"Reading the federal government’s new case study on the spread of the novel coronavirus in Chicago feels like watching the movie “Contagion,” as Gwyneth Paltrow’s character returns from Macao to Minnesota. It’s a real-life reminder that a single person can trigger a deadly chain reaction.
The story laid out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention begins with a funeral in February. Patient Zero, a friend of the deceased who had recently traveled out of state and was experiencing mild respiratory symptoms, came to a dinner the night before the service. He shared a takeout meal from common serving dishes with two family members of the deceased at a house.
Three days later, one of the dinner hosts started to show symptoms of the coronavirus. Two days after that, the other did too. A third member of the family, who hugged Patient Zero at the funeral, got sick.
A few days after the funeral, Patient Zero – still only experiencing mild symptoms – went to a birthday party with nine other people. Seven of them soon fell ill. Two have died.
Three of the seven people who would get sick after the birthday party then went to church. Someone sitting within a row of them in the pews during the service, who was passed the offering plate, soon developed symptoms.
The first host of the dinner from the night before the funeral was hospitalized as their condition deteriorated. A ventilator would not be able to save this person, but a family member who came to visit the hospital soon developed a fever and cough.
All these infected people unwittingly transmitted the disease to other loved ones, fellow parishioners, home health workers and so forth. This happened before Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) banned gatherings of more than 50 people and, four days after that, issued a stay-at-home order.
This is how clusters form. Such seemingly innocuous person-to-person contact is the way places turn into hot spots. In New Orleans, it was Mardi Gras. In Italy, it was a soccer game. In France, it was a ski resort.
This is why it is so risky for the citizens they are supposed to serve that seven Republican governors persist in their refusal to issue stay-at-home orders, even as the United States now has about 15,000 confirmed deaths, including at least 1,924 on Wednesday, and 432,000 confirmed cases. This is why it is reckless and irresponsible for those few pastors who are defying federal social distancing guidelines to hold in-person services during the Holy Week."
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