We reached out to one of the first members of the UW-Madison community to contract coronavirus: Chad McBrad for a view into how college students are both dealing with COVID-19 and working to prevent its spread throughout their community.
We first wanted to get a sense of just how seriously students were taking the recent enforcement of social distancing and congregating in small groups. Chad explained that while he saw the necessity for such orders, “[he] had to see the boys," and that all in all, “it was totally worth it.” This led us to believe that he may not have been taking the orders as seriously as officials have deemed necessary
When we expanded on our question, asking Chad from the Sigma Chicken Pot Pie fraternity how he could have contracted such a contagious disease, he hypothesized that it could have been from a fraternity party he hosted while the lockdown was in order. “There were so many “sick” people there!” he answered laughing at his own joke as he started having a coughing fit. He also theorized that the virus could have been from the Corona beer that they were drinking. “I didn’t find my beach, but I did find a hospital bed.”
His girlfriend Beth from the Kappa Kappa Gucci sorority seemed particularly concerned about his wellbeing, expressing her concerns that Chad “might not be able to attend formal with [her] next Fall if he dies." To our surprise, Chad’s other girlfriend from the Alpha Flea sorority, Tricia, declined to comment, saying that she was currently in Italy as an “act of self-care during this stressful time.”
The doctors seemed optimistic about his ability to bounce back from the virus but expressed their concerns that his 4-year-old juul addiction had taken a toll on Chad’s ability to fight Corona. Meanwhile, Chad was “straight up fiending for a rip of a juul or a fat dart right now” in his isolated hospital bed.
When we asked him why he refused to follow the guidelines of stay-at- home, he explained that “[his] daddy said coronavirus was all a hoax anyway.” He also expressed that he “felt good” about making a full recovery from COVID, and that he couldn’t wait to get back into “darty szn.”
