Coronavirus? What coronavirus? The party in Miami Beach doesn’t stop

Miami Beach Coronavirus? What coronavirus?

This is what thousands of Miami Beach tourists and local residents seem to think enjoying the beach, nightclub parties and the atmosphere on some streets where many forget that Florida is registering its worst days since it began. coronavirus pandemic.

With or without the COVID-19, the usual wildlife of the popular Ocean Drive Promenade walks their half-naked bodies and their usual ease as they mix the cheerful conversations that come from the crowded terraces of restaurants, a wide variety of music and marijuana effluvia that there is no mask to mitigate.

One of those contributing to this uproar is the group of friends of the Brazilian Silvio Maraca, who traveled to enjoy the good weather and the Miami Beach party, without fear of spreading it.

If that’s the case, he says in a conversation with Efe, without a mask, of course, it’s because he already passed the disease and tested negative before boarding the plane in Miami.

About not covering his mouth, he explains that as the police usually “threatens” to put a fine, without going to seniors, and only if one gets very close to them without a mask, it is as easy as not approaching to the agents and maintain a philosophy that many seem to follow in Miami Beach: “The fun of the moment is worth more” than the possible punishment.

night parties

And is that tourists and locals shamelessly boast of breaking the rules, and many upload to their social networks samples of those moments of revelry that health authorities fear will later become the drama of themselves, some relative or any stranger they come across when they are already, perhaps, infected.

As shown by hip-hop singer Tyga, who hosted a party at a Miami Beach nightclub last New Year’s Eve and then uploaded to Instagram a video of the traditional countdown that gave way to the year new in a crowded venue and where he was certainly not very rigorous in keeping the two-meter distance between the dozens of attendees.

And Tyga is still partying and this Saturday she added another to the Story nightclub in Miami Beach, one of the major cities in Miami-Dade County, the hardest hit by COVID-19 in Florida, which this week hit the its record number of positive cases with 17,192 in a single day, well above the 15,300 that was recorded in the worst of the first wave last summer.

without fear

But that doesn’t seem to scare pedestrians off Lincoln Road, Spanish Way and Ocean Drive, even now that the much more contagious British coronavirus strain has been detected in Florida in a young man who hadn’t traveled anywhere. in the incubation period.

And all this also although a curfew is in force from midnight until 6:00 in the morning and a mask or similar must be worn in public places and the social distance must be maintained, under penalty for receiving a possible fine.

But Venezuelans based in Santiago de Chile Albert Chacón and Juan Manuel Torres, visiting Miami Beach, say few police officers have been seen on streets where “half the people” go without a mask.

“When compared to security measures in Chile, Miami Beach is far behind,” says Chacón, while Torres believes that while the “fear” of becoming infected is always present, one must “learn” to live with the virus, because otherwise restraining oneself from enjoying the good times would mean “stopping living” in life.

And Miami-Beach is not an isolated case and is a scenario that has been repeated in other tourist cities in Florida, whether coastal as Fort Lauderdale or Tampa or Orlando, where this week several theme parks had to close their doors a few minutes after their opening because they had already reached the maximum capacity allowed.

Nothing seems to scare those who bet on Florida’s good weather and fun without seemingly giving too much importance to the fact that, after California and Texas, Florida is the third hardest hit state in the U.S., the country with the highest number of cases globally.

Let the party continue.