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Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Why New Orleans Pushed Ahead With Mardi Gras, Even as It Planned for Coronavirus

A cache of internal emails reveals city officials believed chances were “low” that the festivities would help spread the virus, a prediction that proved tragically off base.

ATLANTA —
Twelve days before New Orleans celebrated Mardi Gras Day, the citywide pre-Lenten bash that would pack thousands of visitors onto the streets, Sarah A. Babcock, the director of policy and emergency preparedness for the city health department, prepared a list of bullet points about the troubling disease that had already sickened thousands in China but had only infected 13 known patients in the United States.

“The chance of us getting someone with coronavirus is low,” Ms. Babcock advised community health providers, according to internal emails obtained by Columbia University’s Brown Institute for Media Innovation and reviewed by The New York Times.

The projection proved to be terribly off base, as New Orleans would soon erupt into one of the largest hot spots for the coronavirus in the U.S., with one of the nation’s highest death rates. Experts now believe that the multiweek Mardi Gras festivities likely served to accelerate the spread of the highly contagious disease in the New Orleans area.

9 comments:

  1. Leaders make choices/decisions everyday with the hopes the choices/decisions are correct. If not, they resign (fired) learn from it and move on.

    Unfortunately the New Orleans decision was the wrong one.

    We all make choices/decisions everyday too with the hopes our choices/decisions are the right ones. Many don't have to resign/get fired, yet we all learn from them.

    Hopeful our leaders are learning something since this situation involves all of us!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Huh ? The mayor of new Orleans blamed Trump. That's what "they" learned...

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  2. Nobody was admitting it was a bioweapon

    ReplyDelete
  3. This isn’t what LaToya has been saying. Mayor LaToya Is blaming Trump cause he didn’t put a haunt to the Mardi Gras party before it started and exposed those 100’s of thousands of visitors to the Coronavirus. Anyone who caught the Coronavirus while in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, it’s Trump’s fault.

    ReplyDelete

  4. Nice thoughts, 12:27, but you'll remember that the mayor of New Orleans recently went into a long, complicated dissertation about how it was all Trump's fault.

    They knew as well as anybody what was out there and what was coming, but went on with the show.

    Because TRUMP didn't say they couldn't.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Easy..Follow the MONEY

    ReplyDelete
  6. Someone needs to contact Dwayne Pride - STAT.

    King knows NOLA like no other and can get his team of NCIS agents to "learn things" fast!

    (NCIS New Orleans, CBS on Sunday nights)

    ReplyDelete
  7. according to no mayor, it's Trump's fault they didn't shut down.

    ReplyDelete

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