Not everyone has the privilege of working from home while they get their meal preps comfortably delivered to their doorstep.
Now unsurprisingly the pandemic is out of control, hospitals in many regions are overcapacity and the overworked essential healthcare workers mentioned are sending patients hundreds of miles away to the nearest available bed.
These gatherings are selfish and completely avoidable. If these multiple vaccine candidates are as promising as they are sounding, people should hold off a few more months on social events until this vaccine starts getting deployed to the highest risk crowd.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/11/14/9341852...
The virus has been around for almost a year now and people are still acting like we have no idea how it works or that uncontrolled spread can cause a disastrous collapse of healthcare systems.
They're perhaps not necessary in the strict sense of the word, but health authorities have consistently said that very important gatherings are okay as long as you try to do them safely.