Shouldn’t all publicly funded stadiums become mass vaccination sites?

The vaccine deployment hasn’t exactly happened at breakneck speed. So far almost 9 million Americans have received a first dose of the COVID vaccine. If we’re going to go faster, we might need 24-hour super centers and vaccines to accommodate the hundreds of millions of Americans still waiting to be vaccinated.

I wonder where they could go? Where else could you be able to move thousands of people in a centralized and socially remote location? Where can hundreds of cars easily find parking spaces? What is still accessible by public transport? It looks like your local stadium.

Just like November (and the Georgia runoffs), state governments and professional teams should do their utmost to provide vacant stadiums for the public good. After all, we are the ones paying for the publicly funded stadiums. Why can’t we use them?

Well it looks like we could get started soon. Today, New York Mayor Bill De Blasio announced a new mass vaccination site at Citi Field, an $ 830.6 million stadium paid for with help from $ 614.3 million in public money. The Mets baseball stadium will immunize thousands of New Yorkers a day. And it’s not just New York. On Sunday evening, the City of Los Angeles announced that Dodger Stadium would start vaccinations this week. And two hours south, Petco Park will be vaccinating thousands of people at Padres baseball stadium.

There are vaccination sites at State farm stadium (Arizona Cardinals) Hard Rock Stadium (Miami Dolphins) Minute Maid Park (Houston Astros) The big house (University of Michigan Football) and more. In addition, Fenway Park and Gillette Stadium are should become vaccination sites for Massachusetts first responders this week.

But in a country with so many empty and publicly funded stadiums, more sports venues should start thinking about how they will help the community. The NFL also already urged teams to offer their home fields for vaccination sites and President-elect Joe Biden would have include sports stadiums in its vaccination plan, which should be officially announced on Thursday. According to a study by Global Sport Matters at Arizona State University, the majority American sports arenas use at least part of the public aid to pay for professional stadiums.

Wouldn’t it make sense that we, the public, could use it?