It’s about time. As musicians, clubs and all the derivative sub-industries of music are getting crushed needlessly by Covid restrictions, it seems we have finally found an ally. (Per the Guardian): The 74-year-old Northern Irish singer launched a campaign to ‘save live music’ on his website, saying socially distanced gigs were not economically viable. “I call on my fellow singers, musicians, writers, producers, promoters and others in the industry to fight with me on this. Come forward, stand up, fight the pseudo-science and speak up.” We couldn’t agree more.

As musicians today, we are in desperate times. We are all but forgotten in the world of lock downs, social distancing and masks. Our industry has been decimated like no other and it’s a tragedy that is only going to get worse if we don’t hit full stop and reverse course. Frankly, we need more based musicians like Van Morrison (whether you like his music or not) to join the chorus and bring our industry back to a working situation. But how do we get there? To start with, let’s at least be honest with ourselves, our friends, families and colleagues and look at this situation objectively.

The “science” behind the entirety of the coronavirus restrictions is highly questionable at best and arbitrary, unprovable and erroneous at worst. The initial studies (i.e. Imperial Study, UK), which paved the way for the ubiquitous “flatten the curve” mantra, was off by 25x. The study’s own author disavowed it early on (because it was so grossly incorrect) and various coders from all over the world tore apart the data program as being inept and invalid. Yet these studies were instrumental in promoting the covid fear and used to generate the hyperbolic conditionalities that never came to pass. We don’t have to look at the predictions; we have ACTUAL data. That data showed a “line” that never even approached the social distancing, “flattened” curve. For example, here in CO, we were shown a graph that implicated a capacity level for hospitals, even with social distancing. Our actual numbers? We peaked at ~1200 “covid” cases in a hospital system with 13,000 available beds. In the words of John Bender (Breakfast Club): “Not even close, bud.”

So what happened next? They moved the goal posts. Business owners, whom many were given NO warning or advance notice with regard to the new covid restrictions had originally signed up for 8-10 weeks of lock down restrictions. For many businesses (music venues most certainly) we are now going on almost 8 months of closures, restrictions or both. Our venue capacities here in CO are limited to 25%, even though the current numbers aren’t anywhere near the peak numbers in April. It is no longer about flattening a curve is it? Deaths and hospitalizations have decreased dramatically, so now we are focusing solely on “cases.” Why do we care if someone is positive if they are experiencing nothing more than cold symptoms? It has turned into an excuse to imply authoritarian power and showcase the destructive ability of our own government. Further, it is turning into a surveillance mandate that is frightening to think about.

How often have the various institutions of medicine flip-flopped with regard to the “science” in the past 8 months? Most famously, when covid was first getting started we were told masks don’t work. Today, even though a virus particle is many orders of magnitude smaller than the holes in almost every mask worn today, we are mandated to wear these by decree, without question, even though the science has proven that masks are negligible when it comes to preventing transmission of viruses. For those who are still uninformed with regard to mask use, we did a two-part write up that examines the pseudoscience behind masks: “Are We Masking The Problem.”

The asymptomatic transmission of covid has turned out to be a myth, even called out by the WHO. They recently admitted that the contact tracing bears this out–they see no evidence of asymptomatic transmission. This is because asymptomatic transmission is a myth. Are you tired of hearing about typhoid Mary already? Is she really the only person in history that we can use as support to this myth? Do we not have any hard evidence in the last 100 years other than what is likely an overblown story? Apparently not. Yet, this is the reason our leaders use to mandate masks for even healthy people. Pro-tip: if you are asymptomatic, you are not sick; you do not have enough contagion in PPM to transmit to anyone, likely even if you drooled your own slobber into their mouth.

An interesting tidbit I learned in investigating the studies (for example on whether masks work or not) is that there are basically two kinds of studies being done: 1) RCT (randomly controlled trials) and 2) Lab experiments. In the former, groups are tested with and without masks for actual transmission that leads to sickness within a certain time period and control group. The latter does studies in a lab with cool equipment that essentially estimates what transmission could be like. Guess what? In all the pro-mask studies, there is no testing for ACTUAL TRANSMISSION, person to person. There are NO RCT’s to be found; lab scientists are just playing with fancy equipment (like nebulizers) and using their experiments to forecast what transmission COULD be like. Conversely, all the science that proves that masks are negligible has been studied from actual RCT’s on transmission. RCT’s are a reality; anything else points to what should be called “conditionality”–it doesn’t exist outside the theoretical and is often sensationalized and hyperbolic.

