Miami Beach is a party, as if the coronavirus did not exist | The State
Coronavirus? What coronavirus? That is what the thousands of tourists and local residents of Miami Beach seem to think who enjoy the beach, parties in nightclubs and the atmosphere in streets in which many forget that Florida registers its worst days since the pandemic began. coronavirus.
With or without COVID-19, the usual fauna of the popular Ocean Drive promenade strolls their half-naked bodies and their usual self-confidence while the happy conversations that come from the crowded restaurant terraces, a wide variety of music and the effluvia of marijuana that there is no mask to mitigate.
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One of those who contribute to this bustle is the group of friends of Brazilian Silvio Maraca, who traveled to enjoy the good weather and the Miami Beach party, without fear of catching it or infecting it.
In his case, he says in conversation with Efe, without a mask, of course, it is because the disease has passed and he tested negative before getting on the plane to Miami.
Regarding not covering his mouth, he explains that since the police only “threaten” to issue a fine, without going overboard, and only if one gets very close to them without a mask, it is as easy as not approaching the agents and keeping a philosophy that many seem to follow in Miami Beach: “The fun of the moment is worth more” than possible punishment.
Nightlife at full throttle
And it is that tourists and locals shamelessly boast of breaking the rules, and many upload to their social networks samples of those moments of merriment that the health authorities fear will later become the drama of themselves, a family member or any stranger with which they come across when they are already, perhaps, infected.
Like it shows hip-hop singer Tyga, who animated a party in a Miami Beach nightclub last New Year’s Eve and later uploaded a video of the traditional countdown to Instagram that ushered in the new year in a place full of people and where, without a doubt, it was not very rigorous at the time of maintaining the distance of two meters between the dozens of attendees.
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And Tyga is still partying and this Saturday he added another at the Story nightclub in Miami Beach, one of the main cities in Miami-Dade County, the most affected by covid-19 in Florida, which this week beat its record for positive cases with 17,192 in a single day, well above the 15,300 recorded in the worst of the first wave last summer.
Without fear
But that little seems to scare the walkers of Lincoln Road, Española Way and Ocean DriveEven now that the much more contagious British strain of COVID-19 was detected in Florida in a young man who had not traveled anywhere in the incubation period.
And all this also despite the fact that a curfew is in force from midnight to 6 in the morning and a mask or similar must be used in public places and social distance must be maintained, on pain of receiving a possible fine.
But the Venezuelans settled in Santiago de Chile Albert Chacón and Juan Manuel Torres, visiting Miami Beach, they say that few police officers have seen streets where “half of the people” go without a mask.
“If compared to the security measures in Chile, Miami Beach is far behind,” says Chacón, while Torres believes that, although the “fear” of getting infected is always present, one must “learn” to live with the virus, because Otherwise, being self-conscious about enjoying the good times would mean “ceasing to live” in life.
And Miami-Beach is not an isolated case and it is a scenario that has been repeated in other tourist cities in Florida, both coastal and Fort Lauderdale or Tampa or Orlando, where this week several theme parks had to close their doors a few minutes after opening because they had already reached the maximum capacity allowed.
Nothing seems to scare those who bet on the good weather and fun of Florida without apparently giving excessive importance to the fact that, after California and Texas, Florida is the third worst hit state in the United States, the country with the highest number of cases to global level.
Keep the party going.
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