With Omicron, UK president should stop super-spreader events like basketball at Rupp

Any good parent knows that setting up safe conditions for their children is even more essential than teaching them to stay safe. This metaphor applies to the larger issue of COVID-19. It this new age of the hyper-transmissible Omicron variant, it remains so easy and convenient for “big business” to rely on the concept of individual responsibility to control the spread of COVID-19. The larger social teaching of mask-wearing and being fully vaccinated becomes an endpoint, with community spread then being attributed to a “choice” people make to skip these precautions. This lets restaurants, bars, malls, and even large universities such as the University of Kentucky declare their role in controlling in controlling community spread is limited. Nothing could be less true, and this especially applies to our higher institutions of learning.

Universities are widely considered a haven for liberal thought and progressive social change. Yet, far too many — including the University of Kentucky — are apparently standing down now that they have a chance to make large-scale structural changes that greatly reduce community spread, even in the absence of whether people act responsibly relative to masking up and being fully vaccinated. A center stage example is the UK basketball season. Unlike football, this is game viewed by people literally jammed into a confined indoor space using recycled air, meaning that overall rates of air exchange are exceptionally low. Spectators are accustomed to being loud and vocal thereby expelling large volumes of air from the lungs. A packed Rupp arena may be appealing to the UK people who count money for a living, but it is indeed the textbook definition of a COVID-19 super-spreader event.

Given the overwhelming presence of the Omicron variant, a wise parent of a UK student would stringently advise against that person attending such an event. Similarly, and far more important, a wise university president would not allow such events to even occur. But, sadly, in the age complacency and even resignation toward COVID-19, this wisdom is so often replaced by very cruel math that asks the horrible question of how many humans can be allowed to suffer (even die) before such large financial losses are incurred. It is time for President Capilouto to step up and make a difference to Lexington and central Kentucky. That people travel from throughout the state to be part of the UK basketball crowd means that many will pick-up the virus in Rupp arena and take it back home, where it will spread even more. Here, “the good parent” has the authority to create safe conditions, thereby conferring a population-wide level of protection. The question, of course, is whether he will have the will and courage to be this progressive. The people who live and work in Lexington and throughout Kentucky are dependent on his next move here.

Richard A. Crosby, Ph.D. is the Good Samaritan Endowed Professor at the College of Public Health at the University of Kentucky. His views are independent of UK.