Some would have you believe showing prudence in the face of a virus that has the potential to turn into the worst global pandemic in a century is a mere matter of manliness.
Those of us who outgrew such thinking somewhere around junior high school (and/or don’t oversee a promotion whose parent company’s debt was recently termed “credit watch negative” by S&P Global – but maybe they’re just wimps, too), however, understand putting a halt to contact sports in the face of COVID-19 a basic matter of protecting public health.
According to the Gulf News, a kickboxing event at Bangkok’s famed Lumpinee Stadium on March 6 is responsible for a considerable percentage of Thailand’s confirmed cases of coronavirus.
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Currently, 72 of the first 322 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the Southeast Asian country are directly traced to those who attended that event, which had an estimated attendance of 5,000, and shows at a pair of other Bangkok venues.
Those are just the confirmed cases of those who were tested. Given the virus can take anywhere from five to 14 days for symptoms to manifest, and that early data strongly suggests many people carry the virus without symptoms ever manifesting but can still spread the disease to those who are more vulnerable, the chain reaction from just this one event could be widespread over time.
Here’s an account from a fan named Suwan Jitpinit who attended the show and fell ill:
“We were squeezed against each other. Normally the place isn’t that crowded,” said Jitpinit, who traveled from his hometown in Sukhothai province, a 420-kilometer (260-mile) drive.
“At other regular events, there would be about 1,500 to 2,000 people in the stadium but because this was a special match, there were many more people,” recalled the 37-year-old boxing critic. He stayed in Bangkok for a match at another stadium before going home on March 10.
On the drive home, he began to feel feverish and was shivering so much he had to ask someone else to drive. When he arrived that evening, he went to a local hospital and was diagnosed with tonsillitis. Not feeling any better three days later, he sought help from a bigger hospital in nearby Phitsanulok.”
Matthew Deane Chanthavanij, the ring announcer and in-ring interviewer for the event, also contracted the virus and posted on Instagram warning his countrymen to take it seriously.
And that’s the point here. You can shut the doors to fans – Lumpinee Stadium, for the record, has since shut down for the rest of the month – and limit the number of people who attend. But even in a controlled environment, all it takes is one person contracting the virus – like an in-ring interviewer who is going to speak to all of the evening’s winners – to push it forward to fighters whose immune systems are down after cutting weight, to people who will travel to and from their hometowns before and after the fight, to staffers who might not show symptoms but might visit their grandmothers and get them sick.
And that’s why the shows should stay shut down for now – regardless of what a centimillionaire who didn’t show up to this past Saturday’s closed-door event while his fighters and staff continued on without COVID-19 testing tells you about wimpiness.
The Blue Corner is MMA Junkie’s blog space. We don’t take it overly serious, and neither should you. If you come complaining to us that something you read here is not hard-hitting news, expect to have the previous sentence repeated in ALL CAPS.