Six men, including a doctor from Boston, shared a house on Ocean Drive in Miami’s South Beach during the week before Governor Charlie Baker declared a state of emergency in Massachusetts on March 10. Their travels took place “before the cascade of shutdowns, curfews, and closures that would swiftly upend American life,” reported the Boston Globe.
Theirs was a long-awaited trip to celebrate the doctor’s 30th birthday, during which they enjoyed the Winter Party festivities, said the Globe:
“[They] packed into crowded clubs and roped-off beachfront parties, dancing shoulder to shoulder with their fellow festival-goers. They weren’t shy about their affection for one another, kissing and hugging as they enjoyed what Ellis at the time assumed would be “the last big party event in the country” as other festivals were called off or postponed in the wake of the escalating public health crisis.
“But they ‘started to see the writing on the wall.’
“‘There were tons of hand sanitizer being rolled out. There were a lot of warnings and things going on that seemed ominous,” [said the doctor]. ‘But we were already there and it was just like, ‘Jesus, this is probably going to be a disaster.'”
After returning home to Boston, Seattle, Denver, and Washington, DC, four of the six tested positive for COVID-19, reported the Globe. The other two developed symptoms, with chills, sweats, fatigue and shortness of breath.
Circuit party or not, their activities prior to and following the trip, before they got sick, sound, to varying degrees, pretty familiar to what a lot of folks were doing during those early weeks of March—and some kept doing after Baker’s announcement to various degrees, and may still be doing.
Time to rethink that, for those who haven’t already.
As the doctor from Boston put it, “The fear … is [they] were actively enjoying their social life [before they felt sick] … going to bars, going to dinners, going and hanging out at friends’ houses, quarantining with friends.”
The story “illustrates just how quickly the coronavirus spreads between close contacts and how easily an infected person can unwittingly expose others to the virus in the absence of symptoms,” says the Globe, which went on to report:
“New research based on data from China suggests that undetected carriers of the virus are fueling the explosive growth of the outbreak. A study published in the journal Science on Monday found that people with undocumented infections, often with mild or no symptoms, were responsible for 79 percent of confirmed cases in the early stages of China’s epidemic.”
“I think a lot of people my age are thinking they might get it, but they’re young and healthy enough to fight it. But I think what they don’t consider is who they could potentially pass it on to, others who might not be able to bounce back as quickly,” a 35-year-old marketing employee at a large tech firm in Seattle, who also went on the trip, told the Globe.
“It takes five days for symptoms to show up and then it takes three or four days at best for the test results to come back, so that’s nine days of contact with an infinite amount of people,” the Boston doctor told the Globe. “And all those people would have to self-quarantine and wait for either symptoms or test results, which would be another nine days.”
“You need to self-quarantine now. I can’t stress it enough. I’ve never been so angry about people not following the rules,” Ellis said. “There’s just no way to prevent this from getting to every corner of the country unless you self-quarantine.”
Read the complete Globe story here.
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