On June 6,?? ??? after over 100,000 Americans had already been killed by the new coronavirus, over a dozen friends went out to party at Lynch's Irish Pub in Jacksonville Beach, Fla., including (incredibly) a healthcare worker. Now, 16 of them have tested positive for COVID-19, reports the local news station News4Jax. Seven employees at the bar tested positive, too.
Doctors, virologists, epidemiologists, immunologists, nurses, and public health experts have emphasized incessantly that spending time in crowds — particularly inside and without masks— is a recipe for allowing the coronavirus to easily spread and blossom in a human population that has no immunity to this new pathogenic parasite.
Still, some Americans continue to ignore advice from experts who have spent decades researching infectious diseases. This is immensely problematic because the coronavirus isn’t magically going away, even if some politicians hope it might. There is no vaccine or treatment for this relatively new disease, and there likely won’t be, until at the very best, sometime in 2021. COVID-19 is substantially more deadly than the flu, and can severely sicken young people, too.
“I think we were careless and we went out into a public place when we should not have,” Erika Crisp, a 40-year-old healthcare worker who tested positive for COVID-19, told News4Jax. “And we were not wearing masks. I think we had a whole 'Out of sight, out of mind' mentality. The state opens back up and said everybody was fine, so we took advantage of that,” Crisp said.
(Since reopening, coronavirus cases in Florida are starkly rising.)
Yes, it's a bummer that we can’t live the same lives we lived five months ago. Most live, in-person concerts, for example, largely won’t happen for at least a year. But this is the worst pandemic to occur in a century. Spending time in crowded indoor settings, drunk, and not wearing masks will inevitably result in more disease, particularly in states where infections are still smoldering. Think about how many respiratory droplets fly around bars. Sometimes, most everyone in your group will get infected — and then bring that infection home. (Of course, bars aren't the only place where the coronavirus will spread: packed churches and private gatherings are repeated culprits, too).
“This is a virus that we know is very happy to take advantage of people being careless,” Dr. Vince Silenzio, an M.D. and professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health, told Mashable in May.
“If political leaders want to run experiments, that doesn't mean you have to be one of the guinea pigs,” Silenzio added.
The Jacksonville healthcare worker, Crisp, partook in the state’s experiment and got some unsurprising results. But Crisp can now impart some knowledge to those on the fence about listening to pandemic experts: “We should be wearing masks. We should be social distancing,” Crisp told told News4Jax. “It was too soon to open everything back up.”
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Here are some vital things to remember about the coronavirus pandemic going forward, perhaps for at least the next year:
Wearing a mask isn’t about you. Masks reduce the amount of viral particles you exhale into the air, reducing the potential of infecting others.
It’s nearly impossible to keep people who are either asymptomatic or presymptomatic out of crowded gatherings. These people may have no idea they're infected.
This virus loves spreading in crowded indoor settings.
This pandemic was expected and will not be the last global outbreak.
Summer will not end the coronavirus pandemic.
It's likely researchers will develop a treatment or vaccine, eventually. But don't expect it too soon. “We need patience,” Michael Kinch, the director of the Center for Drug Discovery at Washington University in St. Louis, told Mashable. “We are all so impatient to get back to some degree of normalcy, and we have to recognize that’s not going to happen anytime soon.”
This isn't just a disease for the old. COVID-19 can make young, healthy people severely sick, too.
The new coronavirus will be circulating in our communities for quite a while. To curb the spread, it’s up to us to make either informed decisions, or, unfortunately, decisions based on hope and ignorance (Crisp's group chose the latter). News4Jax reports that Lynch's Irish Pub, after temporarily closing following its prominent role in spreading disease, will be opening again next Tuesday.