Was it not enough that Jeff and Lauren Sánchez Bezos invaded St. Barth’s over the holidays, dancing in resortwear? Was it not enough, when flights throughout the Caribbean were restricted during the U.S. raid on Venezuela, that environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio got stuck on a super-yacht and missed the Palm Springs International Film Awards?
It was not enough that one restaurant after another hustled caviar, Wagyu beef, and white truffles like pushers with a stash of recreational drugs. I heard one waiter recommend a Manhattan garnished with foie gras, which is both egregious and gross. Diplo was Diplo-ing; Jet Skiers were Jet Skiing. It was all ridiculous and bougie, the kind of nonsense regular visitors to the island have learned to avoid.
But a new kind of trouble bubbled up after New Year’s Eve, and it took the form of skin rashes and alleged chlamydia outbreaks. Call in the crisis-management team!
“I went to St. Barth’s and got a bacterial infection,” declared Bethenny Frankel, the reality-TV star and Skinnygirl Margarita mogul, on her social media. She videoed her face up close, showing a rash—“pus-y bumps,” she called it—from hairline to chin.
The culprit is unknown, but Frankel suggested that something unsavory might have been lurking in the unnamed “nice” hotel where she stayed. “People always talk about, How can you take a bath in a hotel?” she said. “How could you sleep on the sheets? Disgusting.”
Amy Wechsler, a New York dermatologist and co-founder of Spotless, an acne clinic, is shaking her head over much of this folderol. “I’ve never, in over 20 years of practice, seen anyone get a skin infection from a hotel room.” Sure, bedbugs can bite, she says, but they don’t cause a rash like the one on Frankel’s cheeks.
What’s more common is contact dermatitis from the hotel soap or the detergent used on the bed linens and towels, “because they’re all so highly fragranced,” says Dr. Wechsler. “I tell my patients to travel with their own skin-care products. It’s less common to travel with your own towel and pillowcase, and it’s a pain.”
She believes a more likely offender is the bacteria swirling around in a hot tub or the sea. Could a billionaire on a yacht provide you with an infection? “If you’re sharing anything—a straw, a glass, a towel—with someone who has impetigo, you just have to have an opening for the bacteria to crawl in.” That opening could be as small as a mosquito bite, and there are plenty of those in the tropics.
As for chlamydia, one TikToker who says he works on a yacht in St. Barth’s claimed that multiple guests contracted the sexually transmitted disease. As his follower count increased, so did the flamboyance of his accusations. “Almost all of the billionaires have been infected with chlamydia. Please do not hook up with these billionaires.” Duly noted.
Théophile Michel, a pharmacist at Island Pharmacie on St. Barth’s, told me he saw no uptick over the holidays in requests for the antibiotics that treat S.T.I.’s. “I sold less this year than one year ago,” he said. “There are a lot of young people who visit and have dangerous behavior with no protection, but I’ve only had maybe one in a month out of 400 people visiting the pharmacy.”
Laugh if you will at the vacationers and their germs, but there’s no need to cancel your travel plans. “This wouldn’t keep me from going to St. Barth’s,” says Dr. Wechsler. But would it keep her from cozying up to a billionaire? “It depends on the billionaire.”
The gleeful comments on Frankel’s Instagram leaned heavily on Schadenfreude. Wrote one, “This is when I’m happy to be broke.” Bon voyage!
Linda Wells is the Editor at AIR MAIL LOOK
