picks in 2022.
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – SEPTEMBER 28: (L-R) James McCann #33 of the Chicago White Sox, Ivan Nova #46, and Jose Abreu #79 meet on the mound during the sixth inning of a game against the Detroit Tigers at Guaranteed Rate Field on September 28, 2019 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Nuccio DiNuzzo/Getty Images)
The coronavirus has likely shortened the 2020 MLB season, if not killed it altogether. The Chicago White Sox have seen this before.
Long-time Chicago White Sox fans will remember 1994. That was supposed to be the year – the year they’d finally win it all for the first time since 1917. The 1919 Black Sox curse would be shaken off, and the Sox would win the World Series before the long-suffering Chicago Cubs would, making it even sweeter for those South Side fans who measure their team’s success against the team based 8 miles north.
After all, the 1993 team was pretty damn good, although they ran into a buzzsaw in the American League Championship when they faced the eventual champion Toronto Blue Jays.
When 1994 rolled around, the White Sox were predicted by most to face off against the then-Montreal Expos (now the Washington Nationals) in the World Series. Instead, the player’s strike scrubbed the season. At the time, the Sox had a 67-46 record and a one-game lead in the division.
Now, the 2020 White Sox were on schedule to possibly be competitive and make a run at the playoffs for the first time since a rebuild began in 2017. How very White Sox would it be if a shortened season worked against them, or if the season was canceled altogether?
I’m the eternal optimist – and I have a gut feeling that there will be baseball at the major-league level this year. But I could be wrong, and worst-case coronavirus scenarios could play out, thus scuttling the season.
Even if I am right, it’s hard to imagine 162 games being played, even with doubleheaders. The season could be compressed.
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Whether that will help or hurt teams is debatable. On one hand, fatigue would likely be less of an issue if teams don’t have as many games to play (of course, that will apply to all teams). On the other hand, there will be less time for players to rebound from slumps or rebound from injuries. Not to mention, a team that’s not predicted to be competitive could get hot, and without a long season, there won’t be time for them to cool off. They could knock the Sox out at some point.
Finally, even if the Sox were to win it all, they’d be derided for winning it during a shortened season. So-called “haters” could say that the win is less impressive than a normal championship because it wasn’t earned over the usual 162 games.
Sure, the Sox have the 2005 Series championship (which also came 11 years before Cubs broke their own curse, giving a certain segment of Sox fans more than a little bit of joy), and coronavirus can’t take that away.
Thursday was supposed to be the White Sox home opener. That, obviously, isn’t going to happen. Hopefully, the 2020 season will.
I know how important it is to socially distance, and I understand a shortened season is the price we pay to try and stop a virus that will kill too many people (really, one is too many, but you get my drift). With that in mind, the White Sox’ fate is very, very low on the priority list. I’ve written this post with tongue firmly planted in cheek.
Still, how very White Sox it would be, to experience no season in 2020.
The ChicagoBears have a quarterback problem, but Pro Football Focus is pointing the blame at the wrong people.
The 2020 NFL Draft is right around the corner and fans are going to have to see what general manager Ryan Pace the Chicago Bears are made of. Without a pick in the first, third or fourth rounds, Pace has his work cut out for him.
After trading for former Super Bowl MVP Nick Foles, some wonder whether the Bears still need to draft a quarterback. Whatever your opinion may be on the matter, one thing is clear: The quarterback position is anything but solidified in Chicago.
A certain outlet, which is notorious for its questionable grading program, recently posted a bit about the current position which the Bears are in. Needless to say, did not go over well with Bears fans.
Pro Football Focus released a post with a short video titled, “Bears are wishing they didn’t trade for a star defensive end right now.”
You can pretty much assume exactly what that means.
Yes, PFF is insinuating that the Bears should regret trading for All Pro pass rusher Khalil Mack. Why, you ask? They state that Pace would love a chance to draft a quarterback in the first round of this year’s draft.
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Sure, any team out there with a questionable quarterback situation would love to draft a quarterback this year. But, the logic in this is argument completely flawed and overlooks a lot of common knowledge.
