PLEASANTON (KPIX) — Alameda County‘s first full day in the Orange Tier takes place amidst an early spring heat wave, that brought record breaking temperatures across the Bay Area, further lightening the mood after a year of lockdowns, zoom classes, and a winter spent sheltering in place.
“It just dragged on and on. You really couldn’t go anywhere, you couldn’t really do anything. So now it’s just all about getting out and enjoying the weather,” said hiker Mitch Taylor.
With temperatures about eight degrees higher than normal this time of year, much of the county reached highs in the low 80s. At Mission Peak, the main parking lot was full by mid-morning, with visitors parking on side streets, and hiking to the trailhead. Yellow mustard flowers and lush green grass covered the rolling hillside, framed by bright blue skies.
Taylor, who hikes to the top of the peak twice a week, urged caution as summer approaches.
“Warm weather is incentive to get lazy. So you have to be careful not to get lazy,” said Taylor.
The Orange Tier allows bars to finally reopen for outdoor service. Wineries can operate at 25 percent capacity.
At Wente Vineyards in Livermore, COVID protocols do not allow children under 21, pets are prohibited, and tastings are limited to 90 minutes. New for this year, Wente is offering premium “library tastings.”
Last weekend’s momentum from the warm weather will continue into the upcoming busy Easter weekend for Wente, as all outdoor and indoor reservations are full.
“We can already tell by the weather last week. And the weather was nice, so yes, people want to get out,” said Ann Ogden, Events Director. “They’re over it. We’re over it.”
At Crown Memorial State Beach in Alameda, a high of 81F degrees drew a sizable, but socially distanced crowd for a Wednesday afternoon.
Leonis Word brought his family to the shoreline to take advantage of the mid-week warm weather.
“My daughter has zoom class every day, and it’s Spring Break. So we were getting away from the laptop,” said Word. “Just the fact that folks are out is fun, to see folks out and about. It feels like everyone is a little more encouraged, I guess. Days like this help.”
Growing numbers of businesses, hospitality industries, and even sports teams are considering requiring proof of vaccination for customers, once the world begins to open up. For both patrons and staff, such a system might offer peace of mind -- and could stop a cruise voyage around the Caribbean, for example, from turning into a floating super spreader.
Countries where Covid-19 rates are low might soon start demanding inoculation information before they let tourists in. It's not that different from parents showing proof of vaccination typically required to enroll kids in American schools, or those little yellow vaccine cards already required to travel in countries threatened by yellow fever, tuberculosis or other scourges. Yet the idea of "vaccine passports" has become the latest object of right-wing politicians' outrage.
Everyone's favorite conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene, a member of Congress from Georgia, branded vaccine passports as "Biden's mark of the beast" and "fascism or communism or whatever you want to call it." Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential Republican 2024 presidential candidate, has also seized on the idea as an issue that will play to the GOP base. "It's completely unacceptable for either the government or the private sector to impose upon you the requirement that you show proof of vaccine to just simply be able to participate in normal society," DeSantis said.
For the record, President Joe Biden is not actually planning to mandate vaccine passports or to set up a central vaccines database that raises the specter of Big Brother surveillance trampling American individualism. The White House says it is trying to work with companies to set standards for vaccine passports and to ensure people's privacy is protected.
Nevertheless, it is an ethical minefield. Should businesses bar people who are not vaccinated? Can employers make vaccines a condition for accepting a new job? Certainly vaccines should be available to anyone who wants one before such filtering systems are introduced. But equally, is it fair for an American who endangers others by refusing vaccination to get the same benefits as others? Rent-a-quote politicians stirring fear and anger about the issue are not doing much to help.
Team USA athletes are now permitted to hold up a fist, kneel, and wear garments promoting racial and social justice at competitions, according to new rules published Tuesday by the US Olympic & Paralympic Committee. Those who choose to do so will be following in a well-trod path -- Tommie Smith and John Carlos, gold and bronze medalists in the 200 meters, made history at the 1968 Olympic Games with the black power salute in support of African Americans' civil rights.
Postcard from London
My hands are chapped from a day wiping down patients' chairs with disinfectant as a volunteer at a local Covid-19 vaccination center -- they didn't have gloves in my size. But raw knuckles seem like a small price to pay for my tiny role in getting the United Kingdom vaccinated.
