Medical experts think the 49ers' Super Bowl loss may have saved lives by ensuring Bay Area fans didn't celebrate as the coronavirus spread
- Medical experts at the University of California San Francisco told The Wall Street Journal that the San Francisco 49ers' Super Bowl loss may have saved lives in the Bay Area.
- After the 49ers blew a fourth-quarter lead in the Super Bowl on February 2, there were no celebrations in the streets or Super Bowl parades.
- The Bay Area reported its first case of the coronavirus on January 31.
- Given the timing, a doctor at UCSF said such celebrations would have been a "high-risk situation."
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The San Francisco 49ers' Super Bowl loss may have kept the coronavirus outbreak in the Bay Area from worsening, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Medical experts including Dr. Bob Wachter, chair of the University of California San Francisco's department of medicine, told the Journal that the 49ers' loss may have even saved lives in the region.
On Sunday, February 2 — the day of the Super Bowl — Santa Clara County reported its second coronavirus case. The first case was reported on January 31. Nearby San Benito County reported a case of community transmission on February 2 as well.
At the time, UCSF was building its COVID-19 command center.
"It may go down in the annals as being a brutal sports loss, but one that may have saved lives," Wachter told the Journal's Andrew Beaton and Ben Cohen.
Kansas City held a Super Bowl parade on February 5, drawing about 100,000 people, according to Startland News.
But the coronavirus was not yet circulating there. According to the city's official tracking site, there were still no confirmed cases as of March 11; Kansas City reported its first coronavirus cases about a week after that.
Beaton and Cohen noted that when the Golden State Warriors won NBA championships in 2015, 2017, and 2018, their celebratory parades attracted crowds of 500,000 to 1.5 million people.
Dr. Niraj Sehgal, who leads UCSF's COVID-19 command center, told The Journal that "it is certainly hard to imagine a more high-risk situation."
Beaton and Cohen also wrote that after Philadelphia held a parade to stoke wartime morale in 1918, it led the city to become the center of the Spanish Flu epidemic within days.
San Francisco has been praised for its handling of the coronavirus: The Atlantic's Russell Berman recently hailed it as a model of how to successfully flatten the curve. California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Monday that a commission is working on a plan to re-open California, Oregon, and Washington.
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