Empty seats are shown at Levi's Stadium on Sept. 13, 2020, during the first half of an NFL football game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Arizona Cardinals in Santa Clara, Calif.
Jeff Chiu/APSan Francisco 49ers fans hoping to attend games in person this year experienced a bit of whiplash Tuesday when Gov. Gavin Newsom stated that Santa Clara County met the requirements for Levi's Stadium to host fans at 20% capacity, only for county officials to dash those plans.
"It makes no sense whatsoever to have audiences at stadiums, particularly when there is a model to do it without audiences in a much safer way so that the only individuals who'd be put at risk are players, the refs and their families [who are] getting constant tests," Santa Clara County Executive Dr. Jeff Smith said during a Tuesday press conference. "Putting an audience in a stadium in large groups is just asking for trouble. It's like a Petri dish."
Smith has a long history of predicting the worst with the pandemic, as he once (incorrectly) forecast there would not be "any sports games until at least Thanksgiving," and later proclaimed, "There will never be a vaccine that will be effective." He envisions the world "struggling for the next 10 years with the same problem." Federal officials including Dr. Anthony Fauci have predicted effective vaccines, and a return to normalcy sometime in 2021 once the vaccines are widely available.
Fans online were incensed at Santa Clara County, with some questioning whether the decision was actually about public health, or rather about taking revenge in a long-standing feud between the 49ers and county officials over whether the team owes the county rent money.
UCSF epidemiologist Dr. George Rutherford, who previously stated that a socially distanced 49ers game would be "low risk" if guidelines were followed, is not entirely sold on Smith's "Petri dish" metaphor, but believes the county made the right decision — for now.
"If the rest of the country was calm, I’d say, 'Yeah let’s go for it,'" he said. "California is a welcome light, as is Hawaii and the Northeast, but the rest of the country is a mess, and we don’t want to have events that could tip us over into a new round of transmission."
COVID-19 case and hospitalization rates are rising in most states, and while California's sporting event guidelines would require that fans attending games live within a 120-mile radius of Levi's Stadium, Rutherford said that policy still carries risks.
"Sonoma County has a 10% positivity rate," he said of the lone Bay Area county still in the purple tier. "California has done well, but it has not done homogeneously well, with lots of hot spots, including Monterey, which is very close to Santa Clara County."
Rutherford believes that Levi's Stadium should reopen to fans once Santa Clara County reaches the least restrictive yellow tier and enough nearby counties get out of the purple tier. San Francisco County became the first Bay Area county to reach the yellow tier Tuesday, and Santa Clara County is currently in the orange tier.
He also still believes a socially distanced 49ers game would have a risk level roughly equivalent to beachgoing or outdoor dining if guidelines are followed, but has grown less optimistic that fans will adhere to stadium rules after seeing fan behavior at other NFL and college football games.
"If you watch some of these games on TV around the country, people have their masks around their neck," he said. "It's hard to drink beer with a mask on, so you might have to get rid of concessions, and there's other stuff that has to go."
