Author Topic: One football game might have caused pandemic in Italy & Spain  (Read 1141 times)

Offline watty

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https://time.com/5809848/game-zero-soccer-game-italy/  (link is ok on phone but it will pester you with ads if you use a computer)

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It was the biggest soccer game in Atalanta’s history and a third of Bergamo’s population made the short trip to Milan’s famed San Siro Stadium.  Nearly 2,500 fans of visiting Spanish club Valencia also traveled to that Champions League match.  More than a month later, experts are pointing to the Feb. 19 game as one of the biggest reasons why Bergamo has become one of the epicenters of the coronavirus pandemic — a “biological bomb” was the way one respiratory specialist put it — and why 35% of Valencia’s team became infected.  The match, which local media have dubbed “Game Zero,” was held two days before the first case of locally transmitted COVID-19 was confirmed in Italy.

“We were mid-February so we didn’t have the circumstances of what was happening,” Bergamo Mayor Giorgio Gori said this week during a live Facebook chat with the Foreign Press Association in Rome. “If it’s true what they’re saying that the virus was already circulating in Europe in January, then it’s very probable that 40,000 Bergamaschi in the stands of San Siro, all together, exchanged the virus between them. As is possible that so many Bergamaschi that night got together in houses, bars to watch the match and did the same.  “Unfortunately, we couldn’t have known. No one knew the virus was already here,” the mayor added. “It was inevitable.”

Less than a week after the game, the first cases were reported in the province of Bergamo.  At about the same time in Valencia, a journalist who traveled to the match became the second person infected in the region, and it didn’t take long before people who were in contact with him also had the virus, as did Valencia fans who were at the game.  While Atalanta announced its first positive case Tuesday for goalkeeper Marco Sportiello, Valencia said more than a third of its squad got infected, “despite the strict measures adopted by the club” after the match in Milan.

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First Italian cases were a week after the game (mid-Feb).  Today, there 75,000 and 50,000 cases in Italy and Spain, respectively  :o  :o  :o

The Liffey Lip

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Re: One football game might have caused pandemic in Italy & Spain
« Reply #1 on: March 26, 2020, 11:32:12 am »
One bullet is alleged to have cause WW1..

Offline silverbullet

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Re: One football game might have caused pandemic in Italy & Spain
« Reply #2 on: March 26, 2020, 02:05:06 pm »
One bullet is alleged to have cause WW1..
I have an alibi.

 


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