Shouldn’t all publicly funded stadiums become mass vaccination sites?

Shouldn’t all publicly funded stadiums become mass vaccination sites?

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With the implementation of COVID advancing at a slow pace, more sports stadiums should be available as vaccination sites.

With the implementation of COVID advancing at a slow pace, more sports stadiums should be available as vaccination sites.
Image: Getty Images

The vaccine was not launched at exactly high speed. So far, almost 9 million The Americans received the first dose of the COVID injection. If we want to move faster, we may need super centers and immunizations 24 hours a day to accommodate the hundreds of millions of Americans who are still waiting to be vaccinated.

I wonder where they could go? Where can you move thousands of people in a centralized and socially distant location? Where can hundreds of cars easily find parking spaces? What is always accessible by public transport? It looks like your local stadium.

Just like November (and the Georgia Runoffs), state governments and professional teams must do everything they can to offer vacant stadiums for the public good. After all, we are the ones who pay for publicly funded stadiums. Why shouldn’t we be able to use them?

Well, it looks like we can start soon. Today, New York Mayor Bill De Blasio announced a new mass vaccination site at Citi Field, a $ 830.6 million stadium paid for with the help of $ 614.3 million in public money. The Mets stadium will immunize thousands of New Yorkers a day. And it’s not just New York City. On Sunday night, the city of Los Angeles announced that Dodger Stadium would start vaccination this week. And two hours south, Petco Park will inoculate thousands at the Padres stadium.

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There are vaccination sites in State Farm Stadium (Arizona Cardinals) Hard Rock Stadium (Miami Dolphins) Minute Maid Park (Houston Astros) The big house (University of Michigan Football) and more. In addition, Fenway Park and Gillette Stadium are expected to become vaccination sites for Massachusetts’s first respondents this week.

But in a country with so many empty and publicly funded stadiums, more sports sites should begin to consider how they will help the community. The NFL has also urged teams will offer their home fields to vaccination sites and President-elect Joe Biden supposedly include sports stadiums in its vaccination plan, to be formally announced in Thursday. According to research by Global Sport Matters at Arizona State University, the majority US sports arenas use at least part of public assistance to pay for professional stadiums.

Wouldn’t it make sense if we, the public, really used it?

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