text_1: John Bel Edwards Says of the coronavirus threat, “there was not a single suggestion by anyone, a doctor, a scientist, a political figure, that we needed to cancel Mardi Gras.”
text_2: The Carnival season in New Orleans kicked off early January and ended Feb. 25. There were few coronavirus cases in the United States at the time, and health officials then said there was no community spread. The earliest indication we found from a federal agency saying that large events may need to be canceled came Feb. 26, after Mardi Gras celebrations.