Jelenlegi hely
OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UEFA
You may support our open letter to the President of the UEFA asking to make public the data concerning the effects of the Supercup football game, held for an audience of 15000 in the Budapest Puskás Aréna on September 24, 2020.
Here is the content of the letter. You my find the link to the Petition here below. The Petition itself is in Hungarian, with the original English letter attached.
https://www.peticiok.com/nyilt_level_az_uefa_elnokenek
Mr. Aleksander Čeferin
President, UEFA
Open Letter April 11, 2021
Dear Mr. President,
As members of the European community sharing the joys and pains of the days we live in we do feel the shared responsibility for our common future as well. International activities are a part of our lives, so are the sports and especially football. However, since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in Europe in the spring of 2020 we were to suspend many of our international activities for our common security – so were most of the international sport competitions.
Yet after the first wave of the epidemic, the organization of European football, UEFA decided to organise the Super Cup football game in Budapest in the fall of 2020 with audience, to see, whether one can organise a football game in front of thousands of people in a stadium safely. According to your words, as of August 25, 2020, Mr. President:
“We hope to use the UEFA Super Cup in Budapest as a pilot that will begin to see the return of fans to our matches.
“We are working closely with the Hungarian Federation and its government to implement measures to ensure the health of all those attending and participating in the game. We will not take risks with people’s safety.”
The Bayern München-Sevilla game was held accordingly, visited by a 15.000 strong audience in the Puskás Aréna in Budapest on September 24, 2020. We are not sure, however, whether UEFA has evaluated this “pilot” experiment according to the usual evaluations of experiments, be it biological or human. A mere statement as “Everything was handled very professionally.” on the website is nice yet rather laconic when life and death are at stake. On the other hand, to issue a statement just a week after the Supercup, stating that a „successful pilot match that was held at the UEFA Super Cup in Budapest on 24 September” (Released October 1, 2020) seems to lack medical expertise from the point of view of the audience, as the well established incubation period of the COVID-19 virus infection may be up to 14 days. From what data did UEFA draw their conclusion?
We would like you therefore, Mr. President to open up the results of your human experiment to the public, before UEFA would carry on organising further similar experiments. Especially so, as the UEFA Return to Play Protocol does not include required procedures on the effect of public football games on the audience in case of this pandemic. So we would be pleased to see, whether the UEFA
- checked the number of infected visitors prior to giving them entry to the game
- followed up the epidemiological medical record of the visitors of the Super Cup
- followed up the infected contact persons’ medical record, if any
- summarized the above data of the Super Cup experiment.
Our enquiry is based on the grounds of factual data of concern, as – according to the data provided to the Johns Hopkins University by the Hungarian authorities – the statistical curve of the COVID-19 epidemics sharply increased in our country three weeks after the Super Cup, while the number of COVID-19 related casualties increased the same way a month after the game. By the end of the year 2020 the number of casualties was 13 fold – 1300 percent – higher in Hungary, than before September 24.
We trust the UEFA can provide sufficient follow up data of this experiment, defying opinions that it was only a case of ‘Russian roulette’ with the lives of our fellow Hungarians.
We look forward with thanks to the publication of the documentation of this experiment of yours.
Sincerely yours,
Dr. Sándor F. Striker, PhD
former diplomat, Hungary
Dr. habil Mária Arapovics, PhD
associate professor, Hungary
The link to the Petition:
