In a major announcement on the relationship between COVID-19 vaccinations and baseball attendance, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo laid out a new plan for folks who want to go to Yankees or Mets games. In theory, it’s an incentive to be vaccinated.
Here are the particulars:
Cuomo also says vaccines will be available AT the games. Those who receive one in that setting will also get a free ticket.
— Anthony DiComo (@AnthonyDiComo) May 5, 2021
A free ticket to get a vaccine that protects you from a potentially debilitating respiratory virus? That seems like a good deal to me …
As for the distancing changes, those are guided by the now long-demonstrated evidence that transmission of the virus is quite rare outdoors, and extraordinarily rare among vaccinated persons. Far from being any kind of social commentary, this change looks like it’s just flat out driven by the science. And if it serves as an additional incentive to get more people vaccinated and squash the pandemic? All the better in my book.
The question now is whether other localities/teams will follow suit on something quite this explicit. I’m not naive, and I recognize there is a political component here, as much as I might personally bang the drum that it’s solely about the science. A lotta folks won’t like this, and for every team that might want to expand capacity in any way possible, you might not have the political will to actually do it. I guess we’ll see what other states do, including Illinois, where the hope is that capacity restrictions can go away, in any case, by the first week of July.