Covid football stadium boom not materializing

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BY TYLER WEYANT

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FUMBLE — The No. 3 and No. 4 college football teams in the country had just ended their nationally televised game in Iowa City. Tens of thousands of screaming, and perhaps intoxicated, students rushed the field. A University of Iowa epidemiologist — wearing blue and white thanks to her Pennsylvania upbringing — watched from her basement and worried.

“It looked like an outdoor super spreader event,” Christine Petersen said of the end of Saturday’s Penn State-Iowa game. “I thought I was watching it.”

Iowa Hawkeyes fans storm the field after the matchup against the Penn State Nittany Lions at Kinnick Stadium on Oct. 9 in Iowa City, Iowa.
Iowa Hawkeyes fans storm the field after the matchup against the Penn State Nittany Lions at Kinnick Stadium on Oct. 9 in Iowa City, Iowa. | Matthew Holst/Getty Images

Yet the early data she’s examined hasn’t shown much of an effect at all. The University of Iowa has been doing dorm-sewage testing since last spring. Although there have been some positive cases this season, tests haven’t registered any severe spikes.

In a football season that’s seen its fair share of crazy events ( Alabama loses! Student journalists watching practices from atop tall buildings! Fake injuries!), one of the craziest may be what hasn’t occurred: the fierce spread of Covid driven by college football that was predicted by experts when the season began.

The headlines were clear. CNN: “College football fans and traditions are back, even with Covid-19 still here.” The AP: “Crowded stadiums, pandemic create combustible mix this fall.” NBC News: “College football season is here. And so is the delta variant.” Um, POLITICO: The newsletter you are reading right now, on Sept. 8, said, “Public health officials fear packed stadiums, raucous tailgate parties and crowded bars could be tinder for the Delta variant.”

And now that we’re a month-plus into the season? “We’re not seeing it,” Petersen said. “You would catch population spikes, and there is no spike happening.”

A University of Florida release this week was blunt: “So far, COVID-19 spikes from college football games haven’t materialized,” with UF epidemiologist Cindy Prins noting “some of these outdoor events really are not the super spreader events that people have worried they’re going to be.”

The low transmission rate on football Saturdays this fall adds to the growing data showing that outdoor activities are safer. Study after study has assessed case spread at outdoor events to be significantly lower than at indoor events. Lollapalooza, the Chicago music festival, saw thousands attend, fully vaccinated, with few reported cases afterward.

Outdoor events that have seen large spreads of Covid, such as the Sturgis Motorcycle rally earlier this year, have various additional factors that play into the spread, such as large unvaccinated populations attending , plus lots of indoor drinking at bars.

Indoor parties on campus are leading to outbreaks at the University of Iowa, Petersen said.

. . .

Most important, the pandemic is unlikely to be over when the national championship trophy is awarded in early 2022. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine, says the relationship between Covid and college football is still a bit murky.

“Could SEC games have contributed to the terrible Delta surge in the South in September and early October? I suppose that’s possible,” Hotez wrote in an email. “Was it lessened by high vaccination coverage among the educated and students at major universities?

“I still think we’ll see a fifth wave as we head into November-December. So we’re not done.”

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