Amidst all the carnage created by the COVID-19 coronavirus, there are some good news stories out there, and one comes from John Kelly, the long-time St. Louis Blues play-by-play voice who currently calls their games on on Fox Sports Midwest. The Blues confirmed near the end of March that the 59-year-old Kelly had tested positive for COVID-19, but that he’d been self-isolating since March 13 and was feeling “strong and symptom free.” On Thursday, Chris Pinkert wrote a piece for the Blues’ website stating that Kelly has not only fully recovered, but is donating plasma to a local study on the virus:
John Kelly, the play-by-play announcer for St. Louis Blues telecasts on FOX Sports Midwest, is donating plasma for a study that will help determine whether antibodies from recovered COVID-19 patients can help those who have the disease.
…”A friend of mine at Washington University reached out to me and said they were doing a study like they are at places all over the world, and they feel there’s a really strong chance that people with antibodies for COVID-19 can help others who are still battling it,” Kelly told the Blues website. “You donate blood, they extract your plasma and inject that plasma into very sick patients. The studies show that a lot of people that are sick are getting better because they’re using a recovered person’s antibodies to fight off the virus.
“If I can make one person better, that’s fantastic.”
That’s an admirable stance from Kelly, who started calling Blues’ games from 1989-92, taking over from his father Dan Kelly, then returned to the team in 2005 after stints with the Tampa Bay Lightning and Colorado Avalanche, and has called their games since. And perhaps his plasma will be helpful in finding ways to counteract this virus. And the testimony he includes in that piece of his own battle with the virus is also notable; he was “feeling really, really bad” and was diagnosed with double pneumonia, but his doctor didn’t initially think he had COVID-19 because he didn’t have some of the other widely-reported symptoms. But the symptoms of this disease seem to vary widely, and Kelly’s case is more proof still of that. Hopefully his plasma donation will help make this fight easier for some others.
[NHL.com]
