Covid/Concerts

"Crowded Lollapalooza music festival could bring cascade of Covid cases, experts warn - Infectious disease experts worry that precautions were insufficient, and infections may have spread among the 100,000 daily audience": https://bit.ly/2WSvsrj

So this is how it appears to be playing out. Corporations are closing their doors to the unvaccinated, you can't work for Disney or Google if you haven't gotten the shot(s), but there's still a large vocal constituency that refuses to get jabbed. Now what?

Well, you can blame the Democrats for one. Always cowering in the face of Republican advances. The Democrats don't act, they react. And it's hard to win a battle if you're always playing defense. There was so much right wing blowback about vaccine passports that the Democrats shut up about them, worried about alienating those who would never vote for a Democrat anyway. And now there's no good way to establish whether someone is vaccinated or not.

Getting a fake vaccine card is much easier than getting a fake driver's license. Never mind that my card is on a flimsy piece of paper that looks like it was made at home to begin with. Never mind the fact that most people carry the image on their phone, and in pictures the fake can look real.

"Fake COVID-19 vaccination cards are 100% a thing at Lollapalooza in Chicago. You can get it with a single-day wristband for $50. I have confirmed that it does work.": https://bit.ly/3flYMNe

They may have turned away 600 unvaccinated people at the Lollapalooza gate, but expect that number to go way down once the word spreads, once people are prepared with their fake documents. Then what?

Well it looks like the concert industry is similar to the Olympic committee. Money is everything. So the games go on, without attendees, athletes get infected and have to drop out and NBC loses a bucket of cash on the TV rights. Is this a victory?

Never mind the Olympics were a thing before everybody knew the East Germans and Russians doped and it was all political anyway. And just try watching the damn games. Go on your Roku, good luck jumping through the hoops of authorization. NBC is so worried about getting ripped-off, people watching for free, that most people aren't even bothering. You always start free with technology, the key is to get enough people using the device or platform to spread the word and reach critical mass. But NBC doesn't realize it's competing with more than network, more than cable, even more than streaming. They're competing with the damn smartphone itself, which works much better than their clunky interface.

So, promoters can say they're requiring vaccination but it really doesn't mean anything. If an unvaccinated person wants to go, they'll find a way. But the promoter will say they've done their duty.

So now who do we sue?

The mayor who wants the revenue?

Never mind that infections show up in excess of a week past the date of the event and so many people don't call in their illness.

So what we've got here is a mess. Created by those supposedly in the know, on the right side of the discussion, but not much better than those spreading disinformation.

And it's one thing to require vaccination at left-leaning, middle class white Lollapalooza. But how about in the deep south at a country show?

Now speaking of country, Luke Bryan, a bland performer if there ever was one, brought Morgan Wallen on stage last week. To hosannas. Turns out the media is not as powerful as it thinks it is. And if you take matters into your own hands you can make a difference, change the course of action, win in the end. The media was canceling Wallen, the same media which believes Twitter reflects the headspace of the public. No, it's a self-selecting minority! Twitter's not worthless, but if you want to draw broad conclusions, beware.

As for DaBaby... It was musicians who canceled him first. Showing you don't need the stinking media to lead the way.

So, what is going to happen with shows?

It's too soon to know. It hangs in the balance. Yesterday Fauci said the spread of the Delta variant would get worse before it gets better. And even if you successfully held mass events in weeks past, we're in a different era today. Delta is gangbusters and very transmissible. But promoters are wary of shutting the business down.

Hell, if I ran the world they would. You've got to penalize the unvaccinated. And if the rest of us have to suffer, I'd rather suffer now than for years to come.

So it turns out nobody really runs this country. It's a collection of tiny fiefdoms that no one really has the temperature of. I'd say it's the wild west without guns, but now with all these permitless carry laws we've got those too.

So what's end game?

In Europe they're making all the car companies go electric, they're worried about the environment. In the U.S. the story is Elon Musk, not Tesla. These same people who won't get vaccinated won't buy electric cars until dealers stop selling them.

But we can change behavior.

I bought a 1974 BMW that required you to put on your seatbelt before you started the car, all 1974 models had this. People were plenty pissed, they got rid of that the following year, but that's truly what made everybody start wearing seatbelts. And now if you don't buckle up there's a ding so annoying you want to shoot your car, or yourself.

There are now laws on the books that you can't drive without being buckled in. If they didn't already exist there'd be tens of millions fighting the powers that be not to have them, because they want to have the freedom to die!

Biden could lead. But he's so busy trying to be bipartisan that he's lost our faith, mine anyway. The right is playing chess and the left is playing checkers. No, scratch that, no matter what the left wants to play the right won't play at all! Imagine knocking on your next door neighbor's door and finding out your buddy doesn't want to play baseball. Would you go home and sulk, beholden to his behavior or...would you just go to the damn field and play with those who were there? And, of course, once you start playing your next door neighbor, and everybody else, wants to get into the game.

You've got to have character. You've got to lead.

Corporations got the memo. No unvaxxed people in the building. When is the government gonna get the memo? Why isn't the justice department suing Florida and the rest of these states with live free and die statutes?

And yes, this is about life and death.

And people are stupid. And they seem to only learn from experience. We protect people on the highways, in national parks, how come we can't protect them against Covid-19?

Forget the arguments, you're already convinced.

But now we've got to leave the others behind and wait for them to wake up. Stop catering to them, you cannot win them over. But if they can't go to a show, can't get on a plane, can't go to a restaurant, can't do almost anything where the public congregates, they're gonna change their minds and get the jab, because it's just too damn lonely looking at the four walls of your house.

What we need is more leadership. A national vaccination database. Don't tell me about privacy when I can find anybody's address online instantly. Never mind social security. We need to close the doors to the unvaccinated and open them only to the vaccinated. We want the unvaxxed to be on the outside looking in. With it being THEIR CHOICE whether to participate.

Who's got the balls?

Doesn't seem like anybody other than private companies that don't let the public through their doors to begin with. Everybody's always waiting for someone else to make the decision, to lay down an edict.

But that's America today. No one wants to take a risk. But you can't advance if you don't.

I mean are we really going to be dealing with this Covid issue for years?

Right now it looks like it.

And that's completely untenable.


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