COVID Had a Blast at the DNC

They came, they saw, they nominated the first Black female presidential candidate in US history—and many of them left with COVID. As NBC News reports, multiple delegates, reporters, and even Kamala Harris campaign staffers have said they left the four-day Democratic National Convention in Chicago with a positive coronavirus diagnosis. "You put 20,000 people in an 18,000-person building, it's bound to happen," says Chicago political consultant Jaimey Sexton, himself a participant at the DNC. "You could ask anybody who was planning an event, they know somebody who has COVID." More:

• What drove the spike: DNC attendees weren't required to wear masks or supply negative test results prior to attending. Salon notes that the canceled in-person 2020 convention made for a more raucous atmosphere this time around.
• From those who got sick: "Indeed. I arrived at the DNC healthy and hopeful and left very sick and disillusioned," delegate Yasmine Taeb, also a human rights activist, wrote on X, per the New York Post. "When you spend five days in Chicago for the DNC and come home with COVID-19. Womp womp," Christopher Wiggins, a reporter at the LGBTQ+ magazine the Advocate posted on X. And rather than Beyonce, "maybe the DNC surprise was the COVID we got along the way," NewsNation reporter Kellie Meyer posted on X.
• The potential upside to a downside: Most of the cases reported, as with the summer spike in COVID, appear to be mild.

(More Democratic National Convention stories.)