How do we talk about plague parties?

The first two months of the pandemic are a complete blur, for me. All I remember is staring at graphs and case trackers, the constant wail of ambulance sirens, fumbling around with a dust mask in the laundromat, and paralyzing dread. Eventually the sirens stopped and the haze lifted. I remembered that the world still existed and would, in fact, carry on. Then a friend sent me an article about people who kept partying throughout April and asked if I knew anything about it.

A supermodel and her boyfriend I recognized from Instagram downed shots — “Cheers to corona!” they said, glasses clinking. Two guys next to me did the elbow bump before laughing and embracing. “We don’t do that!”

I was so enraged, insulted, and upset. I felt naive for being surprised, yet still shocked that this was happening. I hated that they were claiming to be underground, afraid that people would confuse these assholes with the community I know and love. I put my journalist hat on for a moment, digging through a chain of instagram posts to find one of the attendees — a nomadic fashionista who split their time between Milan, Paris, New York, and Burning Man. I sent a message asking if they’d been to some of these parties, and they replied immediately: “Hello yes I’m currently at one now”

I put the phone down and scratched my head. I thought this would be worth hiding, or at least a bit embarrassing. Instead, they were shameless — did I even detect a hint of pride? I started to wonder if this was all an influencer’s scheme for attention and felt gross for falling into their trap.

Once the George Floyd protests erupted and millions hit the streets, lockdown was shattered and parties sprang up quickly — in New York City and beyond. Videos of packed clubs were spread by accounts dedicated to exposing the wealthy superstar DJs headlining these parties. Justice was in the air, after all. But while techno twitter berated Amelie Lens and Nina Kraviz, parties big and small carried on. Article after exposé after investigation came out telling the same story ad nauseum: people are still partying and they don’t feel guilty about it!

Word came around about an upcoming party from a local promoter, and feeling helpless to stop it, I wrote up some basic guidelines for party safety. It went viral and folks were largely supportive, though I had three strangers message me to explain that I’m a white supremacist — both because I was too permissive (I was encouraging people to party thereby endangering people of color) and too restrictive (I was policing people’s behavior). June was a weird time on the internet.

More disheartening, though, was watching my feed fill with videos of maskless ravers packed together. The reaction was swift: folks were upset, sides were forming, people were digging in and accusing each other of being plague-spreading murderers or preachy cops. My outrage at unsafe partying gradually turned into concern — this bickering was worse than pointless. And, as it was turning out, these outdoor parties were probably safer than many of the newly re-opened restaurants and businesses.

Strikingly, in one database of more than 1,200 super-spreader events, just one incident is classified as outdoor transmission, where a single person was infected outdoors by their jogging partner, and only 39 are classified as outdoor/indoor events, which doesn’t mean that being outdoors played a role, but it couldn’t be ruled out. The rest were all indoor events, and many involved dozens or hundreds of people at once. Other research points to the same result: Super-spreader events occur overwhelmingly in indoor environments where there are a lot of people.

But here we had people — myself included — who had just spent two weeks marching in the streets among crowds of thousands suddenly berating their friends for dancing outside. In the many conversations that followed, it became clear that individuals were coming from vastly different experiences with the pandemic. Some of us lived through the constant wail of sirens and watching the infection spread through friends and family, while others only experienced quiet but intensely boring, lonely isolation. Many people didn’t understand the nature of the virus — they believed that it wasn’t a risk for young people, or they didn’t know about asymptomatic spread.

The parties continued — albeit with much less presence on social media. I eventually went to one myself in October with ~150 others underneath a bridge in Queens, and it was arguably safer than my one legal night spent indoors at a bar. The ventilation was good and most people kept their masks on. Everyone I know got tested afterwards (all negative), and I self-quarantined in my bedroom for a week until I got my results. No, it wasn’t as safe as another god-forsaken Zoom party — but it was a calculated risk, one I felt was worth taking for a night of embodied communion. The memory of that night has kept me warm through the long dark of this awful winter.

Human beings are deeply, fundamentally social creatures. We need quality social interaction just as much as we need water and air. Many of us have spent this year in the worst isolation of our lives. For others, it’s been relatively easy — just as with every other challenge in life, each of us experiences this moment differently. But we should never underestimate how badly we want to spend time together.

Which brings me to the point of all this. A few days ago, a friend passed along a link to the latest callout account, which lists out DJs that have kept playing unsafe parties through the pandemic. Based on what I’ve witnessed throughout the year, I believe this is toxic for our community and does not make us safer.

1. This is free publicity for the DJs and the parties. They aren’t even blurring out the contact information on the flyers. For every DJ that is shamed into submission, another DJ proudly soaks up the attention and sends out RSVP links. Generating press through controversy is one of the oldest tricks in the promoter playbook.
2. Some of these parties are (tragically) legal. The US has a completely fractured landscape in its pandemic response — Miami has remained mostly open throughout the year. We can’t stop anyone from packing up their decks and driving down the coast. Yes, throwing an indoor party right now is deeply immoral — but if the government won’t even take action, there are much more fundamental issues to be addressed.
3. This is preaching to the choir. No one who reads or follows these accounts is attending these parties. As long as this discourse plays out on instagram, we are still trapped in our echo chambers.
4. Accusation without evidence or testimony is gossip. Many of these posts are nothing but a headshot and a name. The account authors are anonymous. There are no details about the nature of the party (more recent posts have included videos, though still without context). This is a recipe for abuse.
5. You can’t cancel someone that doesn’t care. Have we learned nothing from Trump? And no, we can’t force strangers on the internet to care. Their careers are not seriously threatened by anything a callout account can muster. We’ve already watched this play out with Business Teshno. This doesn’t even touch the issue of whether canceling has any use at all in a healthy community.

Stop acting like cops and start acknowledging the human needs that drive the demand for parties, even in the midst of a pandemic. Stop pretending we’re better than anyone else — because we’re not.

So, then, what are we to do?

I believe harm reduction is the only way.

Harm reduction — when applied to disease prevention for infectious diseases — is the principle of advising individuals how to mitigate risk, while acknowledging the real world conditions that may lead individuals to take some risks. HIV doctors and addiction health specialists are well versed in harm reduction principles; we would have lost patients a long time ago if we yelled at them to “wear a condom, stupid” or failed to recognize the lived experiences of individuals navigating intimacy, loss, love, and personal trauma in light of the risk of or infection with a virus.

Some day, New York’s restrictions are going to lift. It will probably be long before the vaccine has made it to much of the population, and the virus will still be circulating. Our high horse over Miami will be gone, and we’ll watch in horror as the clubs are packed. If we want to make it through the rest of this pandemic with our sanity intact, this is the way: look for opportunities to educate, inform, and wherever possible, provide safer alternatives. Because telling people you can’t do that when the clubs are open isn’t going to work.