With Bills decision, Cuomo’s whims shift
Contact columnist Chris Churchill at 518454-5442 or email cchurchill@ timesunion. com
Last summer, Major League Baseball came to Buffalo when the Toronto Blue Jays, stymied by tough pandemic restrictions in nearby Ontario, moved games to the city.
Hosting the big leagues was significant for western New York, but, alas, fans couldn’t watch in person. Protocols imposed by Andrew Cuomo didn’t allow it. Letting people attend games, concerts and most other events during a pandemic was too risky, we were told.
That was then. Now, the governor has decided that having fans at one game isn’t so risky. He will allow 6,772 lucky fans to attend Saturday’s Buffalo Bills playoff game.
Does this mean the pandemic is … over?!
Hardly. As Bill Hammond of the Empire Center for Public Policy noted, New York hit postsummer highs for three key
Paul and Lynne Shatsoff were walking at Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve in southern Colorado in 2019 when Lynne took this photo of their shadows — “sort of a different iteration of a selfie.” Below, Andrew Gower captured this view of the Adirondack great range from Rocky Ridge near Giant Mountain on New Year’s Day. Mount Marcy is in the distance.
COVID -19 metrics — hospitalizations, seven-day average infections and testing positivity rate — on the very day Cuomo gave the go-ahead for fans at the game.
Indeed, COVID -19 is surging. Officials are pleading for people to stay home as hospitals are inundated. Schools are under increasing pressure to close. A new, more contagious strain of the virus is in New York. And yet this is the moment for fans at a football game?
There is no rational explanation for this, no rhyme or reason to the governor’s change of heart. This is pandemic protocol by gubernatorial whim.
The concern here isn’t that the game won’t risk public health. Given the elaborate plan the Department of Health has put in place — including rapid testing beforehand and contact tracing when it ends — no New Yorkers will be safer than the fans at the stadium in Orchard Park.
The concern, instead, is about a tremendous waste of energy and resources at a moment that feels precarious.
Yes, fans in western New York love the Bills. Yes, it’s nice “New York’s team” is hosting a playoff game for the first time in 25 years. Yes, the fans at Saturday’s game could experience a moment of real hope in a grim time.
After all, if the perpetually woeful Bills can somehow manage to win a playoff game, then anything might be possible. Humankind can tackle every challenge.
But football is still just a game. It isn’t, you know, actually important. After a year in which people watched their businesses fail, canceled weddings, missed funerals and couldn’t be with dying loved ones, no sane person can possibly think it’s necessary to have fans in the stadium.
And the state, clearly, has better things to do.
I happen to know two people who came down with flu-like symptoms recently and were concerned they might have COVID -19. Both struggled to find a testing site that could squeeze them in; one waited five days for results, while the other waited six. (Negative, in both cases.)
Given that context, how can the state possibly justify thousands of rapid tests being used on fans who, presumably, aren’t