RPI 2021-22: Picking Up Where We Left Off

[NAFTA123]

https://uvmathletics.com/news/2021/1...cember-30.aspx

[sezenack]

To: The Rensselaer Community
From: Shirley Ann Jackson, Ph.D., President, Institute Professor, Professor of Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy, Professor of Engineering Sciences
Re: Congratulations, Coach Ralph Isernia

The fall 2021 football season has been a most uplifting and exciting time for our campus, thanks to our student-athletes and their coach, Mr. Ralph Isernia. Since his time at Rensselaer, Coach Isernia has profoundly and positively impacted our students and athletics program. His vision, tenacity, leadership, and fighting spirit led to an overall regular-season record for the Rensselaer football team of nine wins and two losses. The team's win-loss record in the Liberty League was five wins and one loss. The team won the Liberty League football conference title and earned a berth to the NCAA Division III Football Playoffs for the third time in the last four seasons - truly outstanding!

The first round of the NCAA tournament resulted in a win over Endicott College to advance to the second round of the tournament and a win against SUNY Cortland. The win over Cortland advanced the Engineers to the NCAA Division III Football Playoff Quarterfinal game against North Central College on Saturday, December 4, 2021.

I am tremendously proud of Coach Isernia and our student-athletes. I am pleased to extend his contract as Head Men's Football Coach at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for a term intended to span a period of five consecutive years, through December 31, 2027. The contract extension recognizes his devotion to building a winning football program, consistency in postseason play in the NCAA Division III Football Playoffs, and dedication to all program players and coaches.

"When people think of championships, they think of wins or losses," said Lee McElroy, associate vice president and director of athletics. "Coach Isernia is doing more than winning games. He is building a program that keeps our student-athletes and coaching staff connected throughout the university. Our players have consistently high GPAs and are very involved in community service. The leadership model that Coach Isernia practices helps our young people to be successful in life. They are committed, have character, and promote the Rensselaer culture of excellence in everything they do."

Coach Isernia has led the Engineers team since 2013 and has guided the team to seven consecutive postseason appearances (a school record), four league championships, two ECAC championships, and three NCAA playoff appearances.

"I want to thank Dr. Jackson, Vice President Curtis Powell, and Dr. McElroy for this opportunity," said Coach Isernia. "This extension represents a continued commitment to our program, coaching staff, scholar-athletes, and our standard of excellence. I am honored to continue to lead the football program at RPI."

Coach Isernia and his staff have garnered postseason Coach of the Year awards from the Liberty League, ECAC, and D3football.com. He has received the Marvin Anderson Award, which his peers awarded.

A coach since 1991, he has experience in Division III, Division II, and the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly I-AA). Coach Isernia came to Rensselaer from Ferrum College, where he served as an assistant head coach and offensive coordinator for the Division III Panthers. He spent six years prior at the University of Charleston as an assistant head coach, offensive coordinator, and interim head coach.

A member of the American Football Coaches Association, Coach Isernia has been a speaker and clinician at the organization's events and camps around the country. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Anthropology from Davidson College and a Master of Science in Counselor Education from Western Connecticut.

Please join me in congratulating Coach Ralph Isernia, his coaching staff, and our brilliant student-athletes for their continued successes on and off the playing fields. We are delighted he will continue to inspire them to greatness.

Great news, but there's another coach who needs a contract extension, Shirley

[DrDemento]

Hope everyone here enjoys the holidays with their families!

And to you too!!!!!!! Ours will be quiet, at home, just Jenny and I and of course Sirius Black (one of our few kitties that was not named for an RPI hockey player).

[sezenack]

Hope everyone here enjoys the holidays with their families!

[DrDemento]

"Nature's vaccine" - I like that. It's what I meant by "considerably milder might be a path out of this mess." A weaker version that is highly transmissible would rapidly spread natural immunity, which as you noted is likely to be stronger because the immune system is exposed to the full protein profile of the virus rather than selected subsets found in a vaccine, without the negative impacts on our medical system and tens of millions of patients. That could even make a mild "breakthrough" infection a good thing as it might be preferable to trade a few days of mild illness in exchange for greater likelihood of protection from a potentially more serious future variant.