The UK's vaccination rollout has so far been a roaring success, with 50 doses of vaccine administered per 100 people, according to data tracked by CNN. It's the largest country by far to have such a high vaccination rate. But the shots came too late to prevent a grimmer statistical superlative: The UK also has one of the highest per capita Covid-19 death rates on Earth.
The US with its turbo-charged inoculation program is in a similar position: Awful death tolls and impressive vaccination figures. Both countries failed to contain the coronavirus when it first appeared -- but after a lethal year, Covid-19 now appears to be a problem they can solve with massive spending on vaccines. In this crisis, vaccines are a magic bullet for sale, and the US and UK have money. But both countries may have lost out on a teachable moment; they won't be able to buy their way out of the world's other enduring crises.
Technology is moving slowly on coming up with a similar solution for climate change. And there are no magic bullets at any price for sexism or racism or poverty, as the UK faces up to its problem of violence against women in the wake of the murder of Sarah Everard; systemic racism intertwined with its colonial history; and the shocking fact that in one of the world's wealthiest countries, many children would go hungry without free meals at school.
Those problems require permanent and profound changes in human behavior on a massive scale -- the kind of changes that we initially needed to prevent the spread of Covid-19, but now thanks to vaccines, are preparing to forget. -- CNN's Richard Greene writes from London
DETROIT – The number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus (COVID-19) in Michigan has risen to 672,259 as of Wednesday, including 16,092 deaths, state officials report.
Wednesday’s update includes a total of 6,311 new cases and 10 additional deaths. On Tuesday, the state reported 665,948 total cases and 16,082 deaths. It’s the first time Michigan has reported 6,000 cases in a single day since Dec. 5.
Testing has been steady around 35,000 diagnostic tests reported per day on average, with the 7-day positive rate above 12% as of Monday, the highest since early December. The state has reported an up-tick in Hospitalizations over the last several weeks.
Michigan’s 7-day moving average for daily cases was 4,680 on Tuesday -- the highest since December. The 7-day death average was 22 on Tuesday and has been flat for several weeks. The state’s fatality rate is 2.4%. The state also reports “active cases,” which were listed at 82,200 on Tuesday. More than 569,000 have recovered in Michigan.
Michigan has reported more than 4.2 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine administered, as of Tuesday, with 33% of residents having received at least one dose.
According to Johns Hopkins University, more than 30.3 million cases have been reported in the U.S., with more than 551,000 deaths reported from the virus.
Worldwide, more than 128 million people have been confirmed infected and more than 2.8 million have died. More than 72 million have recovered, according to Johns Hopkins University. The true numbers are certainly much higher, because of limited testing, different ways nations count the dead and deliberate under-reporting by some governments.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer released a statement Tuesday after White House officials announced that there will increase COVID-19 vaccine doses available for Michigan starting next week.
According to a press release, next week’s shipment will increase by 66,020 bringing the total number of doses to 620,040 -- a weekly record for the state. Officials said the allocation includes 147,800 doses of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
The CDC said that Michigan is leading the country in new cases of COVID-19 per population.
On Tuesday, officials reported 5,177 new COVID cases and 48 additional deaths, including 20 from a Vital Records review. On Monday, the state reported 660,771 total cases and 16,034 deaths.
Local 4′s Dr. Frank McGeorge said he’s seen a very clear increase in COVID patients at the hospital where he works.
“Many of them need to be hospitalized. I would honestly say, this feels worse to me here in Southeast Michigan than it was during the wave that started in November. Now, the most concerning trend is the number of middle-aged people with severe COVID,” McGeorge said.
All Detroiters 16 and older are now eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine, the city announced Monday.
Any Detroit resident age 16 or older can now call to schedule an appointment to be vaccinated at the TCF Center.
Appointments can be made by calling 313-230-0505. Anyone living outside of the city of Detroit, but reporting to work each day in the city, also are eligible to schedule an appointment.
Johnson & Johnson vaccine site opened at Northwest Activities Center 9-1 this Saturday.
