2 Jun
2020
2 Jun
'20
6:46 a.m.
Kazoo, September - December. Likely the peak of the surge. Wouldn't
dream of it.
Mac Sloan
Thursday Night Dance, Scout House, Concord MA
On 6/1/20 22:50, Ron Blechner via Organizers wrote:
> The better question is whether we can, in any state, safely hold events
> over 20 people, let alone 50 or 100, until we have a vaccine.
>
> Regretfully,
> Ron Blechner
>
> On Mon, Jun 1, 2020, 9:24 PM Laur via Organizers
> <organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net
> <mailto:organizers@lists.sharedweight.net>> wrote:
>
> We are booking local callers and bands for Sept-Dec in Kalamazoo MI.
> We stipulate this is dependent on COVID and community spread risk.
>
> Michigan has just lifted its Stay at Home executive order. It is
> hoped we will be on contained status by July 4.
>
> We try to stay optimistic. Our concern is community attitude. If the
> community isn’t ready to dance in September we will pause until
> October. At that time hold a dance watch attendance and move forward
> from there.
>
> We hold 2 contra dances a month. One Sunday “just fun” dance and one
> English dance per month.
>
> We have not made a decision in Grand Rapids and Lansing
>
> Laurie Pietravalle
> West MI
> Country Dancing in Kalamazoo
> Grand River Folk Arts
> Looking Glass Music and Arts Association
>
>
> Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone
> <https://overview.mail.yahoo.com/?.src=iOS>
>
> On Monday, June 1, 2020, 8:14 PM, Winston, Alan P. via Organizers
> <organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net
> <mailto:organizers@lists.sharedweight.net>> wrote:
>
> Seth asked:
>
> I’m curious to hear if you are starting to book callers for your
> fall and winter dances… Are you booking in hopes that COVID-19
> has somehow been resolved? Are you waiting longer?
>
> It seems to me that it is going to be a while before we can
> safely have contra dances, given the close proximity to every
> one and the heavy breathing. Do we have to wait for a vaccine?
>
>
> And I reply:
>
> I'm a caller, a series programmer, and chair of our local SF Bay
> Area CDS affiliate, which ordinarily runs 14 series (contra,
> English, teen, etc).
>
> Organization-wide, we instructed all series programmers not to
> book July-September and canceled any pre-existing bookings
> (offering to pay the staff the guarantees they would have gotten
> if the event happened). We've been working on grants and
> fee-for-service projects to get our freelance musicians some
> income and plan to keep that up, and online events with tip jars
> (waltz concerts, tune lessons) to keep furthering our mission
> and to give the musicians support.
>
> We haven't made a formal statement about the Oct-Dec quarter,
> and we haven't yet canceled our English dance weekend scheduled
> for November, but I'm pretty sure we'll have to, and I'm pretty
sre
>
> Our position in the Bay Area is that we have a *lot* of local
> talent, both callers and musicians. If a contra dance started
> looking like a good idea to us as organizers and to the halls we
> use, we think we could pull a pretty good one together on very
> little notice. It's way better for morale, I think, to be ready
> to put one together if its possible than to fill a calendar full
> of things we'll most likely have to cancel, and to bend our
> efforts towards things we *can* do - including online English
> and contra events.
>
> I am myself immunodeficient, diabetic, and 60, so I'm likely to
> get COVID-19 if exposed and with a co-morbidity, wouldn't count
> on doing well with it, so I'm pretty cautious. (Not "never go
> outside and have all the groceries delivered" cautious, but
> "avoid any situation where I can't maintain social distancing
> and wear a mask indoors" cautious.) Contra ticks all the boxes
> for a hazardous activity: usually indoors and usually without
> HEPA-filtered fresh air, exertion requiring heavy breathing,
> difficult to do masked, can't maintain social distance, keep
> touching sweaty people, etc.
>
> What it would take for me to go safely to a contradance is
> knowing that I can't get it (effective, widely distributed
> vaccine, or that I've had it and am immune [requires definitive
> answer on how much immunity antibodies provide and for how long,
> effective testing with no false negatives], or knowing that
> nobody else in the room has it and is shedding virus [and only 9
> out of 10 people who have it spike a fever, so temperature
> sensors are not good enough]; we need quick / reliable / cheap
> tests that can identify asymptomatic virus spreaders and if
> they're not 100% reliable produce false positives rather than
> false negatives, or finally that if I do get it there'll be a
> reliable and effective treatment available.
>
> Society as a whole can get by without a vaccine or a treatment
> if there's frequent testing, quarantine of positives, contact
> tracing, repeat Absent that we social distancing and caution
> can reduce the spread, but there's no will in the Federal
> executive to make that happen because they're focused on
> reopening the economy. In a patchwork environment where some
> states are acting responsibly and some aren't and it's very hard
> to close state borders, efforts of responsible states will be
> undermined. Further, since states can't print their own money, a
> lot of Federal support is needed for them to behave responsibly,
> and the Senate is not altogether on board with that.
>
> Very long way of saying: Doesn't necessarily need to be a
> vaccine, but there needs to be *something* among the four paths
> of "able to test at the door and refuse admission to virus
> shedders", "minimize the severity of the illness with cheap,
> effective treatment or even cheaper, effective prophylaxis with
> no or tolerable side effects", "effective, available vaccine
> with tolerable side effects", and "extinguish virus by
> identifying and quarantining carriers and doing robust
> trace-and-test". Currently not one of those is available to us
> and there's no reason to believe they will be available in 2020
> - but a lot of people are working on vaccine / treatment /
> prophylaxis / testing, so maybe there'll be something in the
> foreseeable future.
>
> I don't know about your community, but ours skews older (despite
> the valued presence of some younger people, some of them also
> immunocompromised) and has associated comorbidities, so I'm
> included to view our holding dances I wouldn't feel safe going
> to as irresponsible, and even a deal like "only let people in
> who sign a waiver saying that if they get sick they won't sue
> us" risks not only affecting our dancers but anyone they come in
> contact with, so is not an acceptable option for me.
>
> I hate it, but that's how I see it.
>
> -- Alan
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