At Least One of the Lake of the Ozarks Partiers Tested Positive for Covid-19

To the shock and surprise of millions of nobody, there’s a really good chance that the nightmare stew pool party in Missouri last week, which thousands of us witnessed thanks to a viral video passed around on social media, served as a breeding ground for the novel coronavirus.

The Camden County Health Department announced on Friday that a Boone County resident who’d visited the Lake of the Ozarks over Memorial Day weekend has tested positive for covid-19, KY3 News reports.

According to Health Director Bee Dampier, the unnamed resident went to a bunch of local establishments last Saturday and Sunday, hopping from Backwater Jack’s—where the aforementioned nightmare stew pool party took place—to Shady Gators (and the adjacent Lazy Gators Pool) and then to a Buffalo Wild Wings before heading home. All the while, their illness was likely incubating, Dampier told KY3 News, and by Sunday they were showing symptoms.

Obviously, this is just one case, and it’s too soon to say whether a bunch of people who swam in the possibly covid-infested waters of Backwater Jack’s will get infected. But the possibility is very real, and it highlights just how dangerous it was for Missouri to reopen in the name of spurring the economy this soon into the pandemic.

Nearly 13,000 people have already tested positive for coronavirus in Missouri, per CNN, and 730 have died from covid-19 infection. It would be a shame for those numbers to spike because the state’s government couldn’t stop putting profits over people.