More than 40 attendees of a November swingers convention in New Orleans have tested positive for COVID-19, the event’s organizer revealed in a blog post last week.
“If I could go back in time, I would not produce this event again,” wrote Bob Hannaford, the organizer of the annual Naughty in N’awlins swingers convention. “I wouldn’t do it again if I knew then what I know now. It weighs on me and it will continue to weigh on me until everyone is 100% better.”
According to Hannaford, one of the attendees was hospitalized in serious condition but later released, though most of the cases linked to the event were reportedly mild or asymptomatic.
The annual event was significantly smaller this year, attended by only about 250 guests compared to 2,000 last year, NOLA.com reported. Hannaford told the outlet the event was also subject to increased restrictions this year, such as mandatory face masks, social distancing, contact diaries and COVID-19 testing for guests prior to the event.
“Over 50 percent of our attendees had the antibodies and many of the rest got tested right before the event,” Hannaford wrote in the blog post.
Unfortunately, those safety measures don’t seem to have been as effective as Hannaford and his guests may have hoped. However, guests were willing to cop to a more relaxed approach to those safety protocols towards the end of the week, to which Hannaford largely attributes the spike in cases.
“In almost every case, they admitted to us that they were super diligent on the first two days (Wed & Thurs) and then they relaxed a little on Friday and then they said ‘F*** it, it’s our last day,’ and many admitted that their lax effort on that final day is probably why they ended up positive,” he wrote.
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