Well, yesterdays big announcement from the “it is the governments prerogative to make a political decision”(SAGE) government, will there/won’t there be any tents fluttering and flags flying before next year?
I have tickets for Wickham, bought aeons ago, and, so far, it seems almost the only one not to have already postponed. It runs over the first w/e in August. Does a marquee count as outdoors or will they just put the stages outside without? All seating (bring your own)? Masks? It’s a largely folk and heritage act line-up so little overt need for a mosh-pit.
Announcement comes on 1/7/20.
Bet the artists are gagging for it,
I am, if the wife lets me.
Sittin’ and a’waitin’…….. Festivals 2020
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Moseley Folk still seems to be okay – with Waterboys, Richard Hawley and Stephen Duffy on the line up it’s not a bad 3 days
Moseley’s Covid-19 statement refers to the festival being 24 weeks away, which dates the statement to mid-March. I fear you are both being optimistic; I am already nervous about next year’s festivals, particularly those with a large element of dance.
There’s always been a dance element to your music @thecheshirecat
Waterboys website still says it is going ahead. We will have to wait and see.
I wonder about the economics of it all. With a severely curtailed (if not abandoned) summer festival season, is it worth trying to tour this summer? If you are a folky with just a guitar (or Billy Bragg), it will be fine. But the Waterboys will need rehearsals, kit, crew…. fine if you playing say a dozen gigs, but if it worth it if that is down to 2? Do we then get a domino effect where headliners pull out, which cancels one of the few festivals… and it ripples outwards?
Not a chance I’ll be going anywhere near a festival this year. Even outdoors, singing (band and crowd) is a highly effective way of spreading virus – all those big breaths in and out.
Admittedly indoors but in a an arena the size of a basketball court in Washington DC 60 members of a choir met for rehearsals. They brought their own music and socially distanced. 50 caught Covid and two died. Think I’ll stay at home thank you very much…
The risks of infection in this country are roughly 0.06 percent If everyone decides to avoid social events then we might as well shut down the World.
There is a risk in pretty much everything we do. We have to learn to live with this virus now because it isnt going away and we are not going to get a vaccine any time soon. The government has done a good job in putting the fear of God into everyone and now they are lifting restrictions it seems many people remain scared.
Lifting restrictions is not lifting social distancing – we can do this and get the economy moving. Now is not the time for the faint hearted.
I think no concerts with more than 50 or 100 people until next year. Not just the direct virus risk,but also travel restrictions. They are just hanging on to people’s money as long as they can.
500 in France but masks and socially distanced (at least for now). Think I’ll stay at home, thank you very much..
Oh 500? That’s getting close to a crowd. My dream is that exactly a year from now I am on my way to Wilco’s Solid Sound festival in Massachusetts. A small festival, but I think around 10,000 attendees.
Have to say I am keeping an open mind. My personal view (based on clinical perception/observations/up to date clinical references & reports) has altered. I am a little sceptical that any or many of the steps taken have had that much overall effect. Yes, distancing etc slowed the rate when the virus was at its most virulent, enabling the NHS not to get swamped by it all hitting at once. But it has followed similar trajectories across most countries whether they locked down well, inexpertly like the UK or virtually not at all, like Sweden. The trick missed was the true realisation of the folk actually at greatest risk. Where care homes were locked good and early enough, not here, not Sweden, it was predominantly those deaths that soared as against the general population. That is, unless you have certain linked conditions: Afro-Caribbean, diabetes or hypertension, the second 2 linked to the medication taken. We should protect them proportionately more, and there is now a new algorithm to better predict risk. Of course a second wave will come, but the preparation will be better and management more focussed. As for Boris and Co, lumpen arseholes that they are, I think they may get lucky, the ebb and flow of the virus enough for their appliance of nonsense to add little( but some, inevitably) to the cull.
Having said, another odd and still unexplained is how similar seeming populations have been affected: are the folk of Lombardy and of Bavaria so different? Or Lombardy and is? It seems so.
