While the New Orleans Saints wait for approval to have fans in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, Lafayette Mayor-President Josh Guillory on Friday suggested Lafayette would be happy to host the next game — with fans — at the Cajundome.
"If @mayorcantrell will not allow fans in the stands of the Superdome, you are more than welcome to play your home games here in Lafayette. We can have fans safely attend the game. Cajun Field would be a great venue!" Guillory wrote Friday morning on Twitter.
We touched on this in the last post but the primary consideration here is obviously not safety. It isn't even trolling, really. Instead it is a deliberate effort to force people to accept the shitty conditions of a post-COVID existence. The virus hasn't been stopped or vaccinated and it may never be. We could think about ways to prevent 200,000 people from dying over the course of six months, or we could just tell everyone to get used to it. The bosses have determined you are to get used to it. And that means, among other things, pretending it is safe to do all the things we normally do.
Dr. Alex Billoux is stepping down as the state Office of Public Health's point person on coronavirus response. Yesterday, he had some parting thoughts on the wisdom of gathering large crowds together to watch football under the current circumstances.
“In the grand scheme of things, it’s kind of ridiculous,” Billioux said. “If this were a story 100 years from now and I said, 'Listen, you know, people were willing to have three to five people die for a football game every week, because it was that important to them … people were willing to sit next to people with a tremendously infectious disease that kills people because they weren’t willing to go a single season without going to a football game.'”
What kind of an idiot needs to be at a football game right now? I can say this speaking specifically as the kind of idiot who loves watching football very much. I love going to the Superdome and watching football. I love going to Tiger Stadium to watch football. I love going to a crowded barroom, or, on occasion, a crowded art gallery or street party to watch football. I am a complete idiot and yet even I do not think any of those things is worth endangering my or anyone else's life right now.
Guillory's "offer" (I don't know if we can consider it an actual good faith offer) to host a Saints game flies directly in the face of Billoux's comments. It doesn't help that the Saints are also applying pressure themselves to bring more fans into the dome. It would be putting it charitably to say they are being selfish. More accurately, they and Guillory are engaging in a deliberate ideologically driven campaign to get the Governor and Mayor to end their emergency precautions.
In a letter to the mayor they publicized today, the Saints claim their health and safety plan "was touted as one of the best and most comprehensive with the ability to safely adapt to numerous seating capacities based on local and state governmental guidance." They don't say by whom the plan was touted. Nor do they specifically say what the expectation should be that it would actually mitigate transmission of the virus. But it's a mystery why anyone should think they've got any credibility in that regard.
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