Sport in Japan suffers in silence

Plus a review of the literature on events and mass-gatherings

It’s been a tough few years for Japanese sports fans. When professional baseball and football (or soccer if you prefer) resumed in mid-2020 after being suspended during the first state of emergency (SoE), attendances were capped at 5000, chanting was banned, masks were required (naturally), and Japan’s notoriously glitchy contract tracing app COCOA had to be installed.

Japan actually held some baseball games at close to full capacity (but with masks and without chanting) in autumn 2020 as a trial for the Olympics…

…but the usual “Cases are rising!” hysteria meant that the attendance cap was kept at 10,000 or 50%, whichever was higher.

The government toyed with the idea of letting 10,000 people into the newly built Olympic stadium during the games…

…but Hiroshi Nishiura (Japan’s Neil Ferguson) produced yet another dementedly ridiculous mathematical model that projected this would lead to 10,000 serious cases in Tokyo alone (yes, really), so the government decided to hold the games without spectators. This turned what was supposed to be a one of sporting world’s major events into what looked like a glorified training session.

And this was several months after sports had gone back to normal elsewhere.

But Japanese sports fans were recently given some good news: they could chant again!

“I can finally shout!” “I’ve been waiting for this.” J-League allows chanting for this first time in 839 days

Does this mean Japanese sports leagues are giving up Covid nonsense? Of course not!

For a start, chanting is only being allowed at a few trial games to start with. And the stipulations are 1) attendance must be capped at 50% capacity, 2) chanting is only allowed in designated areas, 3) every other seat in the area must be unoccupied, 4) chanters must wear surgical masks, 5) chanters must face forward, and 6) no food/drink can be consumed in the chanting area. Highly scientific, I’m sure you’ll agree.

So how did the first trial game go?

“Japan’s excellence.” Mask compliance over 99% in J-League chanting area

Japan’s excellence! The words of the J-league chairman no less. And would you like to see what “Japan’s excellence” looks like?

Kagoshima v Fukuoka

Makes you wonder what Japan’s depressing embarrassment would look like, doesn’t it?

So is there any evidence that Japan has anything to fear from unmasked footy fans chanting sideways while eating?

In the US, Toumi et al. studied the effects of 528 National Football League (NFL) and National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) American football games with limited attendance on Covid cases. To estimate the effect, “every county hosting NFL or NCAA games with in-person attendance (treated group) in 2020 and 2021 was matched with a county that that did not host a game on the corresponding day but had an identical game history for up to 14 days prior (control group).” The results showed that the games “were not associated with increased COVID-19 cases in the counties they were held.” Specifically, the mean estimated effect of holding a game was…drumroll please…1.21 cases per 100,000 people per day!

Figure 3.  Robustness Check for the Estimated Average Treatment Effect Sizes Over Time...

But those games had limited attendance. What about large-scale events?

In England, Smith et al. presented results of the UK government’s Event Research Programme. Using data of cases that were likely infectious or infected around the time they attended major events, they found “The increasing number of reported cases across all events reflects the increasing community prevalence of COVID-19 during that period.” Put simply, the infection rates of event attendees were similar to the background rate in the community, with the exception of the Euro 2020 Final.

Fig. 1. COVID-19 cases reporting attendance at an ERP event by date of attendance and prevailing estimated prevailing COVID-19 prevalence.

These events included the Wimbledon tennis championships…

…Download Festival…

…and Royal Ascot.

If these events can’t be shown to increase infections, then it’s probably safe to fill in the empty seats at Kagoshima v Fukuoka.

And while we’re at it, let’s not forget the time when Fauci warned about maskless college kids causing a rise in cases…

…that never came.

And since the idea behind event restrictions is that mass gatherings may lead to so-called super-spreader events, let’s also remind ourselves that there’s no evidence the spread of Covid was increased by the Trump rally in Tulsa…

COVID-19 Cases per 100,000 - Matching on All Days of Pre-Treatment COVID-19 Case Rates

…or anti-lockdown and BLM protests in California…

Figure 1. Daily average COVID-19 hospitalization rate per 100,000 population and total number of protests two weeks earlier from 29 March–14 October 2020 across California state counties (n = 55 counties).

…or mass political protests in Columbia.

Interrupted time-series analysis plots for five capital cities with series data between March 1 and May 15, 2021.

A standard British football chant sung by boisterous fans of the winning team to silent fans of the losing team is “You only sing when you’re winning.” In Japan, sports fans haven’t sung for over two years. Nuff said.