JUNE MAY BE PRIDE MONTH, but this one hasn’t felt like any Pride month before it. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there have been no parades and many people in the LGBTQ+ community have turned to digital platforms to celebrate at home. It’s usually a time for LGBTQ+ people to come together and celebrate their culture, and missing out has been hard enough.
Andrew Noymer, associate professor of public health at the University of California, Irvine, tells Inverse that he could see parades happening if organizers take the right steps to ensure everyone’s safety. Not holding one, of course, would be safer, but there are ways to make them pretty safe. “I think parades can happen safely in times of Covid but not without some precautions,” Noymer says.
“What I’d like to see if parades are going to happen is that they would be in the daytime, because ultraviolet light helps, as does people masking and social-distancing.” As Noymer mentioned, ultraviolet light helps prevent COVID from being spread on surfaces and generally makes it less likely you’ll be exposed to infectious droplets. Noymer says people participating in the parade and people in the crowd should be masked and keep their distance, and it might even be good to temperature-check people participating in the parade. He says anyone who is experiencing any COVID symptoms should not attend.
Learn more:https://www.inverse.com/culture/how-lgbtq-culture-can-survive-covid-19