Dak Prescott was a recent fourth-round pick, and led the NFL’s no. 1 offense last season. Gardner Minshew was a recent sixth-round pick and now has the Jacksonville Jaguars committed to him as a starter after just one year.
Heck, the Miami Dolphins wound up with the NFL’s no. 12 passing offense with journeyman Ryan Fitzpatrick at the helm, zero semblance of a run game and after trading their best offensive lineman and a starting wide receiver.
The problem with the Bears’ quarterback position has absolutely nothing to do with the Mack trade, but everything to do with whiffing on a no. 2 overall pick, Mitchell Trubisky.
PFF should know that, right? After all, they have historically trashed Trubisky with their grading system and love to point out how terrible he is.
Yet, here they are insulting a generational pass rusher like Mack. I don’t even have to go into the numbers, because they don’t do Mack’s presence justice. What he has done to this defensive unit overall is nothing short of incredible.
The Bears went from a top-10 defense to the scariest team defense in one season, and the fact that the Bears still can’t score points is not his fault. Shoot, the blame might not even fall 100 percent on Pace, here. Trubisky was a highly-graded prospect who was absolutely going in the first round in 2017, but he simply hasn’t held up his end of the bargain.
Trubisky is to blame — not Pace, and sure as heck not Mack. Trubisky is the guy they love to hate (and sometimes we do too, quite frankly). So, keep the narrative straight. PFF should never, ever take a jab at a guy like Mack ever again.
Chance is a handsome, sweet, playful and fun five-year-old, 55-pound male black and white Lab/Border Collie-mix with warm brown eyes looking for a loving guardian.
Chance was relinquished to rescue with two cats when his family could no longer care for them.
He has been crated for way too much of his life – often 12 hours at a time. So, he’s learned to relieve himself inside his crate.
He would love a family to care for him, train him and shower him with love. He loves long walks and he loves to play ball. He brings the ball back to you with a little bit of slobber. He’s enjoys the company of people of all ages, cats and dogs.
He will need training, but he is so worth the investment.
To meet and possibly adopt Chance, please contact Brian at [email protected] for an adoption application.
Chance is neutered, up to date on rabies and distemper vaccines and will be micro-chipped, fecal and heartworm-tested upon his adoption.
His adoption fee of $250 benefits the rescued dogs of Famous Fido.
4137 N. Tripp Ave. in Chicago: $1,690,000 | Listed on Jan. 31, 2020
This 8,000-square-foot Old Irving Park home has six bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms. Inside are four fireplaces, a second-floor loft, three decks, two family rooms, an office, library, exercise room, game room and theater. The home also features a three-car garage with an electric car charging station. A center island, 48-inch custom cabinetry and Thermador appliances make up the kitchen.
Agent: Aaron Vanderbilt of Baird & Warner, 773-681-2748
Southern Illinois was the lone state FCS program to start spring practice before it was halted by the COVID-19 pandemic. (photo courtesy siusalukis.com)
Published in the early 1960s, Silent Spring was Rachel Carson’s landmark book documenting the adverse environmental effects caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides. That same title could also easily be used to describe our current COVID-19 pandemic landscape.
Although Southern Illinois was able to open spring ball Feb. 26 and hold five team workouts, spring football practices will not be held on the campuses of the four Illinois Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) programs going forward.
According to a story last week by Todd Hefferman in The Southern Illinoisan, “Instead of talking to prospective athletes in person, SIU coach Nick Hill and his staff are talking to each other via video conference calls and reviewing film wherever they can. Social distancing takes on a whole new meaning when you’re talking about offensive coaches, defensive coaches and 86 players, but the Salukis are trying to take advantage of what they can off the field.”
Assistant Athletics Director/Communications Mike Williams of Illinois State University told Prairie State Pigskin that head coach Brock Spack made the decision to call off spring practice quickly after returning from a trip with his family.
“It’s my decision. I think it’s the right one,” Spack told Randy Reinhardt of The Pantagraph. “The health, safety and well-being of our players, staff, families and local community is our top priority. Having our players in close contact at practice is not safe at this time for any involved.
