Zoom
in on a map of Florida, and a small dot for the city of Milton will pop up
roughly 25 miles northeast of Pensacola. Situated on the delta where the tannic
Blackwater River feeds into the East Bay, Milton is home to an estimated 10,523
people. It's a small city with a settlement history that reaches back to the
early 1800s. Before the land was officially called Milton, the Santa Rosa
County Historical Society says it had previously gone by choice names such as
"Scratch Ankle," for its aggressive briars, and "Hell-Town," for its humidity,
barbed flora, snakes, and mosquitoes.
This
Carnival season, Milton is going against the advice of health experts by
planning to move forward with their parade and after-party on January 30,
2021—otherwise known as in the middle of
a pandemic that has killed more than 420,000 Americans. It's an unthinkably
tragic number of lives lost, and yet Georgia's Albany Herald recently published an article on a study showing that
in the South, COVID-related deaths are even higher than are being reported.
Just
days before the parade, Santa Rosa County—of which Milton is a part—has a
coronavirus positivity count of 14,706 people. Milton's decision has been
dubbed "the height of frivolousness and irresponsible local leadership" by
their neighbors at the Editorial Board at the Pensacola News Journal. In a scathing op-ed titled "Unlike majority
of the Gulf Coast, Milton Mardi Gras a spectacle of selfishness," the writers
called attention to the fact that across the Gulf Coast, cities have called off
their parades in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19.
"Not
only are Milton's parade organizers spitting on the sacrifices that all these
other communities have made, the Milton City Council actually voted to spend
thousands of dollars of taxpayer money to help fund an "after-party at an event
that officials said would be 50 percent larger than last year's," wrote the
Editorial Board at the PNJ.
Councilman George Jordan was the one dissenter in a 5-1 vote to donate money to
the Krewe of Airship Pirates for their parade after-party. He was joined in
sentiment by Councilwoman Sharon Holley, though for technicality reasons, she
could not vote via phone call.
It
wouldn't have mattered anyway. The PNJ
noted that Jordan and Holley were outnumbered by council members such as Shannon
Rice, who said that using taxpayer dollars to fund an after-party was a matter
of "personal freedom" and "not being tyrannical." The city of Milton has
already gone ahead with a pandemic Christmas parade where "very few" people
wore masks, Jordan told Annie Blanks, a reporter for the PNJ. "I really am concerned about it becoming a super-spreader due
to the after-party," Holley told Blanks. Maybe Hell-Town is an applicable name
after all.
From
New Orleans, it's hard to watch Milton's reckless parade and after-party
without recalling March 2020, when NOLA's Mardi Gras celebration was pointed
out as the reason why the city emerged as a hot spot early on in the pandemic.
The hindsight assessment came too late. Back in February 2020, the CDC was
still warning that COVID-19 would be a future concern. On February 24—one day
before Fat Tuesday—President Trump tweeted "The Coronavirus is very much under
control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries.
CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market
starting to look very good to me!" Then, the virus felt far away and
impossible. Now, the virus has been here for nearly a year and the refusal to
follow the precautions urged by infectious disease specialists is a choice.
Milton
is hardly alone in its incautious choices. The Mystic Krewe of Nyx fulfilled
the prophecy of their name when they mystified many with their choice to throw
a ball in Biloxi. Why anyone would post photos from a ball to social media in
the middle of a pandemic is a
modern-day form of inscrutable mysticism. Even more mystifying: Dough Sunseri,
Nyx's spokesman attorney, tried to tone down the backlash by telling Nola.com that he doesn't think "ball is
a proper characterization" for the event, despite the fact that "photographs of
the event program were titled 'Nyx Myx Masquerade Ball,'" as journalist Doug
MacCash noted. Nyx gets their mystique from their baffling self-delusion. It's
an all-too-common occurrence that makes people believe their actions don't
matter when it comes to public health. The reality is that we're in this
together.
