YOUNG/DUMB

COVID Cases Spiked in Provo, Utah, After Underground Mormon Dances

Two defiant 20-somethings may have set back the city’s anti-pandemic efforts.

In the first week of August, a COVID-19 surge in Provo, Utah, was subsiding—but almost six weeks later, it’s roared back, with the county that encompasses it recording more than 500 new cases in a single day. The Salt Lake Tribune says the spike follows dance parties for local college students organized by a defiant duo of young Mormon entrepreneurs. Their promotion company, Young/Dumb, held underground bashes days before outbreaks at Brigham Young University and Utah Valley University. One of the owners, Kwaku El, even mocked people following the COVID-19 rules on social media. “Woke twitter—you lose. and you always will,” El wrote, according to the Tribune. “Distancing until we have a vaccine, our country will not repair itself. Vaccines take years. We cannot take years of this economic destruction.”