Sick of sports? WVU study shows flu deaths rise when pro sports teams move into cities:
West Virginia University economists, whose research shows flu deaths increase when a city becomes home to a new professional sports team, say their data should make even the biggest fans reconsider support for taxpayer-funded stadium subsidies.
According to their paper in Sports Economic Review, U.S. cities that gained pro teams between 1962 and 2016 saw increased influenza mortality of up to 24% after the teams came to town. The researchers analyzed cities with new teams in the four major North American professional leagues: Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League.
[...] "Most, if not all, of the sports venues in the cities we studied received direct and/or indirect public financing," Humphreys said. "Since 2000, U.S. state and local governments have committed nearly $20 billion to new stadiums — roughly a billion dollars per year. These subsidies usually come in the form of governments essentially cutting team owners a check, funded by issuing bonds, to build their stadiums. The fact that teams basically extort cities to get these subsidies by threatening to move elsewhere makes this of even more interest to economists.
"Our finding, that people in cities with sports teams are likely to be sicker than they would be without the team, has the potential to shift how we think about hosting professional sporting events. We hope taxpayers will be less likely to subsidize professional sports facilities if they realize those teams are making them sicker, burdening health care systems and harming businesses' bottom lines as workers use sick days."
When NFL teams moved to cities that never had pro sports teams before, those cities saw an average increase in flu deaths of 17%, or about 13 additional deaths a year. Becoming home to an NBA team increased a city's flu mortality by 4.7%, and MLB — whose games generally occur outside flu season — had the smallest impact, driving three additional deaths each year.
The largest increase in a city's weekly flu mortality came from the NHL. An NHL team moving into a city caused a 24.6% increase in flu deaths per 100,000 residents, Ruseski said, a total increase of about 20 flu deaths a year in each city.
"As for why hockey is so deadly, we believe it is both the timing of the season and location of the teams," she said. "The NHL season overlaps almost perfectly with the flu season and NHL teams are more likely to be in colder cities."
Journal Reference:
Cardazzi et al., Do sporting events amplify airborne virus transmission? Causal evidence from US professional team sports, Sports Economic Rev., 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.serev.2023.100013
(Score: 5, Touché) by ikanreed on Tuesday November 14 2023, @05:28AM (4 children)
The solution here is to stop paying the players so they're not pro teams anymore.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gaaark on Tuesday November 14 2023, @02:33PM (1 child)
Yup!
I stopped watching professional sports after getting tired of hearing how little they make:
Stupid Guy who'd be working at McDonalds if he wasn't playing: "I just signed a contract for $4 mill a year; he just signed for $4.5 mill a year and my stats are better than his, so I'm not playing until i get $5 mill a year"
He negotiated and he signed a LEGAL contract, so fuck him. Play until your contract runs out, then re-negotiate, f*ck-wad.
I'd rather watch something on plex... even the Crystal Maze with Richard O'brien than some 'under-paid' 'athlete' (not dissing Crystal Maze with Richard O'brien; just pointing out I'd rather not support 'under-paid' 'athletes').
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday November 14 2023, @07:57PM
And when you renegotiate, make sure you do it with some style [youtu.be].
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday November 16 2023, @05:39AM
The solution is to distinguish correlation from causation [tylervigen.com].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2023, @12:52AM
That's what the NCAA is for. Huge revelation for me when I saw my first football game live, and there were all those satellite uplinks there. This is professional sports, I thought. When I asked my suite-mates why they didn't have a union, they thought I'd gone commie. Over the years, the cognitive dissonance on this has constantly befuddled me. I get the incentives, the entrenched mentality, but it's still crazy when you compare how baseball works in this country vs. football and basketball. Playing for a farm team doesn't set you up for life; but at least it's an honest deal, not this "well, they get a scholarship" BS while the coaches make $millions. And it was always systemic racism too (because players in revenue sports are disproportionately Black), right under our noses and yet nobody complains about it and the few that make it through like Charles Barkley defend the system because they won. All the other guys with life-long injuries who couldn't turn pro can twist, I guess.
Then there were the "boosters" and players who found a way around this and acted ashamed when they got busted. They should have owned it as an act of civil disobedience. We'd be further along than the the whole NIL bone they threw.
I can't defend the players who worked around this by throwing prop-bets for gamblers though. I don't think that's the right approach.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2023, @09:19AM (2 children)
Sports teams attract a monied and mobile clientele that bring in both bugs and dollars. Although we may pick some bugs up, this is a part of natural immunization, whose vaccine is merely an exposure to the bug. Don't overdo it though. You need just a smidgen of bug to make a pattern so you resist future instances of it.
I would venture to say this applies to any large public venue that attracts " outsiders" into a local population.
Nature does seem to have a way of adapting to changes. Even the bugs develop antibiotic resistance to our chemicals deliberately designed to trip up their metabolism
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2023, @05:25PM (1 child)
This needs to be said: You're not the least bit funny.
Continuing spread of this fucking "natural immunization" lie leads to dead kids.
Why you want dead kids? They make you horny?
Cuz then, well, I would sorta get it? I mean, I not be kinkshaming you, but it's still murder.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday November 15 2023, @03:05AM
As I read it, that wasn't the point.
Rather, that because more outsiders are mixing with the locally-immune population, more variant viruses are brought in that the locals aren't yet immune to. And the effect is ongoing because exactly which outsiders (and their variant viruses) visit is somewhat random, plus they mix with sources farther away, but they all accumulate at the stadium.
