Covid party insanity continues to sweep the nation, or at least the nation’s news organizations. The latest example comes from Texas, where a 30-year-old man is said to have confessed on his deathbed that he had attended one. “Just before the patient died,” announced Jane Appleby, medical director of Methodist Hospital in San Antonio, “they looked at their nurse and said,” I think I made a mistake. I thought this was a hoax, but it isn’t. “
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What started as local news in South Texas on Friday soon became a national story. By Sunday he had arrived at a newsroom for The New York Times, which duly cited a doctor’s warning that these parts are “dangerous, irresponsible and life-threatening.”
Two weeks ago, I noticed that news reports on Covid parties, in which people supposedly get together with the goal of contracting the virus, have followed a remarkably consistent pattern. The source is invariably a government or health official who is stripped of several steps, at least, from any first-hand knowledge of the alleged event. The story is first reported by local media, then picked up and amplified by larger publications that add little or no additional information. A few weeks ago, for example, the Internet exploded with a story of Alabama college students allegedly throwing parties with infected people and betting on who could get the virus first. The CNN Associated Press media picked up the story, with its clever stereotypes about southerners and idiotic college kids. But when I examined it, I realized that all the news reports dated back to the comments of a single member of the Tuscaloosa city council, who offered no proof of the claim.
Shortly after my article came out, the University of Alabama student newspaper published an article in which Ramesh Peramsetty, a Tuscaloosa doctor whose clinic has been offering Covid tests, confirmed the rumor to be true. When I followed up with Peramsetty, he admitted that he had no first-hand knowledge of the Covid parties; It was something he heard from his staff, who work directly with patients. He directed me to Jerri Hanna, a clinical manager, who said he had direct knowledge. Hanna, however, told me that she had heard about Covid parties from another clinic employee. That second employee, who asked not to use her name because she had been harassed while running test sites, revealed that she had only heard about someone else’s parties on staff, but couldn’t remember exactly who. The rumor was still a rumor.
Texas history is more of the same. A patient, who is now dead and therefore cannot confirm the story, allegedly told it to a nurse, who told others in the hospital. In his video, Appleby, the director of health, does not say otherwise; she says she “heard a heartbreaking story this week.” In a related interview for a local station, Appleby describes hearing about parties where “someone will be diagnosed with the disease and they will have a party to invite their friends to see if they can beat the disease.”
News organizations, including The New York Times, have reported the story without trying to get to the bottom of it, or even find basic information such as where or when the alleged part took place. Some even create a false sense of certainty by making headlines that omit the source of the claim, such as “30 years ABC News dies after attending the ‘COVID party’ thought virus was a ‘hoax’.” Meanwhile, the San Antonio Express-News He reported that the city’s Metropolitan Health District “had not heard of such parties in the city of Alamo.” When I contacted the hospital for comment, Communications Director Cheri Love-Moceri told me that Appleby was not available and that “she had shared everything she could about this patient.” She also said the hospital was unable to share the name of the nurse who reported the confession on the deathbed.
Like any urban legend, the Covid party narrative changes slightly with each narration. Until this latest iteration, events have almost always been described, or imagined, as analogous to the “smallpox parties” of old, where people tried to contract a virus and became immune, to “get it over with. ” . “That description no longer seemed to fit the alleged Tuscaloosa incident, where university students were said to have been betting on the outcome. In San Antonio, it’s even less relevant: if the victim really thought the pandemic was a hoax, why would he have been waiting for the antibodies? So now the Covid party concept has expanded. The New York Times He informs us, as if we did not notice that there is a cunning addition, that “the premise of such parties is to test whether the virus really exists or to intentionally expose people to the coronavirus in an attempt to obtain immunity.” The narrative also seems to become more dramatic as it reinvents itself: first, a gambling group, now the revelation of a dying man.
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