Thanksgiving nightmare; COVID strikes family dinner, infects 22 members

There's a strict order against mass gatherings, especially during the holidays. While the world is preparing for Christmas, this year's celebrations won't be the same. Family gatherings will be replaced with Zoom calls, outings will be limited to lawns, and well, your circle will be limited, very limited in view of COVID-19 pandemic. But anyone who chooses to defy the orders, what's at stake is certainly not worth it.

A shocking revelation made by a Rhode Island doctor, one of her patients threw a large family dinner on the occasion of Thanksgiving and had an uninvited guest – COVID-19. Dr. Rebecca Karb, an emergency medicine physician and faculty member at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence, said how a patient of hers tested positive for COVID-19 and contact tracing revealed that 22 people who attended her Thanksgiving dinner developed symptoms, some severe.

"Last night, one of my (many) patients with COVID told me she had a large Thanksgiving dinner with family—22 people," in a post Tuesday on Twitter.

"The day after, one family member tested positive. Since then (according to my patient) *ALL* 22 people have developed symptoms, some severe. We are so tired," Karb wrote in the tweet. The tweet has since been deleted, but it went instantly viral after it received at least 79,900 likes and 18,600 retweets since it was first posted.

Coronavirus in US

Fearing instances like this would increase exponentially, Dr Anthony Fauci had warned against travelling during the holidays."If you and I travel and then go home and have family dinners, you're gonna see infections two to three weeks from there and then a week later you'll see more hospitalizations and then two weeks later you'll see more deaths," Fauci told Newsweek in a statement earlier.

Besides Dr Karb, several other doctors and nurses have taken to social media to show the world the seriousness of this pandemic. Health officials have urged people to avoid gatherings during the holiday season as the alternative could be dangerous.

Coronavirus doesn't seem to loosen its grip in the US. On Wednesday, there were 3,124 deaths caused due to COVID-19 in the US, which has been the highest single-day tally yet, John Hopkins University said. The highest peak until earlier this week was 2,603 on April 15 at the start of the pandemic, when people were clueless or lenient towards taking precautions. New cases are also averaging at over 209,000, which is a shocking number.