Halloween is just around the corner, and while one of the best parts of Halloween is trick-or-treating, it isn’t safe to go door-to-door this year. With the COVID-19 pandemic still raging across America, trick-or-treating is just too dangerous. The main threat to the American people right now is this virus, and it isn’t worth risking our own safety and that of everyone around us.
The world is a different place now than it was before the virus, and we are unable to participate in many activities that we would like to. Theme parks like Disneyland (in Anaheim) are still closed. According to the Washington Post, more than 100,000 small businesses have closed due to the pandemic as well. And even President Trump was forced to pause on in-person activities after contracting the coronavirus. COVID is a very real issue that many people seem to think they can just ignore. They say to themselves that even if they end up getting it, they will be fine. What they fail to realize is that even if they end up being fine, they are endangering the people around them. The virus can spread so easily and quickly from person to person, which is what makes it so deadly.
Trick-or-treating is one of the activities that we will be unable to participate in this year due to what trick-or-treating entails.
“Children should not go trick or treating this year because it often involves group activity, and the people distributing candy are typically adults, who could be at higher risk of contracting COVID,” said sophomore Wyatt Knapp. ” “If children would like to go trick or treating next year, they should attempt to stay safe this year.”
Passing out candy is one of the things that isn’t safe to do with COVID. Even with people wearing gloves, it is impossible to know who has touched the candy before it is dropped into your bag. You also have to break the six-foot barrier to get the candy, which even with wearing masks isn’t perfect. The other issue would be the crowded streets. If everybody were to go out on Halloween night and the streets became packed with people, everybody would be close together and it would be impossible to enforce mask-wearing leading to an ideal environment for the virus to spread to other people.
“They go from house to house and those people could have COVID without knowing it,” said Freshman Jeffrey Forster. “They also would eat the candy after unwrapping them without washing their hands so they could get it from that too.”
Santa Barbara has been doing very well overall, keeping COVID-19 at bay. We are currently in the red tier, with “substantial” cases. Therefore, we don’t have too many cases and that is due to making sure that everybody is wearing masks and not being in crowded spaces. As of October 13, according to the Santa Barbara Public Health Department website, we also have only 116 total deaths and 9,259 out of our 9,503 total COVID cases have resulted in recovery. This is good news. To throw away all of the hard work that our community has done by going out on Halloween night would be a real shame. It would be putting everybody’s safety in jeopardy and it is definitely not worth it.