If Doc's theory is correct my major concerns would shift to my 92 year-old father that lives with us. Unlike my wife and I, he had absolutely no side effects from any of his three shots. I rationalized my few days of aches and generally tired feeling as an indication that my immune system was at work. Of course, if you buy that then you might be worried about him as he's elderly and with limited lung function. Before deciding how our household should deal with info like Wicked provided, I wonder if I should get him an antibody test to see if he's got reasonable immune response.

P.S. Bringing this back to hockey, Northeastern has announced that all home athletic events are closed to spectators. However, in the "mixed messages" department, they then put their Beanpot allocation on sale and it quickly sold out. I guess they are betting (or hoping) the worst will be over by February.

It is often very instructive in medicine to look back at the very long history of diseases and treatments. Those who ignore (or refuse to look at) the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them. Before we became so advanced and steeped in modern medicine, we studied the natural histories of disease and epidemics. I wonder if you ask all the pundits and so called epidemiology experts we are forced to listen to today, how exactly did the dreaded and misnamed Spanish Flu of 1918 come to an end? Certainly not with mandated vaccinations! For that matter, how did those horrible epidemics of the past disappear? The various incarnations of the Black Death and other plagues? The dreaded sweating sickness that swept through Britain during the 1500's? After over 50 years in the field I still prefer to tell patients that what I am able to do in practice is 75% science, 20 art of medicine (using treatments that are off label for example because I believe they might work), and the last 5% is pure luck. Sometimes we do everything we can right and the results are poor. Other times, we do nothing right and the patient thrives! And fairly often, doing nothing is far better than doing something. Benign neglect can be a very valuable treatment option.
Back to hockey - I am really starting to fret about the rest of this season. NY has been reporting new cases in numbers I cannot keep up with. Will the un-elected Governor use these numbers of positive tests to ban indoor events? Will SAJ do likewise? Will the Ivy League teams rush to judgement and end their seasons? What will the ECAC and NCAA do? Although I am a little disappointed in our most recent performances, I do not want to see our season shortened.

[rpi82]

WS-Thanks for posting the sensitive but sensible material. My outlook here in NJ is similar. Those that want to create panic and fear will simply focus on the number of positive tests. This post seems like a very honest appraisal of the situation that is being seen her and around the world. So far, and I must admit it is far too early to draw firm conclusions, this new variant is acting like nature's vaccine. Most vaccines either contain killed virus, or severely weakened and attenuated virus. This way you get the body to respond and create immunity against the entire virus (not just a portion of it). We can only hope that this variant is doing that job for us. If it is indeed as mild or even asymptomatic as early indications and trends are showing, and if it elicits a decent antiviral response form the host, it may be possible to have large segments of the population become immune to COVID infections in general. This is not something new and has been described in the past in the medical literature and has been seen as the precursor of the end of some epidemics and pandemics. Keeping fingers crossed since as it remains unpredictable as to how this continues. It is a very different world now (with air travel and population mobility) and trying to draw conclusions from past behavior of infectious agents is no longer as reliable. Also hopeful that the powers that be in ECAC and NCAA sports are actually looking at and understand what we are seeing instead of firing from the hip with lock downs and regulations.

"Nature's vaccine" - I like that. It's what I meant by "considerably milder might be a path out of this mess." A weaker version that is highly transmissible would rapidly spread natural immunity, which as you noted is likely to be stronger because the immune system is exposed to the full protein profile of the virus rather than selected subsets found in a vaccine, without the negative impacts on our medical system and tens of millions of patients. That could even make a mild "breakthrough" infection a good thing as it might be preferable to trade a few days of mild illness in exchange for greater likelihood of protection from a potentially more serious future variant.

If Doc's theory is correct my major concerns would shift to my 92 year-old father that lives with us. Unlike my wife and I, he had absolutely no side effects from any of his three shots. I rationalized my few days of aches and generally tired feeling as an indication that my immune system was at work. Of course, if you buy that then you might be worried about him as he's elderly and with limited lung function. Before deciding how our household should deal with info like Wicked provided, I wonder if I should get him an antibody test to see if he's got reasonable immune response.

