Surfing is a disease.
And you thought The Ultimate Surfer was a blight on our heretofore good name. The hyper-vigilant mainstream media is reporting that the just-wrapped Boardmasters Festival, in Cornwall, England, was not just a fun surf contest slash music live music extravaganza but rather a vicious “super-spreader” event spewing nearly 5000 cases of Covid-19 through the rest of the country.
The BBC reports:
About 50,000 people attended the festival in and around Newquay, which now has the three neighbourhoods with the highest infection rates in England.
Cornwall’s public health team said: “We won’t know the complete picture for another few days.”
About 800 of those positive cases are people who live in Cornwall.
The figure comes after the Swansea Bay health board in Wales said on Friday about 50 cases there had been linked to the festival.
Ruth Goldstein, deputy director of public health for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, said: “At the moment, there are currently about 4,700 which could be linked to Boardmasters.
“These are people who have noted when they have had a PCR test, they have been associated to Boardmasters. We don’t know whether they have been camping, or to events on the beach, or to parties in the town put on by Boardmasters. Of those people, three-quarters of them are aged between 16 and 21, which is exactly the profile of the people who we know attend the festival.”
Rotten 16 to 21 year olds. Turn your back for one minute and there they are hosting surf competitions and listening to live music.
The last we heard from the Boardmasters, Korean automotive giant Kia was creating “every surfer’s dream machine” for the event.
Back to The Ultimate Surfer, though. What was the expression on World Surf League CEO Erik Logan’s face when he was watching last night?
Can you draw it in the comments?
Thank you.