The 49ers' Super Bowl loss 'may have saved lives'

Don't tell 49ers fans, but it's probably a good thing they lost the Super Bowl.

Back on Feb. 2 when the San Francisco 49ers faced the Kansas City Chiefs, COVID-19 was barely a conversation in the U.S. But the novel coronavirus had already reached San Francisco, and if the city packed the streets for a victory parade later that week, it could've become a "super-spreading event," The Wall Street Journal reports.

On the night of the Super Bowl, a group of doctors in the Bay Area were focused on fighting the beginnings of what was soon to become an national crisis. Two people in the area had confirmed coronavirus infections after traveling from Wuhan, China, and after doctors spent the night setting up the University of California San Francisco's COVID-19 command center, those patients were transferred to UCSF the next morning, the Journal describes.

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San Francisco was one of the first U.S. cities to report coronavirus cases, and it's since been praised for how its quick containment efforts curbed the spread. But Dr. Bob Wachter, the chair of UCSF's department of medicine, also thanks "lucky breaks" for determining the city's coronavirus fate, particularly the fact that the 49ers didn't come home with a win and subsequently bring anywhere from 500,000 to 1.5 million fans into the streets. "It may go down in the annals as being a brutal sports loss," Wachter said, "but one that may have saved lives." Read more at The Wall Street Journal.