Provincetown, Mass., the quirky community at the tip of
Cape Cod, thought it was safe to return to prepandemic partying.
It wasn’t.
PROVINCETOWN, Mass. — By the Fourth of July, Provincetown’s tourist season had built to a prepandemic thrum. Restaurants were booked solid, and snaking lines formed outside the dance clubs. There were conga lines, drag brunches and a pervasive, joyous sense of relief.
On the weekend of July 4, it was also crowded. Around 60,000 people had jammed into a narrow spit of land, where many congregated, maskless, on sweaty dance floors and at house parties.
PROVINCETOWN, Mass. — By the Fourth of July, Provincetown’s tourist season had built to a prepandemic thrum. Restaurants were booked solid, and snaking lines formed outside the dance clubs. There were conga lines, drag brunches and a pervasive, joyous sense of relief.
...
...visitors were arriving in Provincetown in waves...
...
“We really thought we had beat Covid,” said Alex Morse, who arrived this spring as town manager. “We had internalized those messages, that life will be back to normal. We beat this. We are the most vaccinated community in the state.”
Mr. Morse didn’t think much of it, five days after the holiday, when the town’s Board of Health logged two new cases of coronavirus. A week later, though, the cluster of cases associated with gatherings in Provincetown was growing by 50 to 100 cases per day. Alongside the numbers was an unsettling fact: Most of the people testing.
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A community of health-conscious, left-leaning Northeasterners, known as a vacation mecca for gay men, Provincetown had one of the highest vaccination rates in the country, upward of 95 percent among permanent residents, Mr. Morse estimates.
“We really thought we had beat Covid,” said Alex Morse, who arrived this spring as town manager. “We had internalized those messages, that life will be back to normal. We beat this. We are the most vaccinated community in the state.”
Mr. Morse didn’t think much of it, five days after the holiday, when the town’s Board of Health logged two new cases of coronavirus. A week later, though, the cluster of cases associated with gatherings in Provincetown was growing by 50 to 100 cases per day. Alongside the numbers was an unsettling fact: Most of the people testing.
...
A community of health-conscious, left-leaning Northeasterners, known as a vacation mecca for gay men, Provincetown had one of the highest vaccination rates in the country, upward of 95 percent among permanent residents, Mr. Morse estimates.
And that is when it hit me. I asked in a previous post if there was reason to view the Provincetown-Barnstable County data as aberrational? Quirky? I didn't make the association. I remembered reading in an article yesterday that people were "jetting" into Provincetown from all over the country for its 4th of July celebration. I didn't make the association. One of those hospitalized was 40. That drew an "Oomph" from me. I remembered reading "immunodeficient" in the CDC report. I didn't make the association with either.
I don't know Provincetown, didn't know it when I read that, didn't have any idea why people were jetting into Provincetown for the 4th of July. But this article makes explicit that Provincetown is "quirky" , aberrational, in being a "gay mecca". There is a reason why this New York Times reporter makes the Provincetown-gay association explicit. Are gay men overrepresented among the immunodeficient? I don't know for sure but AIDS stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. The CDC article clearly linked immunodeficient and Delta.
With "gay mecca" I made the association. And then I remembered. The vector for AIDS in the United States was gay men jetting into New York City from all over the country to party on July 4, 1976. "Dreamy," in Randy Shilts description, Gaetan Degas, an Air Canada flight attendant, jetted all over North America--Toronto, San Francisco, New York--spreading what was then known as "gay bowel syndrome" all over the continent, even as the Kaposi's sarcoma purple blotches disfigured his face.
Is this why the Provincetown-Barnstable County outbreak stands out from other studies? Why there seems almost an inverse proportion of fully vaxxed and infection? To me, a non-scientist, yes. There is a particular vulnerability that gay men, even fully vaxed gay men, have that makes the CDC report aberrational.
On the weekend of July 4, it was also crowded. Around 60,000 people had jammed into a narrow spit of land, where many congregated, maskless, on sweaty dance floors and at house parties.
...
So many gay men poured in for Circuit Party week, the first week of July, that people on social media started sharing photos of the lines outside clubs, snaking for blocks.
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From the 965 cases that scientists have traced to gatherings in Provincetown, among them 238 residents
...
