Are Alabama Students Holding 'COVID Parties' With Cash Prizes for First to Get Sick?

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Are some Alabama students having parties with prizes for the first person to get sick with coronavirus?

That’s what Tuscaloosa City Council member Sonya McKinstry claimed is happening in her city. Tuscaloosa is home to the University of Alabama. McKinstry claims both local doctors’s offices and Fire Chief Randy Smith said parties with a payout for catching coronavirus are going on.

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If true, this would be an eating-tide-pods-level-stupid idea.

NBA player Rudy Gobert showed disdain for coronavirus back in March by touching every reporter’s microphone at a press conference. Gobert ended up catching coronavirus, his teammate Donovan Mitchell later caught coronavirus, and Gobert was blamed for spreading it across the NBA.

Rudy Gobert playfully touches microphones days before testing positive for coronavirus


However, Wired is reporting that these parties are not happening.

“This is not the first reporting on the spread of Covid parties, which are, in fact, neither happening nor spreading. Back in March, Kentucky governor Andy Beshear announced during a daily public-health update that one case in the state had been tied to a ‘coronavirus party.’ ‘We ought to be much better than that,’ he said. ‘We should forgive that person, but no more of these—anywhere, statewide, ever, for any reason.’ His one-sentence anecdote, presented without any further detail, was dutifully passed along as news by CNNNPRThe Washington Post, and other outlets.

Then in April, The New York Times ran an op-ed from epidemiologist Greta Bauer, offering ‘seven reasons your ‘coronavirus party’ is a bad idea.’ She’d heard ‘rumblings’ that these events were going on, the piece explains, because some people think they would be better off with antibodies.

Rumblings had developed into rumors by the start of May, when a public health official in Walla Walla, Washington, claimed to have discovered, via careful contact tracing, that at least two patients had indeed attended ‘Covid parties’ so as to ‘get it over with.’ The local police chief told reporters that he wouldn’t rule out criminal charges for any other such events, but assured them that ‘we’re not going to overreact.’ Two days later, the same public health official admitted she’d been wrong: ‘We have discovered that there were not intentional Covid parties,’ she said. ‘Just innocent endeavors.’

The latest version of the tale, from Alabama, follows the same pattern as the others. It appears to be the product of a weird game of telephone mixed with loose talk from public officials and disgracefully sloppy journalism.”

The Daily Dropout can’t say for certain whether any first-to-get-sick-wins parties are happening in Alabama, but we can say for certain that getting sick doesn’t sound like a catchy idea for a party.