SAK in a Pandemic

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Pam’s niece was visiting from the mid-west in August and she wanted to treat her to an evening at SAK Comedy Lab.

SAK strongly encourages all non-vaccinated students to wear a face mask while in the class area.

An inherent risk of exposure to COVID-19 exists in any public place where people are present. COVID-19 is a contagious disease that can, in some instances, lead to severe illness and death. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), senior citizens and people with underlying medical conditions are especially vulnerable.

Pam, her niece and I wore masks the entire time. Under this situation I wore a KN-95. I noticed that ushers also wore masks but as the audience filled in the seats there were no masks in sight. None. When the audience had filled in I turned around and saw that one lone woman also wore a mask.

The SAK seats up to 60% of their pre-covid maximum capacity. They provide one seat open between groups. That is a full two feet of social distancing. They advised online that, if you are uncomfortable being in a venue that feels somewhat dense with people, now might not be the best time to attend their shows. They politely request that all guests wear a mask in the venue regardless of vaccination status. It can be removed when you are seated with your food and drink. If wearing a mask while at a live venue isn’t your thing, they completely understand. I can vouch for the fact that veeeeery few took this advice seriously.

The performers are all vaccinated and are not masking while on stage. The performances consisted of some of the cast belting out some amazing show tunes. Chase Padget whose work I have admired from past Fringe shows was among the cast, and he did a stellar job. They all killed it. If you want to laugh yourself to death, this is the place to do it.

A few weeks after this performance, on August 20, 2021, a member of SAK’s Front of House staff reported a positive Covid-19 test. Because the staff work closely together, they decided to take their shows down for the weekend out of an abundance of caution. This was the first time since the pandemic began that they took a show down.

In August 2021 alone, more than 9,000 residents died in Florida from COVID-19, making it the most deadly month of the pandemic in the Sunshine State. Yet looking around this audience you would think that COVID was a thing of the past. Florida is way ahead of the nation’s other five largest states in a race no one wants to win. In the last six months, Florida has recorded nearly 90 deaths for every 100,000 residents, by far the highest among the six largest states. Florida’s death rate over that period is more than three times higher than in New York and more than five times higher than in California. In fact, only Texas has a rate that is at least half of Florida’s.

 

Pandemic Studio

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For the past 18 months I have been getting up each morning and immediately stepping over these storage crates to work in the studio. I start the morning by sharing the post of the day on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I then look up the daily hospital rates and United States risk assessment map which I put on the sidebar of the days article.

As I eat breakfast, I browse through he days news looking for the latest horror that needs to be illustrated. Some mornings I wake up with the idea fresh in my head. Some of the best and strangest ideas occur to me as I am trying to wake up.

With the idea in mind I start researching on Google images. This part of the process is quite fun as I get lost down various rabbit holes and the idea may morph as my research leads down strange tangents.

An older version of Photoshop is used to cobble together my ideas and then I e-mail that composite to myself  so I can use it as reference for the painting which is done in Procreate on an iPad. My goal is usually to get the drawing done by lunch and then have the painting done with enough time to write an article by midnight. Some days, like today,, I post work that is unrelated to the pandemic so I can have a few moments of peace were I am not analyzing the situation our country is still in. Social isolation for an artist isn’t that bad if the world is in a tail spin, and you feel the need to document every moment of the free fall. I am also thankful to be with a partner who has made the pandemic incredibly bearable. Laughter and time spent together in our bubble make the time fly by.

The pandemic is far from over, but moments of peace and quiet are as important as the endless insanity.

Genie Out of the Bottle

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After 18 months, with much fanfare, Disney‘s Aladdin returned to the New Amsterdam Theater on Broadway. The show was then summarily shut down when there were breakthrough cases of COVID-19 among the cast. One of their washes for the genie should have been an infection free run of the show.

All performances of the popular musical through Sunday, Oct. 10, are off. In a statement, the company said, “Although negative PCR testing allowed us to move safely forward with last night’s performance of Aladdin at The New Amsterdam Theatre, additional breakthrough COVID-19 cases were detected within the company today.”

Blythe Adamson, the epidemiologist working with Disney Theatrical Productions on its Broadway shows said, “This 12-day pause allows the Aladdin company ample time to ensure that people with breakthroughs recover, and any other potential breakthroughs are identified before the Aladdin company gathers again.”

Added Disney, “Because the wellness and safety of our guests, cast and crew remain our top priority, we feel the prudent decision is to cancel performances starting tonight, Friday, October 1 through Sunday, October 10. We will continue to provide support to the affected Aladdin company members as they recover. The Broadway League announced that all Broadway venues would continue to require COVID vaccinations for audiences, performers and staff through the end of the year, at which time the policy will be reviewed for another possible extension.

In Flight

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COVID-19 has been shown to spread on airplanes by infected passengers. There is scarce reliable data, so the understanding of how exactly COVID-19 transmits during flights is limited.

Airplanes have been a primary way the virus quickly spread around the world. The most risky times are boarding and departing the plane. There are no social distancing practices when people crush into the aisles to get their luggage from overhead compartments and wait on top of one another to get off the flight.

During on board dining, everyone takes off their masks at the same time to eat. Which of course raised the risks of infection. The option to serve passengers at alternating times to maintain social distancing while eating is a logistical problem airlines are unwilling to consider.

When an airlines middle seats are left vacant, the risk of infection is reduced. A CDC study, using laboratory modeling, found that leaving the middle seat open can reduce COVID exposure by up to 57%. However airlines are packing passengers into the cabin like cattle.