Chief Public Health Officer Denise Fair also announced that the Detroit Health Department has been informed it will receive its first allocation of Johnson and Johnson vaccine this week. Detroiters wanting the one dose J&J vaccine can call 313-230-0505 for an appointment to receive at the Northwest Activities Center, located at 18100 Meyers from 9-1 this Saturday.
The state of Michigan announced Friday that all residents age 16 and up will become eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine on April 5, nearly a month before the May 1 date pledged by President Joe Biden.
People age 16 to 49 withcertain medical conditions or disabilitieswill qualify starting March 22, when 50- to 64-year-olds can begin getting shots under a previous announcement. Two days later, March 24, a federally selected regional mass vaccination site will open at Detroit’s Ford Field to administer an additional 6,000 doses a day for two months.
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services announced that the first case of the COVID-19 variant B.1.351 has been identified in a child in Jackson County.
The health department did not say how the boy was infected but a case investigation is underway to determine close contacts and if there are additional cases associated.
This new variant was originally detected in South Africa in October 2020 and shares some mutations with the B117 variant. The first case of the B117 variant -- originally detected in the United Kingdom -- was identified in Washtenaw County.
Starting Friday, March 5, Michigan restaurants and bars will be allowed to fill up to 50% capacity, with a maximum of 100 people, according to the state.
“I’m proud that we are able to take this positive step without compromising public health,” Whitmer said.
Since Feb. 1, restaurants had been capped at 25% capacity. From mid-November through the end of January, no indoor dining was allowed at bars or restaurants.
The number of the confirmed cases of a more contagious COVID-19 variant in Michigan increased by more than 100 this week, suggesting there is “undetected spread” in the community.
Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, the chief medical director for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, said the state has confirmed 422 cases of the COVID-19 B117 variant.
That number increased from 314 cases identified as of six days prior (Feb. 24).
Wayne County announced it will open several vaccination clinics for residents 65 and older.
According to county Executive Warren Evans, the vaccination clinics will begin Feb. 23.
“I’m pleased Wayne County is now in a position to begin vaccinating seniors,” Evans said. “I know everyone is eager to safely get back to normal. Our team is working hard to ensure all of our residents can get their COVID shot as quickly as the vaccine is available.”
There are no walk-up appointments and seniors must make an appointment by calling the number for the site in their communities.
Michigan COVID-19 daily reported cases since March 1:
March 1 -- 785 new cases
March 2 -- 1,067 new cases
March 3 -- 1,536 new cases
March 4 -- 1,526 new cases
March 5 -- 1,486 new cases
March 6 -- 1,289 new cases
March 7 -- 980 new cases
March 8 -- 980 new cases
March 9 -- 954 new cases
March 10 -- 2,316 new cases
March 11 -- 2,091 new cases
March 12 -- 2,403 new cases
March 13 -- 1,659 new cases
March 14 -- 1,571 new cases
March 15 -- 1,572 new cases
March 16 -- 2,048 new cases
March 17 -- 3,164 new cases
March 18 -- 2,629 new cases
March 19 -- 3,730 new cases
March 20 -- 2,660 new cases
March 21 -- 2,400 new cases
March 22 -- 2,401 new cases
March 23 -- 3,579 new cases
March 24 -- 4,454 new cases
March 25 -- 5,224 new cases
March 26 -- 5,030 new cases
March 27 -- 4,670 new cases
March 28 -- 4,101 new cases
March 29 -- 4,101 new cases
March 30 -- 5,177 new cases
March 31 -- 6,311 new cases
Michigan COVID-19 daily reported deaths since March 1:
March 1 -- 6 new deaths
March 2 -- 24 new deaths (12 from vital records)
March 3 -- 5 new deaths
March 4 -- 37 new deaths (29 from vital records)
March 5 -- 10 new deaths
March 6 -- 56 new deaths (48 from vital records)
March 7 -- 2 new deaths
March 8 -- 2 new deaths
March 9 -- 29 new deaths (8 from vital records)
March 10 -- 8 new deaths
March 11 -- 23 new deaths (16 from vital records)
March 12 -- 8 new deaths
March 13 -- 38 new deaths (30 from vital records)
March 14 -- 4 new deaths
March 15 -- 5 new deaths
March 16 -- 27 new deaths (6 from vital records)
March 17 -- 0 new deaths
March 18 -- 25 new deaths (24 from vital records)
March 19 -- 15 new deaths
March 20 -- 47 new deaths -- (39 from vital records)
March 21 -- 3 new deaths
March 22 -- 3 new deaths
March 23 -- 16 new deaths (8 from vital records)
March 24 -- 16 new deaths
March 25 -- 49 new deaths (30 from vital records)
March 26 -- 20 new deaths
March 27 -- 22 new deaths
March 28 -- 4 new deaths
March 29 -- 4 new deaths
March 30 -- 48 new deaths (20 from vital records)
March 31 -- 10 new deaths
Coronavirus resources:
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The Marlins have until 12:00 p.m. ET on Thursday to lock in their Opening Day roster. Based on several official roster moves, reporting from the likes of Craig Mish and Jordan McPherson, and covering the team myself, here is my final projection for the 26-man group (13 position players and 13 pitchers):
My projection from last weekend was very similar to this, except that I had figured the Marlins would opt for Nick Neidert over Curtiss. However, on Tuesday Fish Stripes confirmed that Curtiss had indeed made the cut and on Wednesday, the Miami Herald noted that Neidert is headed to Triple-A where he’ll presumably be fully stretched out as a starter in preparation for if/when a rotation vacancy presents itself.
