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We played to at least 3/4-full mostly-unmasked indoor crowds in both Missouri appearances. My bass player and I got the Moderna vaccine and were fully vaccinated by the second week in April.
My drummer, much younger than we two, got the Pfizer shots much later. He had only gotten his second Pfizer shot by the week before we went on the road, so he was not fully vaccinated yet.
When we got home, all of us were tested within the window of infection-- 3 to 7 days since we played Springfield (in fact, 5 days for me)-- and we all tested negative, after having gone into situations of rampant Covid increase. We are going to get tested any time we go out of Mississippi, and we stay at home as much as possible while we are here.
And I am pretty sure that in 2022, we will continue to be mostly unemployed international professional touring musicians because of the attrition of places to entertain due to the Covid, and the understandable unease of owners about drawing crowds.
But the most important, and most remediable, factor will be the selfish wrong-headedness of the estimated 40% of Americans who are reluctant or resistant to take a vaccine-- and who are breeding vaccine resistance into their children-- and who are keeping the pandemic going.
The cultural effects of the Covid pandemic do not get the news space that, for instance, Covid's effect on education does, education being a central political area of interest. But as an international cultural worker, I can tell you that my friends across Europe report that those effects are profound.
Bill Homans, aka Watermelon Slim
(Article changed on Aug 24, 2021 at 8:37 PM EDT)
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