Agree with that @retropath2 and I am not a doctor.
It was over egged and we focussed in the wrong places. If care homes were handled properly, if everyone with the virus and their families were quarantined then the death rate would have been lower. All European countries have followed the same trajectory. Asian countries however seemed to have a shorter trajectory and got back to normal more quickly. I have heard a report from a scientific analysis done in Iceland that there were actually 5 different strains of the virus which may explain different death rates in different countries
I heard on the radio today that the far east countries already had infection tracing in place because of their exposure to SARS, hence their better response.
Not all European countries the same. Off the top of my head, Germany, Denmark, Norway, and Finland fared less badly than others. I believe this was down to prompt, early action in the form of lockdowns and closed borders. Like New Zealand. Tough measures, the critical thing being doing lockdown early and forcefully. This meant less deaths and a loosening of restrictions sooner. Over quickly meaning economy less damaged.
Pre-lockdown, infections in the UK were doubling every 3-4 days, i.e. roughly quadrupling every week. UK locked down a week later by comparison. Which would explain the proportionally – roughly 4 times – higher death toll. Not difficult to see why.
How on earth did 10 members of Pakistan’s cricket squad get infected? Were they sharing boxes?
https://www.bbc.com/sport/cricket/53149897
It seems that fleeting contact from infected people or surfaces has a low chance of spreading it. Being next to somebody infected at a concert or in a pub for hours is going to be a much higher risk.
At the festival I mentioned above (Solid Sound) you can probably practice a reasonable form of social distancing depending on how you want to spend the weekend and how close to the front you want to get. There is plenty going on on multiple stages so you could choose the less populated ones. For headliners Wilco you can choose to take a lawn chair and be seated at least 1 metre from anybody who is not in your circle of family or friends. You won’t get the best view, but you will be able to hear them just fine.
Also check how it is now spiralling in the US in states where they are not really practising lockdown too enthusiastically.
Brave of you to admit your personal stance has changed, retro, especially here on this internet place! Are you sure you don’t just want to ignore all the evidence and double down on your original view? 🙂
I too agree the precautions should have been targeted more intelligently. I always suspected a total lockdown was a blunt instrument – perhaps useful in the short term, but the risk of resting on our laurels and missing the real picture was always a big risk.
Re the pakistani squad, infected yes, as exposed, but ill? It seems not.
how many of us here have had unwitting exposure, asymptomatic infection and knew nothing. bring on the bloody antibody tests. (And ignore the half-cocked conspiracy peddlers on youtube around high false negatives and the difference between immunological responses and so-called myeloid responses to the virus. It ain’t scientific until it’s science.)
Having differed from @steveT at the beginning of this, I think the scientific advice offered to and taken late, with a pinch of salt, by the government was correct for then. And I stood staunch with it. Such modelling as was then feasible from SARS, MERS etc, plus the emerging evidence and anecdata from China, then the experience of Italy meant we had to embrace the possibility we would need more beds and ventilators than we had, need all the Nightingale units, all the volunteers. Thank Pan we didn’t. There is so much more now known. Swabbing is easily accessible, with spit testing waiting to take over. Antibody tests are being unrolled to, first, hospitals and to random individual by post, soon for routine availability. Numerous vaccines are at unthinkable stages of development, given the time, with trials ongoing and recruiting: many of my younger colleagues are signing up and taking part in the Oxford trial, which seems promising. There is an understanding of risk strategising: to get the holy grail of a herd immunity, it is maybe a question of vaccinating the young and healthy, suggestions emerging it takes less well on older less robust immune systems.
These are exciting times.
I have booked us a first trip away from home, a long w/e in Norfolk in an air’b’n’b, and we won’t even be bothered if we can’t register in the pub for a drink of a bite. Dogs on the beach and al fresco in a garden that isn’t our own is all we seek. Plus I would like to get to even a slimmed down Wickham. Mike Scott seems to think, like Moseley, it is still on. I go alone in my one man tent and barely interact, even when I know folk (eh, Steve!). Bring it on.
