Party Favor
In a time of a pandemic, is a negative swab test a valid ticket to party?
As we celebrate our one-year anniversary in quarantine, we can all agree that we are all itching to be amongst a crowd of people, laughing away with a drink in hand and bumping bodies against loud music. It’s unrealistic to think that people will keep holding their lives offf for months on end and trying to stay indoors for more than a year now isn’t doing us any good either. Since swab tests are becoming more accessible and vaccines are rolling in, they’ve been an advantageous precautionary measure to slowly and safely get back to our pre-pandemic lives. With this being said, many are now relying on COVID-19 tests to freely socialize without precaution—but is a negative swab test really a valid ticket to party without worry?
I was a senior in college with just a few months left before our supposed graduation when the pandemic fi irst hit. So, you can just imagine my batchmates and I feeling robbed of our last months as young adults. We said goodbye to graduation traditions and farewell to nursing epic hangovers from the parties we could have had to reward ourselves. Nonetheless with the swab tests, vaccines, and at-home rapid test kits available online that are now taking into play, from left to right, you can see that many are meeting their friends in large groups where masks and social distancing are left at the door. I won’t lie and say that I didn’t feel jealous seeing others do this or that the tempting thought of doing the same didn’t cross my mind. But as one enjoys a night of fun with friends, somewhere else a frontliner is struggling in a crowded hospital and for another, it’s a day spent at a funeral.
Recently, news came out that a group falsifi ied PRC tests to travel to Boracay and tested positive. Some establishments have also closed down due to violations against COVID health protocols causing many to lose their jobs. Medical practitioners are now facing this dangerous preconception spreading amongst the public that a negative swab test or even a PCR test is a ticket to freely go out and worse, to party. Although helpful, it is not sufffiicient to erase the need for the other proven precautionary methods of self-quarantines, masks, and social distancing. Tests are one of the vital parts of the cycle to defeat a virus and it’s an additional measure to help the public get back to work, take care of the basic needs and reunite with family members. Moreover, its main benefiit is if someone receives a positive test, that person knows to stay home and isolate to avoid spreading the virus. Experts say to treat a negative result as a snapshot in time. Let’s say you get a test at 10 AM on a Monday, only during that specifiic time is the virus isn’t present in your body. Because as you step out of the clinic and you hold the handle of the escalator or push open a door of the building, the risk of infection is still present.
We have all been sufffering in this pandemic some more than others, and we all have a social responsibility that will greatly afffect when this virus will end. So, as you plan to use a negative swab test to slip into a party, contemplate if it’s really worth risking your life or another’s? Choose with caution, friends.