First, I only see 882 cases listed in the outbreak.
Second, there are 2,952 residents of Provincetown, MA.
Did each resident get infected 100 times? Or is this just crap reporting?
Scratch that, my tired eyes completely misread that as “hundreds of thousands”.
My mistake!
ABC News published a story on Thursday headlined: “CDC mask decision followed stunning findings from Cape Cod beach outbreak.” The article by Anne Flaherty and Arielle Mitropoulos explained how more than 800 people — 74 percent of whom had already been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 — tested positive for the coronavirus in the aftermath of Fourth of July celebrations in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
“The initial findings of the investigation led by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, seemed to have huge implications,” the ABC News account said. It explained that the Cape Cod outbreak was “among the pieces of new evidence behind the CDC’s decision” to ask Americans to wear masks indoors, even if they are vaccinated.
That ABC News article was more than 800 words long, but somehow the reporters never found an opportunity to mention two highly relevant words: “Bear Week.”
Provincetown is to gay men what Mecca is to Muslims, and the annual week-long gathering of thousands of “bears” (“a term used by gay men to describe a husky, large man with a lot of body hair,” per Urban Dictionary) who pack into crowded bars immediately follows the Fourth of July holiday. So this “Cape Cod beach outbreak,” to use the euphemism of that ABC News headline, was atypical to say the least, and certainly a poor test case to justify inflicting renewed mask mandates on the entire nation.