After attending what is likely the last electro dance music festival for a long time, five UC Santa Barbara students were placed in quarantine when a friend they met there — who'd just returned from Italy — tested positive for COVID-19. From the talk in Isla Vista, which turned out to be fairly accurate, the details unearthed form a snapshot of a disease cluster avoided.
The futuristic techno-sounds of Crssd — pronounced “Crossed” not "Cursed" — brought the group of mostly fourth-years to San Diego the weekend of March 7-8 at San Diego’s expansive Waterfront Park. The festival featured four dozen performers on three stages with international deejays headlining, like Gesaffelstein from France, Chris Lake of Scotland, and Carl Cox from the U.K. There, they met up with their friend, a San Diego State University student who’d been sent home by the school's study abroad program.
By March 13, SDSU had notified its community that a student tested positive and that he or she was in quarantine at home outside San Diego County. In Italy, the disease curve was just starting its steep arc upward.