We’ve reached the two-week mark since the NBA decided to suspend the 2019-20 season. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that Rudy Gobert — testing positive for the coronavirus when he did — saved lives.
The positive test sparked the suspension of the NBA season, and in the days immediately following Gobert’s diagnosis, U.S. sports leagues closed up shop — including the cancellation of the NCAA tournament.
It’s taken a single UEFA Champions League match to show that those sports leagues made the correct — albeit difficult — decision to stop play.
The Associated Press published a new report about Bergamo, Italy, on Wednesday. The city of 120,000 is one of the hardest hit Italian regions in this coronavirus pandemic. And epidemiologists are looking at Atalanta’s Feb. 19 Champions League match against Valencia as the “biological bomb” that caused the virus to spread across Bergamo and to Valencia, Spain.
Via the Associated Press:
The evening before the match, there was no social distancing as officials from both clubs mingled and exchanged gifts and handshakes at a gala dinner offered by Atalanta.
“I have heard a lot (of theories), I’ll say mine: Feb. 19, 40,000 Bergamaschi went to San Siro for Atalanta-Valencia,” Fabiano di Marco, the chief pneumologist at the hospital in Bergamo, told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. “In buses, cars, trains. A biological bomb, unfortunately.”
Valencia defender Ezequiel Garay was the first Spanish league player to test positive for COVID-19. The team played a Spanish league game against Alavés about two weeks after the game in Milan, and later Alavés reported that 15 people in the club were infected, though it did not say the cases were directly related to the match against Valencia.
That particular match has since been dubbed “Match Zero,” as at least 7,000 people in Bergamo tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. The virus also spread to at least 2,600 people in Valencia, Spain.
Had the U.S. gone forward with packed stadiums and arenas — or even limited-capacity events — there could have been a dramatic acceleration in the virus’ spread across the U.S.
In Italy, it only took one match to make matters significantly worse. The U.S. would’ve had dozens of opportunities to make a crisis even worse between the NBA, NHL, spring training, MLS and March Madness. Those leagues made the right decisions to stop play. It had to be done.
You can read the full report here.
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