P.S. Bringing this back to hockey, Northeastern has announced that all home athletic events are closed to spectators. However, in the "mixed messages" department, they then put their Beanpot allocation on sale and it quickly sold out. I guess they are betting (or hoping) the worst will be over by February.

[DavidNardolillo]

Just for an update on location Cap. Dist. conditions, as an FYI. I heard a radio interview this A.M. with Dr. Dennis McKenna, the Prez of Albany Medical Ctr.

Paraphrasing his key points:

-Hospitalizations are DOWN at Albany Med. over the last two weeks (I'll hold my breathe waiting for that tidbit to air on the local news...)
-Case loads (positive test results) are increasing rapidly because testing is increasing rapidly. (He mentioned the same would be true if you increased testing at the same pace for other viruses.... such as flu.)
-Upwards of 90% of all new cases (positive tests) are Omicron
-ALL of the data they are seeing--local, regional, statewide -- is that the severity of illness is FAR less severe than Delta. For those with symptoms (at least 40% are asymptomatic) Omicron appears to stay higher up in the nasal cavity with far less impact and far slower spread into the bronchi... and resolves more quickly than Delta.
-There are very effective treatments for those who might become ill
-The latest data from South Africa where Omicron was first found, shows their case loads dropping rapidly with few hospitalizations.

I'm not pushing any narratives, but the facts (the math) are what matter. This guy has consistently been a non-partisan steady voice through the cloud of fear that is spread like manure by media outlets.
The current case loads are exploding because everybody is getting tested, including many, many, many of those with no symptoms... With any luck our Omicron curve will peak as quickly as it did in S. Africa.

Which radio station interviewed Dr. McKenna?

[DrDemento]

WS-Thanks for posting the sensitive but sensible material. My outlook here in NJ is similar. Those that want to create panic and fear will simply focus on the number of positive tests. This post seems like a very honest appraisal of the situation that is being seen her and around the world. So far, and I must admit it is far too early to draw firm conclusions, this new variant is acting like nature's vaccine. Most vaccines either contain killed virus, or severely weakened and attenuated virus. This way you get the body to respond and create immunity against the entire virus (not just a portion of it). We can only hope that this variant is doing that job for us. If it is indeed as mild or even asymptomatic as early indications and trends are showing, and if it elicits a decent antiviral response form the host, it may be possible to have large segments of the population become immune to COVID infections in general. This is not something new and has been described in the past in the medical literature and has been seen as the precursor of the end of some epidemics and pandemics. Keeping fingers crossed since as it remains unpredictable as to how this continues. It is a very different world now (with air travel and population mobility) and trying to draw conclusions from past behavior of infectious agents is no longer as reliable. Also hopeful that the powers that be in ECAC and NCAA sports are actually looking at and understand what we are seeing instead of firing from the hip with lock downs and regulations.

[Wicked Slappaahs]

I hope you're right because "considerably milder" might be the begining of a path out of this mess, but what I've heard from people tracking the medical data is that they are fairly certain that Omicron severity is not signicantly worse than Delta, but whether it is comparable or less severe is still TBD. Importantly, they also believe that Omicron is much more contagious, thus even if it is comparable or somewhat less severe on an individual case basis, there is a lot of concern regarding widespread overwhelming of our medical system. As it is, here in CT we've seen a 300% increase in hospitalized cases over the last month and a 200% increase in infections over just the last two weeks - all before Omicron could become the dominant strain, although that's expected in the next few weeks.

For those of us that have tickets to the Army game at West Point, keep an eye out. My nephew, a USMA grad, was going to join me for the game and he's heard that closure to fans may be upcoming.

Just for an update on location Cap. Dist. conditions, as an FYI. I heard a radio interview this A.M. with Dr. Dennis McKenna, the Prez of Albany Medical Ctr.