How about the 6 foot social distance metric? Where are the RCT’s behind that arbitrary distance? Good luck finding any “science” there. Or what about the disease being airborne? People–if the disease is airborne your mask is not going to save you because that aerosolized pathogen is going right into your eyeballs. Literally everyone on earth would be infected by now. It’s really an insane claim to make, which is why the CDC walked it back. What about the science behind letting you walk all around a grocery store with a couple hundred people, but forbids you to workout in a gym in a similarly sized building? For us musicians, show us the science that supports horn players killing people with covid, as if the horn or wind instrument is some sort of incubator and/or covid laser spreader. In fact, show me ANY science in the last 8 months that has valid support and has not been walked back or contradicted by our various (bought and paid for) institutions.

Here’s another giant consideration: Shouldn’t we be concerned with getting accurate data on the number of covid fatalities if we are basing all these existing and future restrictions on it? We are killing businesses right and left, yet our fatality data is sketchy at best. Why does the CDC advocate for ASSUMING a death is covid? Why are hospitals financially incentivized for covid deaths? Why are hospitals incentivized for using ventilators? Why are we labeling people who died from cancer, heart attack, stroke, drug overdose and car crashes as covid deaths? Why has almost every state been caught with their pants down with what looks to be fraudulently reported covid fatalites? Here in CO, we had a guy who died of liver toxicity (according to the coroner) who after some re-working by our state health dept, somehow became a covid fatality. It seems a little suspect that the CDC would recently split out deaths FROM covid at 7% (of total fatalities) while the rest of everyone else seemed to only die WITH covid, pointing to some other malady as the root cause.

Yet, as Van Morrison picks up the torch of reason, it seems even Van Morrison’s fans are drinking the fear cool aid. “This is madness. The science is real,” said one. “We love you, Van, but calling pandemic management protocols ‘pseudo-science’ is probably the dumbest and certainly the most dangerous idea you’ve ever put your name to,” wrote another. (Per the Guardian): Until now, the most prominent Irish musician to challenge coronavirus rules was Jim Corr of the Corrs. He joined hundreds of people in a protest against lockdowns and masks in Dublin last Saturday. He became engaged in a social media spat with the Irish singing duo Jedward after they mocked him on Twitter as a “covidiot”. So what’s the deal here?

We have currently what looks to be two groups of people. The first group is completely polarized politically, so any mention of covid being sensationalized makes you an orangemanbad supporter by default. This group wears their masks because they are conditioned by their televisions and some are really afraid, even though the data doesn’t support their fear. This group seemingly has no ability to think for themselves, or even look at anything objectively; they are simply useful idiots. They parrot the media talking points and question nothing, even though their communities and way of life are being plundered right in front of their eyes. If you beg to differ or even try to engage these folks in debate, they shame you for having an individual opinion and hide behind the most inane of mantras available in 2020: “Science is real.”

The second group actually understands “science” beyond it “being real.” This is likely a more educated bunch, who have taken advanced sciences and maths in school. They understand the methodology between a lab guess and a randomly controlled trial. They look at data objectively, often referring to their own internal data sets (i.e. most of us know of NO ONE who has died from covid, or even hospitalized). The second group understands that covid is a disease most affecting the elderly and persons with underlying comorbidities, whom we could easily sequester away from society rather than lock everyone down. (Keep in mind that about 45% of covid deaths exist from nursing homes alone). More importantly, the second group sees the dishonesty of the media transparently. They know better than to trust the purple tie wearing nincompoop on their local news or cable station. This group understands that underneath it all, there is a nefarious agenda being pushed to track, trace and control our population, ultimately excluding future freedoms via “health mandates.”

In conclusion, regardless of your level of fear, we know one thing for certain: LOCK DOWNS DO NOT WORK. Nor are they effective at all, unless you measure by the amount of economic destruction. It is most certainly a strategy that cannot be employed more than once, which makes it ridiculous to even try in the first place. As musicians, we are the group most negatively affected by these restrictions and it is literally killing us. We have lost our incomes, our employment, our bands, our venues and potentially our careers. Please think about how important music is to your life and help us stop the madness! A big thanks goes out to all the musicians with balls out there (vis a vis Van Morrison) who are standing up for what is right, moral and ethical. Help us keep live music alive!