Numbers keep ramping up here and everywhere with very few very isolated exceptions. 

Anecdotes are not complete science but here are a couple of facts:

My dad has been in a vets home before and through this pandemic. 100% by his own choice. Had lots of options pre-pandemic and since. He chooses to stay. 

If you heard about the vets home in MA, you’ll know that was a wake up call for all vet homes. 

My dad’s place was fine for quite some time. Very careful, but suddenly, before the vaccines, COVID got in and 37 died of it. Strict lockdown kept most of them safe going forward.

Post vaccine, all but one got vaccinated. No deaths since and they were visiting and traveling freely. (Don’t know about the one who chose not to vax).

Staff aren’t (weren’t?) required to get vaccinated and one of the hands-on staff recently tested positive. The whole place is under quarantine again. Lucky so far. 

That’s an anecdotal fact. Generally accepted science is not surprised. 

Another fact, as most folks here know, kids are very unlikely to die from the earlier strains of COVID; the new variants effects are to-be-determined. But we do know at least anecdotally that they are getting much sicker under delta when they do get sick and just like dancers in a contra line, kids in schools are great vectors, both amongst themselves and back home and across the community, in part BECAUSE they can’t be vaccinated. 

This discussion is not only or primarily about our own personal health, or about the well-being of our dancers and musicians; it is about protecting those everywhere that are most vulnerable, whether they dance or not, those in the wider community, including all of those who thought they were healthy but got very sick anyway, with too many dying. 

We will dance again, and it will be sooner if we all take every precaution now, including being a little uncomfortable and unhappy in the short-term for the good of everyone in the long term.  

Regardless of opinions about vaccines or chances of personal survival, it seems pretty clear we are currently headed in the wrong direction, and I’d like to think this dance community has the greater community in mind when thinking about and deciding what to do going forward. 

We will dance again, but let’s be sure we don’t put others at risk for the sake of our desires.