On Tuesday, my wife and I completed our 4th Messiah sing-along for the season. We both seem to be feeling OK, so at this point I guess it’s safe to say that this year’s score is Messiah 4, COVID 0.
Moving right along
Source: Virginia Department of Health.
Looks like we’re starting this year’s winter increase in COVID-19 cases. The incidence of airborne respiratory illness tends to be on the rise at this time of year. That includes pneumonia of all sorts, flu, the common cold, and now COVID-19.
Above is what I’d call a horizontal gee-whiz graph of that (per the nomenclature of the the classic “How to Lie With Statistics”). Without context, you might be tempted to say, gee whiz, look at the increase.
Source: Virginia Department of Health.
In context, by contrast, it’s not such a big deal. Currently Virginia shows 14 new cases per 100K population per day. Just two years back (January 2022), it was more like 214 per 100K. So, upswing, yes. Comparable to prior peaks, no.
Conversely, you might be tempted to say COVID is now no worse than the flu, but based on the data, you’d be wrong. By the numbers, COVID-19 still accounts for about 3 percent of U.S. deaths (per the U.S. CDC). Whereas prior to COVID, influenza and pneumonia together accounted for less than 2 percent of U.S. deaths, and the most of that was attributable to pneumonia (CDC, Deaths 2019, .pdf).
Finally, not to harp on it, but choral singing is about as good a way to spread airborne disease as exists, owing to the high rate of aerosol emissions when people sing in full voice. (I’ve been over that in several prior posts).
Regardless, we attended four different sing-alongs. All were in churches of various denominations. In each case, the church was full, masks were few and far between, and there was a lot of gray hair in the audience.
When I run the probabilities, it’s a near-certainty that we shared a church space with at least one person who was actively infectious with COVID. (Again, based on calculations outlined in old posts, I’d guess that with a total attendance of about 2000 in the four sing-alongs, and current incidence in Virginia, there was a 92% chance that at least one person was actively infectious in at least one sing-along.)
So it’s a pretty good guess that somebody picked up a new case of COVID as a consequence of those sing-alongs. But almost nobody seemed worried about it — despite the advanced age of the average audience member. No idea who drew the short straw, if anyone.
In any case, based on what has to be a fairly broad sampling, I’d say the market for mass singing of baroque Christmas music has returned to full normalcy. In so far as that can be considered a normal thing to do.
Finally, you might reasonably ask, why so many sing-alongs? Straight-up return on investment. It took us seven years to get our parts (alto and bass) down rock-solid. Might as well get our money’s worth.
Plus, to a degree, it’s surprising how much variation there is among services. Some are loosey-goosey, some are run quite rigidly. Accompaniment ranges from a solo organ to string quartet to full orchestra. Soloists run the gamut from merely good to truly exceptional, transport-you-to-a-different world singing.
It’s time to put our Messiah scores back on the shelf for another year. We made it through yet another full season, and enjoyed it. And we’re looking forward to doing it again next year.