Brock Spack (photo by Barry Bottino, Prairie State Pigskin)
“While we are disappointed in not being able to have this time to work with our players and aid in their development, we realize there are bigger things than football at stake here.”
Williams said Spack wanted to take football off the players’ plates.
“They’ve got enough going on adapting to online classes and other changes in daily life,” Williams paraphrased Spack.
Like ISU, students are no longer on campus at Eastern Illinois and Western Illinois.
“Where we are is pretty much in the same boat as everyone else. We already canceled all the significant dates for this semester in terms of football-wise, our alumni weekend, our golf outing, spring game,” WIU head coach Jared Elliott told Prairie State Pigskin.
Academics
Each coaching staff sees academics as priority one.
Spack told Reinhardt “members of his team who are at risk academically and ‘making sure they get what they need. It’s hard to do from a distance.’”
Jared Elliott
Elliott said, “We’ve shifted everything online. We’re going to be online the rest of the semester. You’ve got young men from all over the country now at home. The biggest thing for me right now and for our program is that I’m a big believer that structure is a critical part to any human being’s life, specifically to our young men.
“The way that we’re doing that is still having a structured week for our players Monday through Friday. We’re trying to be as proactive as we can, utilizing the resources that we have. As I said to our staff, thank God that we have the technology that we have today to be able to stay connected to our players and to be able to facilitate the structure for our guys in this very uncertain and uncharted time that we’re in right now.”
The third-year WIU head coach added that “frequent, almost daily, academic checks with our academic staff and our position coaches” are in place.
“The biggest concern for every coach right now is all of the sudden you’re not having your players here on campus, it’s that element of accountability in terms of academics,” Elliott said.”You may have a large portion of young men that maybe have never taken an online class before, and so we’re trying to make sure all those steps have been really well thought out and preparing those guys for what’s coming down the pipe in what it’s going to look like in the foreseeable future.”
EIU head coach Adam Cushing told Prairie State Pigskin, “It’s structure. Any online class, any home schooling, the structure is the critical part. Humans, all humans, have a tendency when you’re not in your normal routine to be amorphous and just do whatever, whenever. So that’s our No. 1 goal as a staff, to provide that consistent structure so that everyone can succeed.”
The second-year head coach added that his staff’s first two semesters on campus have produced the highest football team GPAs in program history.
“We’re being creative in what we can do and operating as though they’re on campus and not at home,” he said.
Workouts
With the extreme nature of football as a team game, each staff must also be creative in its ways to meet the challenges of preparing its team for the day it can assemble on a practice field. Each staff is in the process of developing individual workouts for its players.
“Some of our players have access to a gym, some don’t,” Elliott said. “We have workout plans for both of those scenarios.”
Cushing added, “Some guys are more fortunate than others with home gyms, weights at home, resistance bands and all that other stuff.”
Cushing, a Chicago native, praised the work on EIU strength and conditioning coach Joe Orozco.
“His day probably became a little more crowded with training, but he’s got a great creative plan to make sure that he can still coach all the individuals on the team.”
Team bonding
All staffs have used a variety of means to communicate with and to organize players. FaceTime, Skype and Zoom are among the technology resources that have been utilized.
Cushing said, “That’s absolutely critical. Stuff that you and I could never have even imagined as kids, much less college-age. Our No. 1 offseason goal has been to create connections within our football team. My afternoon has been 30 minutes with the offensive staff looking at each others’ faces (via technology), and then I just got done with the defensive staff and that was after an hour of FaceTiming individuals on our roster.
“We’ve got a plan, and that’s a big part of our plan, connection on a daily basis. Every single day our coaches are looking our players in the eye, and they’re looking each other in the eye.”
Elliott said, “We’ve used group conferencing to run position meetings and do the installs. We have to continue to find a way to teach and coach.”
Adam Cushing (photo by Barry Bottino, Prairie State Pigskin)
Final thoughts
Whether you’re a Leatherneck, Panther, Redbird or Saluki, you realize you have to make the best of a situation that impacts far more than collegiate sports.