Which very much applies to anything that either lacks a vaccine, or in this case influenza, which somewhat evades vaccine because we don't always guess right which one will get us this year.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Opportunist on Tuesday November 14 2023, @10:41AM (7 children)
Cramming a load of people into a confined space that scream and shout constantly could propagate germs?
Has anyone ever checked whether organized religion has the same effect, by the way?
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 14 2023, @11:33AM
>Has anyone ever checked whether organized religion has the same effect, by the way?
God doesn't want that study funded.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday November 14 2023, @02:14PM (2 children)
One of the early US incidents of COVID spreading involved a choir. I assume it was religious, because most are.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2023, @05:07PM (1 child)
Yes, churches act similarly to the ever-popular Covid party --
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/us/coronavirus-churches-outbreaks.html [nytimes.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Opportunist on Tuesday November 14 2023, @09:36PM
And considering that there is a considerable overlap between religious nuts and anti-vax nuts...
I can't say I disapprove.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Wednesday November 15 2023, @03:30AM (2 children)
I dunno, but schools at all levels are seething cauldrons of every germ known to man. It's amazing how little you catch when you don't have school-age kids.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Wednesday November 15 2023, @09:57AM (1 child)
That, too.
Coworker of mine is pretty much sick from October to March, simply because their rugrat brings home every conceivable kind of disease.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday November 15 2023, @02:19PM
I did things differently when I was a school-age kid. I'd bring home the mildest possible case and give it to my little sister, who would get the fullblown version with maximal misery. My own elder generation rarely became sick from our distributions, being from the generation Before Vaccine, and doubtless had exposure and immunity the likes of which we can only be grateful we've never seen.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Tuesday November 14 2023, @12:05PM (3 children)
This is why you should all play real football, or soccer, like the rest of the world. No flue according to research.
Considering that most, or at least a lot, of the cities that have one pro-sports team in the NFL, NBA, NHL and/or MLB also have one or more teams in one of the other leagues, plus perhaps a few more teams that are not listed here such as college teams etc. Are all the teams cumulative or additive or what? Which is the biggest plague city? New York city? They have one of each or even duplicates in some leagues don't they?
Secondly most of the team serve very large cities, most of them with at least 500k or many millions of people in them or the area. Having 20-30 "extra" deaths per year is probably not even a factor then.
Does it matter if it's an indoor or outdoor arena? Most of Baseball arenas are outside? So is Football, while Hockey and Basket are indoor. Or? I don't keep track of all the arenas.
Also are not a lot of arenas these days multi-purpose. As in used for other things when it's not game day such as concerts and such things. So perhaps it's the arenas that bring death to the city and not the teams.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Farmer Tim on Tuesday November 14 2023, @04:54PM (2 children)
When steam power became obsolete the players no longer needed to have fireboxes, boilers or flues installed, however the flues were retained out of tradition and for decorative purposes until the beginning of WWI when the metal was needed for munitions. Unfortunately unflued town gas propelled players resulted in excessive carbon monoxide levels, so the league went entirely electric in 1924, initially with overhead catenary lines which proved cumbersome and necessitated the use of bulky transformers to ensure line voltage compatibility in international tournaments, finally switching to internal lead acid batteries in 1949 thanks to the availability of military surplus from WWII. Modern soccer players run on an emission free steroid/cocaine cycle fuel cell with a safety vent, but since this is usually closed it’s technically a valve rather than a flue.
Came for the news, stayed for the soap opera.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2023, @05:09PM (1 child)
looks like you've been channeling dannyb ...
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday November 15 2023, @02:21PM
It's contagious. After all, we're all locked in here together....
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday November 14 2023, @05:33PM
The average major league baseball player is retired, so need to correct for age. Elderly people like pro sports so they get themselves a stadium and promptly die of the usual elderly-related illnesses like the flu.
The cause-effect relationship seems inverted from the article claim; sports teams don't cause elderly-related illnesses, elderly cause both sports teams to arrive and elderly-related illnesses.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday November 16 2023, @01:32PM
I have become highly skeptical of reporting that uses a "percentage increase" statistic, especially from small starts, and on an enormous population. Obviously, it's for the drama. A statistic that goes from 2 deaths out of whatever (100,000 in this case) to 3, why, that's a 50% increase, OMG! We aren't told the original numbers, but enough is there that we can calculate them. If 20 more deaths is a 24.6% increase, then the original number of deaths was about 80. And that stat doesn't matter if that's out of 1000 or 100,000 people. If that 100,000 population size is used, then an increase from 2 to 3 is an increase from 0.002% to 0.003% of the population. Put another way, if a 100 story building is being constructed one floor at a time, finishing the 1st floor is an infinite increase in the number of floors, finishing the 2nd floor is a 50% increase in the number of floors, and so on. Finishing the 90th floor is a mere 1.1% increase in the number of floors.
Another complaint I have is the overuse of the counting of deaths. What about all those who became ill and recovered? I get that deaths can be a reasonable proxy from which total harm can be extrapolated, yet there are many cases in which number of deaths is not a good measure of total harm. Number of deaths from Fukushima is zero, so far. (In the near future, there could be an increase in early deaths from a statistically significant increase in cancers from being nearby.) Does that mean it wasn't a terrible disaster? Fukushima is a less severe disaster than a one car wreck that causes one fatality? Of course not! A disease that kills no one yet severely sickens everyone for a week could still be considered a disaster.