'Mind-boggling' or 'responsible?' Swingers convention comes to New Orleans amid coronavirus
NOLA.com
November 13, 2020
About 250 swingers are in New Orleans this weekend for the “Naughty in N'awlins” convention as state and local officials sounded another round of alarm bells Friday, warning of increased spread of coronavirus.
“Naughty in N'awlins” Organizer Bob Hannaford said the swingers' sojourn in New Orleans was initially scheduled for the summer but was postponed because of the pandemic. Attendance is down from 2,000 people last year to about 250.
Is a gathering like that safe? Susan Hassig, an associate professor of epidemiology at Tulane University, was caught off-guard by the news.
“That's really quite mind-boggling,” she said. “Clearly no public health epidemiologist was involved in the design of this activity.”
Hannaford said a medical expert actually was. He also defended holding the event in the middle of the pandemic, pointing to rules that require masks and widely-spaced seating during daytime seminars at the hotel. At night, the organizers advertise erotic balls, dance parties and an off-site meetup at a downtown swingers’ club with “play rooms.”
“While the scheduled events do not require a special event permit from the city, the Department of Safety and Permits reviewed COVID-19 restrictions and safety protocols with the event organizers and expects full compliance from the approximately 250 attendees,” a City Hall spokesman said.
Hannaford said attendees will wear wristbands to identify people who’ve recently had COVID-19 and people who’ve recently received negative test results, who together make up more than half of the event’s attendees.
Experts have warned that immunity from a prior infection likely lasts only for a certain, yet undetermined period of time and that test results can quickly become useless.
“I think what we’re doing is responsible and correct for these times,” Hannaford said. “There has to be something between shutting down everything and opening up the world with no restrictions.”
On Friday the Louisiana Dept. of Health reported the largest one-day total in new coronavirus cases since August.
2 comments:
Yuck! No telling what a blacklight would show in one of the play rooms! New Orleans is a hot humid moist sea of nastiness. I don't even like to change planes in that petri dish of a city.
How stupid would you have to be to go to something like this even if there WASN'T a plague going on. You could probably catch seven different STDs just touching the front door handle.
Post a Comment