If you haven’t watched the Chicago house party COVID-19 video, you’ve likely heard about it. The scene, posted to social media, lasts nearly 24 minutes, but it takes only about 10 seconds to absorb, and 2 more seconds to condemn. The video appears to show a packed room of young adults — some wearing masks but most not — chatting, laughing, drinking and quite possibly infecting each other. Oh, and obviously violating the state’s orders limiting crowds and enforcing social distancing.
The viral video of the April 25 party in Galewood on the city’s Northwest Side gained some context after Janeal Wright, 26, came forward as the organizer and expressed remorse. The party, he said, was meant to honor two friends who were shot to death in an incident on the West Side in 2018. Wright wasn’t concerned about the pandemic, but he was cooped up at home when not at work as a security guard. Time to party, he decided. Time to escape the worries of his world.
“Gun violence is taking everybody around my age group,” Wright told the Tribune’s Alice Yin. “That’s why I was so oblivious. Because you know, diseases, viruses, they’re very serious and everything like that, but they’re not (gun violence).”
A legitimate excuse? No. He was wrong to allow so many people into a closed space, just as every one of those partyers was wrong to show up and squeeze in. Mayor Lori Lightfoot called them “foolish and reckless.” What were they thinking? They weren’t thinking, or caring about their own health or others. They failed a basic test of adult responsibility.
We’ve seen other senseless COVID-19 decisions make national news. In Florida in March, spring break revelers packed the beaches while much of the country already was hunkered down. “If I get corona, I get corona,” one of the young adult partyers declared.
We’re not pleased either with those who attended a court hearing Monday in Clay County challenging Pritzker’s stay-home order. According to Mark Maxwell, a CBS-affiliate television reporter who was in the courtroom, the largely no-mask-wearing crowd laughed as lawyers made arguments supporting the order and explaining the public’s health, and vulnerable lives, would be at risk if the order were lifted. The crowd also, according to Maxwell, mocked the few people who were wearing masks.
“Can confirm. The audience in the courtroom yesterday laughed on several occasions, including at one point when the Attorney General’s office argued people’s lives would be at stake if the stay-at-home order was nullified. People who wore masks were openly mocked,” Maxwell tweeted the day after the hearing.
So we have a Chicago party organizer unknowingly risking the public’s health, and we have observers at a court hearing openly defiant to it. Both are not good looks.
Nobody is pleased with this economic and social shutdown. But to break the back of the pandemic, it is necessary to protect progress made and to buy time to prepare.
Party organizer Wright said he wasn’t paying attention to the news and didn’t grasp the significance of the social distancing requirement. There are bigger issues to manage, like daily survival, he suggested.
That’s a perspective we’ve heard before. As part of a series of editorials, “Chicago Forward: Young Lives in the Balance,” we are exploring how young African Americans in Chicago feel disconnected from the broader world. To them, COVID-19 is a theoretical threat at best. Getting shot is a real threat.
Autry Phillips, executive director of Target Area Development Corp., told us he was frustrated by that narrow, alienated view of the world, and the related indifference to the coronavirus by Chicago’s younger generation. “They say, ‘I’m going to die anyway,'” Phillips said, “and they tell me, ‘I don’t even expect to reach 25.'”
Perspectives can change, however. Wright said that to atone for his actions, he wants to speak out and educate others in the community about COVID-19. “We’re going to make sure that he’s a voice,” said state Rep. La Shawn Ford, D-Chicago. That would be an excellent outcome.
Anyone who misjudges the extent of a public health crisis — whether young, oblivious adults or an older, defiant adults — can change behaviors. The numbers in Illinois suggest a leveling off of infections that are leading to death. We have a greater understanding of the groups most at risk, which include black communities. So let the house party fiasco become a moment to reflect, not condemn.
Editorials reflect the opinion of the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board, as determined by the members of the board, the editorial page editor and the publisher.
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