And seriously, you are not worried about all that singing and shouting going on? I do hope your expert views are correct but as someone over seventy I won’t be going near any crowds , however small, in the near to mid future. We are beginning to socialise, drinks on the terrace with a few friends, lunch on the quayside , going for al fresco wine dinner in a meteor crater on Friday (!) etc but softly does it for us old fogies.
“anecdata” – what a fantastic word! Looked it up (cos I thought maybe you’d just coined it) and it opened up a fascinating bunny hole…
I won’t be singing and won’t be in a throng of folk who might. And I will, uncharacteristically, lurk on the fringes rather than brave the front line. All the singers: Mike Scott, Van etc will be wearing masks, I am assured, anyway.
One of the technical groups I belong to has been speculating about how musicians will need to bring their own mics and crew will need to be diligent in handling gear. There’s loads of stuff to consider, especially when crew are used to quick turn arounds.
Wipe them down, wash your hands. They should have been doing this anyway. A tiny record store here that often has musicians placing at has introduced a perspex screen between the stage area and the rest of the store. He hasn’t opened up fully yet though.
I think the pop shields are the biggest concern.
We have rellies in Lille, northern France. Offspring the Elder was going with cousins to a festival there next July. But this year’s tickets have been rolled over to next, so not many left. Yesterday, Eurostar trains to Lille have been cancelled from now until end of 2021.
Maybe go in 2022, then? When you’re 17, the year after next is, like, forever.
Interestingly, the Black Lives Matter march in Ottawa a couple of weeks ago seems to have produced no additional cases as far as they can ascertain.
Indeed, Dai, mindful I too had to ‘educate’ you to the reality as it seemed at the start…… I think timing is all and had BLM been in March it would have been different. Likewise here and the earlier w/e around VE Day here. I predicted carnage. Where is it and how not. Big dunno. Still scared but proportionately less so. Still a 2 metre man and a mask and not going to Bournemouth but, we’ll see. The much vaunted second wave probably will come but not until this one has finished.
Not sure you “educated” me. I think you accused me of taking it too lightly, which I never did. Some said the death numbers predicted for the UK were way too high, but some of them turned out to be way too low.
Surely a second wave cannot come until a first one is finished. This article suggests it may not be too bad if lessons have properly learned and as you suggest there is more understanding of the virus and how it is transmitted.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/coronavirus-canada-second-wave-1.5626124
I’ve never got the festival thing at all. Something like Glastonbury would be my idea of hell. It’s bad enough on TV. BTW, has anyone told the BBC that it’s not happening this year? Lauren Laverne’s half hour talking about fields with Emily Eavis this morning was excruciating.
My festival rule is NO CAMPING. I have been to many but only camped at one. I got pretty much no sleep that time, was drifting off at one point, but was awakened by someone throwing up just outside the tent, lovely.
Now, as a Crohn’s disease and sleep apnea sufferer with an increasingly weak bladder camping is simply not an option.
Moseley, due September 20, now postponed 12/12…….
Wickham, a month before, likely thus doomed…….
Boo.
You could always go the beach instead.
“By the time we got to Bournemouth
We were half a million strong…”
Update today, and it looks a half decent 50:50 chance, with descriptions of 95 page documents being reviewed by the local council, no marquees, all stage(s) outside and the direction of the stage to audience turned about to allow tiered viewing. Talk of people pods for any allowable groupings, uncertain what that means, but suggesting maybe fixed “pitches” with room for rugs and seats and coolboxes. (First come first served, likes towels on the loungers, or allocated for the whole time??)
Up to the council and the british weather now…….
Final verdict will be wednesday, it seems.
Boo. 2021.
Or possibly yay?
It would have had the possibility of being an interesting experience.
Hey ho, antibody test this morning anyway.