Your favorite band knows how long the pandemic will last

For a potent dose of coronavirus reality, follow the music.

Many of the biggest music festivals in the nation — Coachella, Lollapalooza, Stagecoach, and JazzFest — won’t happen until (at the earliest) the spring or summer of 2021. Meanwhile, massive, medium-sized, and smaller tours have been rescheduled, many for a year from now. This includes the likes of Mötley Crüe, Lucinda Williams, Taylor Swift, and Weezer.

Such is life with a new contagious pathogen that’s substantially more deadly than the flu, and has no proven vaccine nor medical cures. The resulting respiratory disease, COVID-19, isn’t just a disease for the old: The virus recently ravaged an otherwise healthy, young woman’s lungs so severely, doctors had to remove and transplant both of them. Our altered reality for the next year, and the 114,000 dead and counting in the U.S., is a price we’ll all pay for the U.S. government’s failure to contain the spreading virus back in February and March (states are now largely on their own to curb the spreading disease). Read more…

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