Ok, I guess I need to apologize for judging others so harshly. I decided last month to get back into karaoke. I quit the day job and put out word that I was available for booking. That was before the sharp upturn in numbers of new COVID cases, but I am still pushing thru.
Of the 5 bars I worked weekly at the beginning of last year, I won’t be returning to any. One has decided not to have karaoke right now. I have lost interest in going back to one of them completely. The other 3 hired new karaoke hosts while I was unavailable, and I respect their decision not to change things up now.
Tomorrow is the start of my first weekly karaoke gig since March 16th 2020. I’ll be at The Silver Dollar on Mondays. It’s kinda nostalgic for me because when I was 21 I used to drink and sing karaoke there.
Last month I did a night at Garage 75 on James Island. That was one of the last places I worked before the pandemic. It’s a neat place with a very diverse crowd. I’ll be there on the 2nd Saturday of each month for the foreseeable future. Hey, that’s this week!
I got vaccinated in the AstraZeneca clinical trial back in November. If they had given me a placebo instead of the real shot, I would definitely have gotten another vaccine as soon as I was eligible.
Vaccination is the only way out of this. Maybe we could have stopped it with shelter-in-place, masking, and social distancing, but I suppose our society couldn’t be asked to sacrifice like that. People needed to be around other people and many had to continue to run their businesses for fear of economic ruin. Some were more reckless than others, but I am no longer taking a hard line on that. The government did a bad job of conveying risks and realities, while other sources unleashed a torrent of information and misinformation that was often hard to separate. We did what we thought was right. Some sacrificed more than others, and some paid the price for those who chose not to.
Covid is still here and from what I see on the news, it’s getting worse. I hope my karaoke nights don’t encourage unvaccinated people to behave in a way that risks their health or the people around them.
I know that the new varieties of Covid can affect vaccinated people and masks are recommended for everyone indoors. I will probably be wearing mine most of the time. As someone who will be in close contact with a lot of people there is definitely a risk of me giving the virus to someone.