We are just hours away from finding out the truth!
Hey Violet’s first single since 2019, “Friends Like This” is an impassioned and feverish anthemic channeling familiar pandemic-induced frustrations of distance, disconnect, isolation, and loneliness.
for fans of MisterWives, Ariana Grande, Maroon 5
Stream: “Friends Like This” – Hey Violet
How am I supposed to have fun like this, at a party of one like this?
Hey Violet’s first single in nearly eighteen months’ time is an impassioned and feverish uproar of a somewhat familiar frustration: Isolation, distance, disconnect, and a general lack of intimacy. A soaring anthem full of vivid emotion, catchy lyrics, and tongue-in-cheek imagery, “Friends in Cheek” turns exasperation into a beautiful pop upheaval.
It’s the release we all need right now, a year into the COVID-19 pandemic.
Friends Like This – Hey Violet
Spending all day on my phone Am I in prison, or am I just home? Might bleach my hair, might shave it off I might call my ex or even his mom Drive to the beach, but stay in my car
Independently released March 12, 2021, “Friends Like This” marks a special new chapter for Hey Violet as they embark on an independent career. Currently the trio of sisters Rena and Nia Lovelis and Casey Moreta, Hey Violet have never shied away from new challenges – whether it was singing truth to power, diving into the depths of their emotions through song, or finding new ways of expressing something that’s been said a hundred times, and remains true.
Speaking to Atwood Magazine five unfathomably long years ago, Rena Lovelis expressed the band’s general desire of “[finding] different ways of saying stuff and different ways of playing things.” Hey Violet certainly accomplished that in “Friends Like This,” a song that doesn’t shy away from the anger and anguish we’ve all experienced to some degree throughout the past year. Rather than sugarcoat life or glaze over the situation, Hey Violet lean into those visceral feelings, using their music as an outlet to express, process, and unleash a bevy of pent-up energy. Better than keeping it all bottled up inside, right?
Rena Lovelis lets it all out in a powerful chorus – her evocative, strong voice laced around soulful melodies and pulsing grooves:
How am I supposed to make friends like this? How am I supposed to make friends like this? When we only connect like this How am I supposed to make? How am I supposed to makе? How am I supposed to have fun like this? At a party of onе like this? How am I supposed to make friends like this? How am I supposed to make? How am I supposed to make?
”‘Friends Like This’ is obviously quarantine-inspired, but the song encapsulates more than just the requirement of self-isolation we’ve all had to endure,” Lovelis recently told HollywoodLife. “It’s been such a frustrating past year, so we took that feeling of anger and frustration and translated it into the lyrics of ‘Friends Like This.’ What we found most soothing is that, sonically, the sound and mood of the song doesn’t take on the same emotion that the lyrics do. “Friends Like This” is a really fun and bouncy pop song that acted as our relief from all of the pent-up loneliness and lack of human connection we’re all experiencing.”
