Yahoo Finance Carole Baskin, whose tiger will predict the winner, slams 'irresponsible' fans attending Super Bowl
Carole Baskin isn’t happy that thousands of fans are going to be allowed to attend the Super Bowl next week.
The “Tiger King” star, whose Big Cat Rescue sits less than 15 miles from Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida, slammed the decision to host 22,000 fans in the Feb. 7 game amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I just think it’s irresponsible for people to be gathering in large groups, even though I understand they’re saying this is a much smaller group than they’ve ever had,” Baskin said, via USA Today. “But it doesn’t matter that it’s a smaller group. It’s way more people than should be exposed to each other for the purpose of watching a game.
“We are right now dealing with life or death on this planet and I think everyone of us should be doing our part to stay home.”
Carole Baskin’s cat will predict Super Bowl winner
Baskin rose to fame in the United States after the Netflix documentary “Tiger King” premiered in March. Joe Exotic, whose exotic animal park in southern Oklahoma was the focus of the documentary, was sentenced to 22 years in prison last year for trying to have Baskin killed, among other things.
One of her cats, Dutchess, will actually predict whether the Kansas City Chiefs or Tampa Bay Buccaneers will win the Super Bowl during a YouTube event on Thursday.
Baskin’s Big Cat Rescue stopped offering tours in March due to the pandemic — something that has hit Florida harder than most other states in the country. The state, which has repeatedly ignored or failed to implement basic social distancing guidelines and other precautions, has recorded more than 1.7 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus since the pandemic began, according to The New York Times. Only California and Texas have recorded more. Of those cases, 10,500 came in the past week, too, the fourth-most in the country.
Despite her involvement in the big game, Baskin isn’t happy with the thousands of fans who will be at the stadium on Feb. 7.
“What I have seen is every time there’s a big event, whether it be a protest or a political rally, after that thing happens there’s this huge uptick in the number of local people who [test] positive for COVID-19," Baskin said, via USA Today. “And there’s no way if you bring 22,000 people to Tampa, from all over the place, that you’re not going to see that same kind of huge uptick in cases here. There’s nothing that would justify that sort of risk-taking.”
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