For those hardened supporters of lockdowns, masks, and social distancing, the news out of Texas is not good: AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys, welcomed 73,126 for a boxing fight on Saturday night.
The crowd for the bout between Canelo Alvarez and Billy Joe Saunders is easily the largest since to fill an arena for a sporting event in The United States since the pandemic began.
According to Pro Football Talk:
Face coverings are mandatory for stadium workers but masks and social distancing are encouraged, not required, for fans, according to the AT&T Stadium website.
It remains to be seen what the crowd size, absent social distancing and mask wearing, means in the fight against COVID-19. Some health officials in Tarrant County expressed concern about the potential for an uptick in COVID-19 cases.
Of course, many of those Tarrant County health officials are like health officials in other parts of the country who have been consistently and disastrously wrong when making dire predictions for every gathering of more than eight people since the pandemic began.
Notably, Dr. Anthony Fauci pleaded with Americans to avoid Super Bowl parties due to the supposed potential that watch parties could become superspreader events.
“Enjoy the Super Bowl, but don’t do it with a large crowd of people in your house in a place when it’s cold and you don’t have good ventilation,” Fauci said in February.
However, despite Fauci’s warnings, the Super Bowl did not lead to any appreciable rise in the number of coronavirus cases in the Tampa area.
Speaking of Tarrant County officials, it was those same Tarrant County officials who warned that Texas Rangers games could become superspreader events. Well, just over a month into the season, there has been no appreciable rise in coronavirus cases that can be attributed to Rangers games.
Still, for reasons that politics, not science, can only explain, people keep asking for their opinions.