She recently went to a homecoming celebration for her alma mater and said that even with capacity restrictions and vaccination requirements, she still kept her mask on and maintained distance from unmasked partiers. Ompad said that on a spectrum of risk assessment, epidemiologists and public health officials skew toward the very careful end. We’re all about harm reduction and let’s have fun in a way where there aren’t consequences. “But we are the buzzkill so you can continue having fun. “Epidemiologists are often the buzzkills of the party,” Danielle Ompad, an associate professor of epidemiology at NYU’s School of Global Public Health, told me. That’s why the epidemiologists I spoke to wouldn’t be going out. Throw the virus into a place with all those combined factors and it could spread quickly and easily. Those people are usually yelling to be heard over the music - yelling propels droplets into the air, which is both gross when you think about it and unnerving when you consider that’s how SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, is spread. They’re crowded with people in close proximity to one another. They’re indoors and ventilation isn’t usually great. Nightlife venues are risky because they satisfy everything Covid-19 needs to thrive. All of the epidemiology professors I spoke to - including from UCLA, Columbia, NYU, and the University of Washington - said they would not personally partake in a night at a crowded indoor nightclub or bar right now. In an epidemiologist’s ideal world, no one would be going out. What to think about if you’re going to go out
In turn, it provided us a model that we could all use when we think about risk assessment. Very few of those vaccinated people appeared to get severely ill, but it was a real-life illustration of the risk that remains.Īnd on the flip side, some scientists say that outbreak displayed a real-life example of a community coming together and mitigating harm, not only with vaccinations but also by proactively protecting one another. This past summer, in Provincetown, Massachusetts, public health experts reported an outbreak that was connected to nightlife and affected many people who were already vaccinated. The answer to these questions then involves understanding personal risk and recognizing our own responsibility to the communities we belong to. But if people were strict and simple when it comes to following public health advice, the US would probably be having a different conversation regarding Covid-19. The strict and simple answer from public health experts is no, not yet.
Lawmakers and public health experts have loosened messaging and restrictions, even as warnings about the delta variant continue.īut the question that lingers is, if nightlife was shut down so urgently at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, should we be going out at all while it continues? Is there really a responsible way to dance to “Rasputin” in a nightclub full of sweaty people? New York City, where I live, has more than a few really great disco parties, provided you are fully vaccinated. Nightlife - clubs and bars - has come back.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.įor more newsletters, check out our newsletters page.Ī year and a half later, I have the option. Had I known the speed at which it was going to happen, I might have gone out at least one more time.īy submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice. In 2020, nightclubs and bars were shut down abruptly to slow the spread of Covid-19. I can’t explain the logistics of this intense personal fantasy.īut I think it goes back to the concept of never appreciating what you have until it’s gone. I don’t know how this desire started, or why, beyond the addictive hook, “Rasputin” is my song of choice. Previously, I wasn’t that deeply invested in going out. This has been an elaborate yearning in my soul. People were reading and hiking and baking and binge-watching, seemingly making the best of a bad situation.Īs much as I wanted to enjoy these appropriate pandemic hobbies, I found myself wanting to pass the time only one way: dancing to the disco hit “Rasputin” in a crowd of people - preferably, but not limited to, gay men.
Over the course of the last 18 or so months, I watched as my friends, and flagrantly attractive people I follow on Instagram who aren’t my friends, started picking up hobbies.