UPDATED: What A Super Spread!
This is how it works: How an Upscale Connecticut Party Became a Coronavirus 'Super Spreader' .
About 50 guests gathered on March 5 at a home in the stately suburb of Westport, Conn., to toast the hostess on her 40th birthday and greet old friends, including one visiting from South Africa. They shared reminiscences, a lavish buffet and, unknown to anyone, the coronavirus.
Then they scattered.
The Westport soirée — Party Zero in southwestern Connecticut and beyond — is a story of how, in the Gilded Age of money, social connectedness and air travel, a pandemic has spread at lightning speed. The partygoers — more than half of whom are now infected — left that evening for Johannesburg, New York City and other parts of Connecticut and the United States, all seeding infections on the way.
Westport, a town of 28,000 on the Long Island Sound, did not have a single known case of the coronavirus on the day of the party. It had 85 on Monday, up more than 40-fold in 11 days.
I had a niece living there until last September or October. Got out just ahead of the bug. Lots more at the link.
UPDATE: Just heard from my niece:
Sadly I know a fellow mom my age [back in Westport, CT] with 3 kids who is very sick. In hospital on a ventilator. She’s the picture of healthy... nutritionist, incredible athlete/marathon runner.