Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2021-05-02 17:27
Ursa wrote:
> The possible impact of wind instruments spreading airborne
> diseases such as tuberculosis, measles, mumps, and whooping
> cough back when they were not under control was something
> people either didn't care about, or thought was a risk worth
> taking. A band room in the 1950s was a veritable germ factory.
> And yet we survived.
>
This argument is to me something of a red herring. Tuberculosis doesn't in normal circumstances cause epidemics and it has been treatable since the discovery of penicillin. The MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine has been keeping those three under control since 1971 and as individual vaccines since the '60s. Those of us who are older than that (playing in band rooms in the 1950s) all got those viruses (generally as children) - but they are for the most part survivable. Nothing even approaching the death rate for COVID-19. Whooping cough also has been controlled by vaccination since the 1940s in the DPT shots we're supposed to get as infants and then get boosted every ten years. Common cold viruses probably also spread pretty easily even today in an unmasked band room - if you catch a cold you take medicine for symptom relief (or not) and go on with your life.
IMO, COVID-19 is every bit as extraordinary a threat as governments and doctors around the world have been making it, and extraordinary precautions are more necessary until enough of us have been vaccinated or therapeutics have been developed that are reliably effective at keeping victims from dying.
All of that said, I agree 100% with the others who find bell masks ludicrous as a way to prevent COVID spread. If spreading COVID is a concern, the activity is not safe. People have a right to decide on the level of risk they're willing to take, but pretending to minimize the risk with a bell mask on a clarinet is IMHO a delusion. As more of us are vaccinated and effective treatments become more widely available so that the risk of death is marginalized, music performance of all kinds will get back to normal.
Karl
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The Clarinet BBoard
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