Released March 29, the band’s dazzling “Friends Like This” music video brings us closer to Hey Violet than we’ve been in nearly two years’ time. Directed by Ariel Michelle, the immersive visual intensifies the song’s already dynamic emotional and lyrical content. “[It’s] essentially a hyperbolized version of what many of us have been doing and feeling during quarantine,” Rena Lovelis explains. “Glamorized moments of utter boredom (Rena changing the television multiple times but never finding anything good to watch), chaos & confusion (Nia baking bread and pulling it out of the oven only to add that loaf to a huge stack of already-made bread, capturing the stir-craziness we’re all are feeling) and even grappling with being completely out of touch with our loved ones and attempting to find others ways to connect (Casey in the backyard having a tea party with dolls and stuffed animals).”
A mixture of lighthearted and deeply serious sentiments blend together as Hey Violet convey the fluctuating emotions that have rippled – or rather, ricocheted – throughout us during this pandemic:
So boring, staring at these walls It feels like my whole life, has been put on pause Might start a cult, that could be sick Is golf kinda cool, or did I lose my grip? Might take a trip, but just to my fridge Ugh
With only about 15% of the US population fully vaccinated against coronavirus (according to US News) at the time of this writing, it appears we will have to wait a little longer until we can all start making friends again. Thankfully, we now have an earworm anthem in “Friends Like This” to soundtrack our socially distanced, still-isolated lives.
“Friends Like This” is the lead single off Hey Violet’s forthcoming EP Problems – a four-track affair with what’s been described as “a decidedly edgier vibe” – out April 30, 2021. Until that time comes, we’ll be dwelling in the intoxicating grooves and relatable angst of “Friends Like This.”
How am I supposed to make friends like this? How am I supposed to make friends like this? When we only connect like this How am I supposed to make? How am I supposed to make? How am I supposed to have fun like this? At a party of one like this? How am I supposed to make friends like this? How am I supposed to make? How am I supposed to make?
Two online business models see a future post-pandemic, but success might depend on cooperating with actual clubs.
The cultural legacy of the pandemic may not only be shows canceled, careers derailed and theaters and clubs closed. There has also been innovation, like the emergence of the virtual comedy club.
What began out of desperation has matured into a new digital genre that has drawn sizable audiences in the habit of buying tickets to livestreaming stand-up from the comfort of their own homes. As clubs now start to reopen, and comics and patrons return to their old haunts, the next few months will be a key test of this business. Was it a pandemic-era fad or will it be an enduring part of the landscape?
On a video call from her San Francisco home, Jill Paiz-Bourque, the chief executive of RushTix, perhaps the biggest digital comedy club, made the case that the lockdown only accelerated an already inevitable revolution. “Why did Netflix eclipse television?” she rhetorically asked. “It’s streaming, unlimited, global. Why did Spotify eclipse terrestrial radio? It’s streaming. It’s global. It’s unlimited. And that’s why livestreaming with RushTix eclipses Live Nation eventually because it’s streaming, it’s global, it’s unlimited.”
Many are skeptical, including fans who badly miss being surrounded by echoing laughter and stand-ups who are exhausted by performing for screens and who widely prefer telling jokes in the same room as crowds. While conceding that nothing replaces the traditional comedy format, Paiz-Bourque said the doubts will look as shortsighted as early mockery of Twitter, podcasting and so many other now common internet forms. She has good reason for such swagger. Paiz-Bourque’s business, which she calls “a Silicon Valley start-up,” regularly sells over 1,000 tickets to see comics like Sarah Silverman, Patton Oswalt and Maria Bamford. In February, she sold 15,000 tickets to eight shows, bringing in close to $280,000 in revenue.
“Once we got our first taste of 5,000 ticket shows, that was intoxicating,” Paiz-Bourque said (Colleen Ballinger, the popular YouTuber best known for “Miranda Sings,” was the breakthrough artist).
As touring resumes, Paiz-Bourque is tweaking her vision, moving away from a tight focus on those headlining and radically increasing volume. By the summer, her goal is to produce five shows a day, every day. In other words, to live up to the slogan that appeared on her site before a recent show: “The biggest comedy club on the planet.” She said she wasn’t worried about clubs reopening because “I have way more supply than they have access to.”
