Edited on 7/24/2020: Thank you to one of our followers for bringing it to our attention that at least some of the reports of COVID parties were later debunked. We are leaving the post up with a note, because the main message is legit.
Please, for the love of peanut butter and jelly, do not purposely get COVID for all the reasons listed here and more.
For us, this really highlights that misinformation is EVERYWHERE right now. Thanks for all those fighting to good fight to wade through it.
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For today’s #ThrowbackThursday post, we revisit a post from May 6th about whether to attend a ‘COVID Party.’
A: Our answer then…For the love of peanut butter and jelly, please NO, 1000 X NO! and for many of the same reasons the answer is still NO today.
When we posted on this back in May, health officials in Walla Walla County, WA had raised concerns that individuals were attending COVID-19 parties to purposely intermingle with an infected person in an effort to catch the virus and we recently saw a new report of similar parties happening in North Texas (see story here).
*** Editorial note: turns out the North Texas COVID party report was unsubtantiated. ***
In our previous post we gave the reasons below as to WHY THIS IS NOT A GOOD IDEA, so do they hold up?
1. Even young and healthy individuals can suffer extreme complications or death from COVID-19 and symptoms can last weeks with little known yet about the long-term consequences of infection.
STILL TRUE? Yes, but some good news about kids. While we are still learning about the long-term consequences of infection, evidence suggests that some individuals do suffer damage to several systems of the body (see prior post here) and others become long-haulers with prolonged or recurring symptoms (see guest post here). Luckily kids seem much less likely to experience complications and death but the possibility cannot be entirely ruled out (see prior post here).
2. If you were to attend such a party, you wouldn’t know if you became an asymptomatic case and then would potentially spread it to others at the grocery store, employment, etc., not to mention older or more vulnerable family members.
STILL TRUE? Yes. While the proportion of individuals that are truly asymptomatic (never develop symptoms) vs. presymptomatic (haven’t developed symptoms yet) is somewhat difficult to pin down, among individuals who do develop symptoms, they are most infectious in the 2 days before symptoms start and while individuals who are asymptomatic may be less likely to transmit to others, it is still possible (see prior post on asymptomatic transmission here). So, if you think you were exposed, you should self-quarantine for 14 days to avoid spreading infection to others while you wait to see if you will develop symptoms which can take 2-14 days (average ~5 days) (see prior post on timeline of infectiousness here).
3. Having intentional get-togethers to spread COVID-19 undermines all the efforts communities have made to flatten the curve, and their occurrence could lead to an extension of, or return to, stay at home orders.
STILL TRUE? Yes. We are seeing around the U.S. that after re-opening, many states and cities have experienced a surge in cases and unfortunately very much an unflattening of the curve (see prior post on this possibility here) and in some places the possibility of a return to stay-at-home orders has been recommended to suppress ongoing outbreaks (see this link). Aiming to PREVENT the spread of infection during any get-togethers is still very much needed to help slow the spread of infection in our communities.
4. Most states have not yet ramped up their testing capacity or contact tracing staff to adequately deal with testing and contacting individuals who are part of more frequent large-network outbreaks.
STILL TRUE? Yes. Sigh…sadly we are currently seeing reports of long delays in getting test results back in certain parts of the U.S. (see this link) which makes it challenging for contact tracing to be effective. As outlined in this previous post, for the test-trace-isolate strategy to be successful at containing outbreaks, there needs to be quick turn around on test results and enough contact tracers to be able to quickly reach out to cases to instruct them to isolate, ascertain information about who they were recently in close contact with and then reach out to those contacts to instruct them to self-quarantine. If you do get tested and are waiting for results, it is best to start isolating yourself while you are waiting, to keep in mind the possibility of a false negative result and plan to remain self-quarantined for a full two weeks even if you test negative (see prior post on this here).
5. CDC warns against this strategy for other illnesses such as Chicken Pox.
STILL TRUE? Yes (see here).
6. It has not been determined whether individuals who have the infection garner long-term immunity.
STILL TRUE? IN PROGRESS! Since we are still only ~6 months into this pandemic, we still have a lot to learn about long-term immunity. That said, researchers believe that in most cases, individuals who test positive again weeks after initial illness are likely doing so because fragments of viral material are being picked up by the test and not because they are getting re-infected (see prior post on this). In addition, as discussed in a recent NYT article, while recent studies have indicated that antibodies targeted against SARS-CoV-2 do decrease over time in those infected, this is typical of viral infections, and there is still the possibility of a robust memory T cell response in shaping immunity to SARS-CoV-2 and perhaps even among those previously exposed to other commonly circulating coronaviruses (look for a longer post on this topic soon).
While we are happy to end with that bit of optimistic news, overall, our answer about attending a COVID party is still a resounding NO, 1000X NO!
Much safer to continue to #StaySMART and take steps to reduce your risk of exposure to this virus to protect yourself and prevent further transmission in the community!
