Social distancing is important to slow the community spread of infectious disease, but it creates enormous economic and social cost. Thus, it is important to quantify the benefits of different measures. We study the ban of mass gatherings, an intervention with comparably low cost. We exploit exogenous variation in the number of National Basketball Association and National Hockey League games, which arises due to the leagues' predetermined schedules, and the sudden suspension of the 2019–2020 seasons. We find that, among clusters of counties that are adjacent to sports venues, each additional mass gathering increased the cumulative number of COVID-19 deaths by 10.3%.

中文翻译：

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群众集会导致 COVID-19 早期死亡：来自美国体育运动的证据

社会距离对于减缓传染病的社区传播很重要，但它会造成巨大的经济和社会成本。因此，量化不同措施的好处很重要。我们研究了大规模集会的禁令，这是一种成本相对较低的干预措施。我们利用了 National Basketball Association 和 National Hockey League 比赛数量的外生变化，这是由于联盟预定的赛程以及 2019-2020 赛季的突然停赛而产生的。我们发现，在邻近体育场馆的县群中，每增加一次群众集会，COVID-19 死亡累计人数就会增加 10.3%。