Paraphrasing his key points:

-Hospitalizations are DOWN at Albany Med. over the last two weeks (I'll hold my breathe waiting for that tidbit to air on the local news...)
-Case loads (positive test results) are increasing rapidly because testing is increasing rapidly. (He mentioned the same would be true if you increased testing at the same pace for other viruses.... such as flu.)
-Upwards of 90% of all new cases (positive tests) are Omicron
-ALL of the data they are seeing--local, regional, statewide -- is that the severity of illness is FAR less severe than Delta. For those with symptoms (at least 40% are asymptomatic) Omicron appears to stay higher up in the nasal cavity with far less impact and far slower spread into the bronchi... and resolves more quickly than Delta.
-There are very effective treatments for those who might become ill
-The latest data from South Africa where Omicron was first found, shows their case loads dropping rapidly with few hospitalizations.

I'm not pushing any narratives, but the facts (the math) are what matter. This guy has consistently been a non-partisan steady voice through the cloud of fear that is spread like manure by media outlets.
The current case loads are exploding because everybody is getting tested, including many, many, many of those with no symptoms... With any luck our Omicron curve will peak as quickly as it did in S. Africa.

[Wicked Slappaahs]

For those of us that have tickets to the Army game at West Point, keep an eye out. My nephew, a USMA grad, was going to join me for the game and he's heard that closure to fans may be upcoming.

Dang. I was worried about that.

[rpi82]

The difference with this outbreak, which you won't hear about on the nightly news, is the considerably milder symptoms of Omicron cases vs. Delta. I have no idea what Shirley will do ... will she complete her bridge burning campaign on the way out of town ? Certainly possible.

I hope you're right because "considerably milder" might be the begining of a path out of this mess, but what I've heard from people tracking the medical data is that they are fairly certain that Omicron severity is not signicantly worse than Delta, but whether it is comparable or less severe is still TBD. Importantly, they also believe that Omicron is much more contagious, thus even if it is comparable or somewhat less severe on an individual case basis, there is a lot of concern regarding widespread overwhelming of our medical system. As it is, here in CT we've seen a 300% increase in hospitalized cases over the last month and a 200% increase in infections over just the last two weeks - all before Omicron could become the dominant strain, although that's expected in the next few weeks.

For those of us that have tickets to the Army game at West Point, keep an eye out. My nephew, a USMA grad, was going to join me for the game and he's heard that closure to fans may be upcoming.

[Wicked Slappaahs]

This weekend the NHL and the NFL are both cancelling games. I can only hope that we haven't seen the last hockey game for the Engineers this season.
The covid numbers are out of control right now.
Think happy thoughts.

The difference with this outbreak, which you won't hear about on the nightly news, is the considerably milder symptoms of Omicron cases vs. Delta. I have no idea what Shirley will do ... will she complete her bridge burning campaign on the way out of town ? Certainly possible.

[Ralph Baer]

This weekend the NHL and the NFL are both cancelling games. I can only hope that we haven't seen the last hockey game for the Engineers this season.
The covid numbers are out of control right now.
Think happy thoughts.

If we have seen the last game, hopefully it is at least a league decision, preferably the NCAA.

[engineerhockeyfan]

This weekend the NHL and the NFL are both cancelling games. I can only hope that we haven't seen the last hockey game for the Engineers this season.
The covid numbers are out of control right now.
Think happy thoughts.

[sezenack]

I missed the last game. Looks like RPI enjoyed a nice shot advantage, suggesting they might have skated better. Surrendering 4 goals on 22 shots and going 0 for 5 on the power play will make most games hard to win. What was your diagnosis of that last game?

RPI won the shots on goal battle, but I thought Alaska had much better chances. We had to have allowed at least 7-8 odd-man rushes or breakaways in the game, and Linden was standing tall luckily. Honestly, I wouldn't even be surprised if it was in the double digits.

RPI also only really started putting shots on net in the 3rd period when they were down and desperate to try to score. The offense was lacking the majority of the game, while the defense kept allowing quality chances. I thought Linden played really well and it's a shame he didn't have much help in front of him