Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival: Come for the bands, stay for the herpes? The music festival beloved by hipsters wrapped up two back-to-back weekends last Sunday, and there were a lot of highs and lows! Some great acts took the stage, like Lizzo, Ariana Grande, and Billie Eilish. The weather more or less cooperated (it's always going to be hot in the desert, but it wasn't terrible). There were plenty of Instagrammable backdrops and photo spots. Plus good food, plenty of booze, and of course the iconic Coachella ferris wheel. But the lows were ... low.
OK, so maybe there was just one low that we know of now, but it's a doozy, guys. Apparently, herpes cases had a massive spike after the music festival. Which means festival-goers were enjoying more than the $20 beers and amazing live music. It's like Vegas - what happens at Coachella doesn't always stay at Coachella!
HerpAlert is a real thing, and they're the ones who keyed us in to the herpes spike after Coachella. The service launched in 2017 and gives users a chance to have a qualified medical professional review the photos they submit to rule on if it's herpes or not herpes.
A representative for the company told TMZ that in the days after the first weekend of Coachella, HerpAlert saw 1,105 reported cases of the sexually transmitted infection from the area around Coachella, as well as San Diego, Orange, and Los Angeles counties. The service usually sees about a dozen cases a day. They saw almost 250 cases in the first two days after the first weekend of Coachella.
Now obviously, this doesn't mean that ALL those people have herpes. Only a doctor can diagnose you. And we certainly hope that if one of these people was about to get it on with someone in the middle of an outbreak and saw the sores that they put the breaks on their sexy time. But in any case, this is definitely a great time to remind people that safe sex is the best sex! It'd be a real shame to go to Coachella, have an amazing weekend, and come home with herpes.