The thing about appraising pandemic crowds is that it doesn’t come down to, say, football fans bad, political celebrants/protesters good.

Everyone has genuine need for collective affect rn. The question is who creates conditions for and benefits from the (harmful) gathering.

Notre Dame, Clemson, the ACC (etc) have been engineering the conditions that produced last night’s catastrophe for months. This is the logical and expected outcome of their relentless pursuit of revenue at the expense of players, fans, and the broader community.

The impulse to collective engagement is a profoundly good human quality. Demonizing it only serves to consolidate a neoliberal logic of individual responsibility.

And yet, we also need to stay safe.

We need to figure out ways to hold institutions accountable for our wellbeing under these exceptionally difficult circumstances. And we need to resist blaming each other when that doesn’t happen, or when desires exceed appropriate bounds.