Laura Silverman and Jonathan Katz from “Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist.”RushTix
In the next month and half, she’s rolling out nine original, interactive series, including competitions (“Very Punny With Kate Lambert”), a cooking show (“Baking It Better with Tom Papa”) and a dating one (“Find Your Boo With Reggie Bo”). She’s also adding closed captioning, a subscription package and new technology that allows patrons to move around the “club” and hear different levels of laughter.
The overall vision is to produce new work with emerging artists during the week while doubling down on headliners on Friday and Saturday nights. How will she compete when stars are eager to tour and return to live stages? Simple, she says: Make comics offers “worth their while.” After previously offering 80 percent of tickets sales, she’s recently started guaranteeing up to five figures. She says six figures will become common among an elite few. “I’ve gotten pushback on this from Day 1,” she said about enlisting comics. “Then you start wiring thousands and tens of thousands of dollars and they were like: I get it.”
RushTix is hardly the only player in this market. Nowhere Comedy Club, a smaller, scrappier operation that was started by the comedians Ben Gleib and Steve Hofstetter, has booked a stellar lineup of comics, including Mike Birbiglia, Gilbert Gottfried and Nikki Glaser. In something of a coup, Bill Burr recently performed in a benefit production from a studio that Gleib built in his home, a booking that Paiz-Bourque said she was “devastated” she didn’t get a chance on. (She just announced that Burr will be appearing at RushTix on May 16 in a live version of the animated TV show “Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist.”)
Gleib, who began Nowhere after ending a presidential campaign in 2019 that left him nearly broke, also performs his own show online every week. And while he is optimistic about the future of livestreaming, he sounded more anxious than Paiz-Bourque about losing comics to touring. “I think we can peaceably coexist,” he said. But as he approaches Nowhere’s anniversary next week, his strategy is not to rebrand or recast so much as make Nowhere fit more seamlessly into the existing ecosystem.
He recently started geotargeting, a technology that restricts consumers from certain areas from buying tickets, a tactic he called potentially “game-changing.” This enables a comic heading out on a tour to block the places he’s visiting so as not to depress sales there.
Emilio Savone, the co-owner of the New York Comedy Club, which begins indoor shows on Friday, when the city will begin allowing indoor shows at 33 percent capacity with a limit of 100 people, said such digital theaters have a future. “Do I think it can sustain as a seven-night-a-week type of thing? Maybe not?” he wrote in an email. “But I do think it’s a good tool for comedians to work on material, and it offers another way for the comic to engage and reach their audience.”
Ben Gleib in soundcheck on Sunday.Nowhere Comedy Club
Felicia Madison, who runs the West Side Comedy Club in Manhattan — which will begin outdoor shows on April 14 but not indoor shows until the city allows for 50 percent capacity — also sees a future involving a hybrid of traditional and digital clubs. “If they’re smart, they’ll work with clubs” to livestream from there, she said.
RushTix is already doing that, with the stand-up comedian Godfrey performing from the Gotham Comedy Club on April 7. But neither Paiz-Bourque nor Gleib sound enthusiastic about the economics of such arrangements. Gleib argued that strength of Nowhere was in the relationships it has developed with new comedy audiences. “We’ve reached huge demographics that have never been serviced by comedy clubs,” Gleib said, pointing to patrons who live in remote areas or those with disabilities or social anxiety. “Then there’s the lazy,” he added. “We’re great for lazy people who don’t want to go out.”
Nowhere puts fans’ faces onscreen and allows everyone to talk, laugh or even heckle (though they can muted for that, too). This creates a freewheeling show that emphasizes the community of audience and performer. By contrast, RushTix keeps the audience to a chat room and limits laughter to 20 people. Gleib called this “elitist,” saying the RushTix approach didn’t resemble live stand-up.
Paiz-Bourque doesn’t argue, saying that since no online show can duplicate a live one, her goal is to produce the best experience. “We gave up on trying to emulate the live experience and the more we gave up on that, the more we started opening up barrels of creativity,” she said.
Maria Bamford on her livestream show, “Vindicated.”RushTix
If anything, she wants to move away from a dependence on conventional stand-up, while still booking big names. It’s why one of the first comics she recruited was Bamford, a natural experimentalist who is putting on an unusual show on April 17: after doing a set, she will film herself sleeping for the next eight hours. You can watch and join her for breakfast the next day.
