Participants in the blood donation at MAD Club include those who once danced upon its floors and interior design elements, which have mostly remained intact. Footage of donors being tended to by nurses presents a surreal look, something like the strangest afterparty ever booked.
Switzerland is currently dealing with a significant new wave of COVID-19 cases, with statistics ballooning as of October. Approximately 359,000 cases and 5,566 deaths to the coronavirus have been identified at the time of this writing. This health climate has inspired this motivation for blood donation, and MAD Club’s 35-year run as an evening hotspot at least has a new community-first reason to reopen its doors.
One woman interviewed by Reuters during donation had this to say: “I think they absolutely need to continue to organize donation centers in places that have nothing to do with the sanitized white tents, which could be scary. The setting is great. Even the staff here, they are very happy, and we can see it.”
As new shutdowns arise in response to COVID-19 case increases in multiple municipalities throughout the US, repurposing business locations that have been otherwise fully shutdown to help their surrounding communities seems like a fantastic idea. Let’s hope this trend catches on.
