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@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
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On Monday, June 1, 2020, 8:14 PM, Winston, Alan P. via Organizers
<organizers@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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