Bamford already has a dedicated audience that will follow her wherever she goes. The real test for these clubs will be whether they can develop enough loyalty to get audiences to try less established talents. These platforms tend to benefit those who already have large and engaged online fan bases. When clubs and theaters return, they are going to be booking acts that they know can sell tickets, which may make them more wary of adventurous or emerging comics.
There is a real danger right now that we are entering a very cautious moment in comedy as institutions struggle to rebuild, and Paiz-Bourque, a former comic gifted in the art of selling a premise, argues now is the moment for her to fill another niche.
Pointing to a logjam of early- and midcareer stand-ups whose careers have been slowed by the pandemic, she said, “Not only is this going to be a business that works. It needs to creatively for all these comedians.”
An unassuming 3-by-4-inch piece of cardstock could become your ticket back to normalcy, with colleges, airlines, event venues and more weighing plans to require documentation of a COVID-19 vaccine. So, to protect that prized proof of inoculation, should you get it laminated?
OfficeMax and Staples are currently offering promotions where residents can have their cards laminated for free. But some are concerned that the cards should stay writeable for booster shots down the road.
“If you want to laminate it, just know that it might be hard in the future to do anything more to it,” Panagis Galiatsatos, a physician with the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told NJ Advance Media.
His recommendation: Laminate a copy of the card. But even more importantly, Galiatsatos said people should take a picture, write down the confirmation numbers and send a copy to your physician’s office.
“There’s other ways to maintain proof of vaccination without compromising the card… there’s a better way to do this than just relying on the cards that they give you,” he said.
However, Stephanie Silvera, an epidemiologist and public health professor at Montclair State University, thinks the concern around lamination is probably overblown.
“I’m not particularly worried about the ability to write on a particular card a year from now, so I think if people want to get it laminated, there may be value in doing so at least in the short term,” she told NJ Advance Media.
Former New York Giants football star Tiki Barber shows his COVID-19 vaccination record card after getting his shot at a vaccine site in Jersey City on March 24. It shows his birth name, Atiim.
Residents will likely have to receive COVID vaccine booster shots in the future, though by then, Silvera hopes we’ve figured out a more efficient and centralized system to record peoples’ vaccinations.
“Going forward we are going need to have a better system of keeping track of our vaccinations than hopefully people not losing their cards,” she said.
While it’s too early to say how society will recover and react to the continued threat of the virus long-term, Silvera predicts our yearly flu season will become flu and COVID season. Vaccine booster shots every six months or year are probably coming down the pipeline, though it’s still much too early to tell, she said.
“Don’t get rid of the card,” Murphy said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” earlier this month. “That is likely to be something valuable. Keep the card, laminate it and put it in your wallet.”
“And in terms of what value that card will have, other than your own personal health, (is) to be determined,” Murphy added. “But that is under consideration and there are lots of different potential uses for that, whether it’s going to a sporting event, getting on a plane, etc. So hold onto it and, again, we will first and foremost take our guidance from the CDC.”
Health privacy concerns
The Republican Governors Association hit back at Murphy for his comment, calling it a “health privacy minefield.”
“Hard-working New Jersey residents have the right to keep their health care decisions between themselves and their doctor, and don’t need Phil Murphy in the waiting room telling patients to make sure they ‘laminate’ their vaccine card on the way out,” Republican Governors Association spokesman Will Reinert said in a press release.
In Camden County, officials have urged residents to laminate, make copies and keep the card with them at all times, like a driver’s license.
“For us, as a community, to get fully back to normal — and as Rutgers underscored with its new policy last week — proof of vaccination will be key to the process of protecting the overall public health,” Commissioner Director Louis Cappelli Jr. said in a press release.
Right now, the United States has no central database for vaccines, leaving paper cards as the only proof of inoculation for many of the 145 million Americans who have received coronavirus shots to date. The Biden Administration is working on developing a standard credential or “vaccine passport,” but the effort will require coordination across dozens of agencies and faces a number of other challenges, The Washington Post reported.
For now, if residents want to make their vaccine cards or copies more durable, they can go to Office Depot and OfficeMax stores through July 25 using coupon code 52516714 or Staples stores indefinitely with coupon code 81450.
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