“At some point this will pass, hopefully sooner rather than later and we can get back to life as is,” Elliott said. “I will say this, the biggest thing I’ve noticed is that our kids have that element of realizing how quickly things can be taken away from you. You take it for granted, you really do. Whether it’s a position meeting or a team meeting or a weight room session or a practice, and when something happens like this, it really opens your eyes and your perspective changes. That attitude of gratitude.
“I can tell our players miss being around each other. That’s always a good sign when you’ve got a team that loves each other and want to be around each other. Our players, the parents, the families have been amazing. It’s such a fluid situation. New information comes out day by day. Our kids have great in how they’ve adapted and handled this.”
Cushing praised Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s decision to enact his shelter in place policy in an attempt to slow the virus.
“I’m extremely thankful for Gov. Pritzker’s leadership and his willingness to do something that is extremely unpopular to protect the health and safety of everybody in Illinois, all of our student-athletes and all of our students at EIU,” Cushing said. “It was a difficult decision, I’m sure, but genius and strong leadership has boldness in it.
“The people who are going to come out of this on the other end much stronger are going to be the ones who maintain that connection that really focus on how we are still a football team and not just a bunch of guys who play football on the same sideline.”
“This is unprecedented,” Spack told Reinhardt. “We’ll try to prevent the spread of it so we can play next fall. We hope we can get things started in the summer.”
SIU’s Hill told Hefferman, “There will be a time to address all of that. Right now we gotta do our best to take care of our families and do what’s best for the country.”
Blog co-authors Barry Bottino and Dan Verdun bring years of experience covering collegiate athletics. Barry has covered college athletes for more than two decades in his “On Campus” column, which is published weekly by Shaw Media. Dan has written four books about the state’s football programs–“NIU Huskies Football” (released in 2013), “EIU Panthers Football (2014), “ISU Redbirds” (2016) and “SIU Salukis Football” (2017).
If I was a Democrat–which I’m not, but which I used to be before I was expelled for being pro-life and culturally conservative–I would want Andrew Cuomo as my nominee for president of the United States.
His televised briefings during the COVID-19 crisis were a textbook case of how government should operate and what qualities a leader should have. While President Donald Trump was struggling in his press conferences to read off a script enumerating everything his administration was doing, Cuomo, seemingly from off the top of his head, was reeling off the multitude of steps he was taking.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo
His presentation was not colored by political posturing and self aggrandizement, as Trump’s has been. It were factual, calm and, dare I say, apolitical.
The irony is that as apolitical as it has been, Cuomo has boosted his national profile and–this is more important–his reputation as a practical politician, who did not let ideology cloud his problem-solving approach in a time of crisis.
It’s what so many Americans crave. “Please, please end the BS, step up and solve our problems.” It’s what huge hunks of moderate, independent and never-Trumpers hunger for. It’s what neither Biden nor Trump offer. In all this, Cuomo has the best chance of beating Trump–the heart’s desire of many Americans living outside of Trump’s base.
Compare Cuomo’s performance with that of the apparent Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden. My Lord, did you watch him yesterday stumble through his scripted faux fireside chat in which he displayed again the reasons why he’s just not just a weak candidate, but not up for the job and bad for the nation.
So, a Draft Cuomo movement already has begun. Reports the New York Post: “#PresidentCuomo trends as governor’s star status rises over coronavirus response”. It’s hard to see how that could be done with Biden leading the delegate race, especially if he goes into the party’s national convention with a majority. Maybe those infamous 775 unpledged superdelegates will pull it off somehow.
Maybe, for the first time in decades, a convention will be worth watching instead of being the ceremonial crowning that it has become.
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I’m Jerry Partacz, happily married to my wife Julie for over 40 years. I have four children and eleven grandchildren. I’m enjoying retirement after 38 years of teaching. I now have an opportunity to share my thoughts on many things. I’m an incurable optimist. I also love to solve crossword puzzles and to write light verse. I love to read, to garden, to play the piano, to collect stamps and coins, and to watch “Curb Your Enthusiasm”.
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