Infectious Disease Specialist Dr. Aileen Marty On Spring Break Mass Gatherings: 'You Have People Completely Behaving As If COVID Didn't Exist'
MIAMI (CBSMiami) - Florida International University Infectious Disease Specialist Dr. Aileen Marty spoke to CBS4 about mass gatherings during spring break in Miami Beach.
Dr. Marty addressed the dangers of mass gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Here is what she had to say:
"A mass gathering of individuals is always a risk. Having this type of behavior unmasked in the middle of a pandemic. Now, you're talking about an interchange of variants, which can lead to a brand new variant forming that might be potentially worse."
"So that's my biggest fear. That's always a consideration with a mass gathering is that different versions of a particular germ come together, recombine and form something worse."
"Every time I've dealt with mass gatherings, whether it's a FIFA World Cup or an Olympics or whatever, we always have that as a consideration. What's the impact of bringing germs into the area by the people who are coming, and what's going to be the impact of germs acquired at the mass gathering and going back to where people are coming from."
"When we're talking about a virus as nasty as the SARS two virus, and you have people completely behaving it as if it didn't exist, they are putting themselves at risk. They're putting their families at risk, and they're putting the community in which they are doing these actions at high risk. And so this is not mature adult behavior and that's a real problem."
