CDC’s Carnival Advisory
Library Shoebox Float - 2010
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have a Carnival Advisory linked from their main webpage at the moment.
A couple of quick points about the page:
New Orleans is the 5th listed city for “most popular Carnival celebrations” after Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Nice, France; Venice, Italy; and Quebec, Canada. I’ll give them Rio & Venice, but really Nice & Quebec have more popular celebrations than we do?
“Most people participate in Carnival and Mardi Gras to have fun, but these festivities are also associated with certain health risks, primarily from crime, unsafe food, excessive drinking, risky sex, and heat-related illness.” I don’t think this year we’ll have any heat related illness but you never know with our crazy weather.
And, of course, the advisory is written for travelers, not carnival natives/locals who know how to prepare and what to expect.
Nice list, but I can’t believe that the CDC didn’t include a warning about the choking hazard posed by tiny plastic babies hidden in festive pastry. Please, tourists, be careful of the king cake babies.