“We were told, ‘Now you’re vaccinated, and everyone is vaccinated, you can go out and live the pre-Covid lifestyle. People did, they were living with gusto. We were led to believe, ‘If you get the vaccine, you can go to a dance club, you can go to a house party and meet someone and make out.’ That’s what we thought the situation was.”-Steve Katsurinis, the chair of the town Board of Health
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From the 965 cases that scientists have traced to gatherings in Provincetown, among them 238 residents
...
“We were told, ‘Now you’re vaccinated, and everyone is vaccinated, you can go out and live the pre-Covid lifestyle. People did, they were living with gusto. We were led to believe, ‘If you get the vaccine, you can go to a dance club, you can go to a house party and meet someone and make out.’ That’s what we thought the situation was.”-Steve Katsurinis, the chair of the town Board of Health
And Mr. Katsurinis heard right! That's what we were told, from the president to the CDC director on down.
By the end of the week, Mr. Katsurinis was taking reports of positive coronavirus cases — all gay men, with an average age of 30 to 35.
What puzzled him, he said, was that so many of the infected people were vaccinated.
“I couldn’t believe, frankly, that vaccinated people were getting and spreading it, the way that the contact tracing people were saying,” he said. “I had that moment of saying, ‘I don’t believe that data is accurate.’”
Days passed, he said, before it was clear that the virus circulating was the Delta variant, “and I went, oh, OK. Delta is a different thing.”
“I don’t think we could have anticipated what Delta would do here,” he said.
Infectious disease specialists have praised the community’s meticulous contact tracing...
Mr. Morse said he was concerned about overreacting...But successive waves of tests showed a rising positivity rate, hitting a peak of 15 percent on July 15...The town’s positivity rate dropped to 4.6 percent on Thursday; its mask mandate will automatically become an advisory, and then be lifted, if it remains low.
Rick Murray, the general manager of the Crown and Anchor, a beachside inn that houses bars and nightclubs, said it is part of the community’s DNA to be “very, very responsible” in a health crisis.
“When the AIDS epidemic came, we took care of our own, and we will take care of our own now,” said Mr. Murray, who has been H.I.V. positive for 37 years. He said he anticipates that guarding against the virus will be challenging “for another two or three years, easily.”
Thinking back to the exuberant crowds of June, [Liz Carney, 500 said it was “a bit naïve” to think it was safe to congregate inside — but also, she misses them.
“There was just a joy and an exhilaration,” she said. “It was very exciting. I wish I had taken a twirl on the dance floor while I had a chance.”
By the end of the week, Mr. Katsurinis was taking reports of positive coronavirus cases — all gay men, with an average age of 30 to 35.
What puzzled him, he said, was that so many of the infected people were vaccinated.
“I couldn’t believe, frankly, that vaccinated people were getting and spreading it, the way that the contact tracing people were saying,” he said. “I had that moment of saying, ‘I don’t believe that data is accurate.’”
Days passed, he said, before it was clear that the virus circulating was the Delta variant, “and I went, oh, OK. Delta is a different thing.”
“I don’t think we could have anticipated what Delta would do here,” he said.
Infectious disease specialists have praised the community’s meticulous contact tracing...
Mr. Morse said he was concerned about overreacting...But successive waves of tests showed a rising positivity rate, hitting a peak of 15 percent on July 15...The town’s positivity rate dropped to 4.6 percent on Thursday; its mask mandate will automatically become an advisory, and then be lifted, if it remains low.
Rick Murray, the general manager of the Crown and Anchor, a beachside inn that houses bars and nightclubs, said it is part of the community’s DNA to be “very, very responsible” in a health crisis.
“When the AIDS epidemic came, we took care of our own, and we will take care of our own now,” said Mr. Murray, who has been H.I.V. positive for 37 years. He said he anticipates that guarding against the virus will be challenging “for another two or three years, easily.”
Thinking back to the exuberant crowds of June, [Liz Carney, 500 said it was “a bit naïve” to think it was safe to congregate inside — but also, she misses them.
“There was just a joy and an exhilaration,” she said. “It was very exciting. I wish I had taken a twirl on the dance floor while I had a chance.”
And the Band Played On.