Air vents are designed to push air downward and into the aisles. The air is then recirculated and mixed with 50% of outdoor air. Passengers’ exhaled air is cleaned with HEPA (High-Efficiency Particulate Air) filters, which are also used in hospital operating rooms, for example. These filters are designed to retain 99.95% of airborne particles of a wide variety of sizes, greatly reducing the risk of infection. experts say that air circulation and filtration systems alone cannot completely protect against infection. HEPA filters can only clean particles that reach it — so passengers need to minimize risks, such as wearing face masks, to help avoid coming into contact with particles that did not reach the filter. Aiming the air nozzle right at your face at full velocity, even if it is too cold, is the best option to avoid swapping air with infected fellow passengers.

Researchers focused on long-haul flight EK488 from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to Auckland, New Zealand. Using genomic sequencing, scientists found that four passengers on board became infected by one of two other passengers on the flight. Two of the passengers infected were not wearing face masks. When passengers and crew move about in the aircraft cabin, it can affect the direction of airflow, and increase the risks of infection.

Experts encourage passengers to refrain from eating or drinking while on board. This might not be an option on a very long flight so being brief and perhaps refraining from immediate consumption might reduce risks. “If a passenger briefly removes his or her mask to eat or drink, other passengers in the vicinity should keep their masks on,” said a Harvard University report on COVID risk mitigation on planes. Each moment a face mask is removed on the plane — including eating and drinking during a flight — the risk of infection increases. The longer a passenger eats, the greater the risk of infecting someone, said epidemiologist Ulrichs.

Red Menace

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CNN reporter Chris Cillizza reported that Red Covid is killing Americans. This menace was perpetuated by the former president who made basic health measures a political talking point he hoped would get him re-elected.

States that voted Democratic for Joe Biden  in the last election are showing much higher vaccination rates that states that voted Republican. The spread is startling when seen on a graph. Not getting vaccinated has become a point of pride among the Republican base right up until they are gasping their last breaths with a tube down their throats.

More than 9 in 10 self-identified Democrats (92%) report that they have had at least one dose of one of the three vaccines for Covid-19. That number among Republicans? Just 56%.

Republican governors were slower to adopt both stay-at-home orders and mandates to wear face masks. “Governors’ party affiliation may have contributed to a range of policy decisions that, together, influenced the spread of the virus,” the study’s senior author, Dr. Sara Benjamin-Neelon the Bloomberg School’s Department of Health, Behavior and Society, said in a statement. “These findings underscore the need for state policy actions that are guided by public health considerations rather than by partisan politics,” she added.

Dubbing it “Red Covid,” The New York Times‘ David Leonhardt wrote: “The political divide over vaccinations is so large that almost every reliably blue state now has a higher vaccination rate than almost every reliably red state.  Because the vaccines are so effective at preventing serious illness, Covid deaths are also showing a partisan pattern. Covid is still a national crisis, but the worst forms of it are increasingly concentrated in red America.”
There are two Americas right now. The one that is intelligent enough to take safety precautions kike wearing masks  and got vaccinated and the other who is ignorantly willing to go to slaughter to make a political point. Choose wisely.

Misinformation Mind Parasites

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Andy Norman, reported that America is facing a pandemic of ignorance.  Insane QAnon theories have captured the minds of many and anti vaccine rhetoric is spreading like wildfire with reason and thought being abandoned for blind devotion to baseless doctrine.

In his provocative book Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think, Newman unearths this growing scourge. In this era,  misinformation is more common, and spreads even faster than the virus.

He explained, “Parasites require a host, bad ideas require a host. Parasites often compromise the health of their hosts. Bad ideas can also compromise the mental well being of their hosts. Parasites can leap from body to body. Bad ideas can leap from mind to mind.”

Facebook algorithms have nurtured this tsunami of misinformation. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the social media giant has removed 18 million posts containing misinformation about COVID-19, but would not say how many times the posts had been viewed or shared.

A White House study 12 misinformation super spreaders they dubbed, the “disinformation dozen”.  Misinformation experts have condemned platforms for taking down some of the most egregious accounts, but not others. For instance, the anti-vaccine figurehead Robert F. Kennedy Jr. still has an account on Facebook, despite being banned from Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.

 The Washington Post reported that a new peer-reviewed study from researchers at New York University and the Université Grenoble Alpes in France will show that misinformation got six times as much engagement on Facebook as real news. Pages that post more misinformation regularly got more likes, shares, and comments. Truth be damned, Facebook wants clicks.

Vaccine misinformation remains very high on Facebook. President Joe Biden said that the tech giants such as Facebook are “killing people” by failing to tackle the problem. Experts who study online misinformation say it has still largely failed to address the issue and that falsehoods about the vaccine are still reaching millions of people. Rather than tackle the issue, Facebook founder Zuckerberg has decided to instead start placing pro-Facebook messaging in its news feed. It is the usual adage of deny, deflect and do a distracting dance while raking in the dough. The mighty dollar trumps death.

Don’t Get Vaccinated

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A black Wilmore Funeral House truck  had “Don’t Get Vaccinated” emblazoned on it’s side. This messanging was actually Part of a Pro-Vaccine Campaign. The truck that circled outside of the Bank of America Stadium in North Carolina during Sunday’s Carolina Panthers game, CNN reported. Wilmore Funeral House is nonexistent, however — the creation of ad agency BooneOakley. When internet users access the website, the landing page has a message that simply states, “Get vaccinated now. If not, see you soon.” The page also has a link to StarMed, which allows people to register to get vaccinated at health care providers in the area.

Last month in Florida over 9500 people have died from COVID-19. Bringing the total number of deaths from COVID in the Sunshine State to over 54,000. That is about double the number of deaths compared to a country like Canada.

Business is too good for funeral directors. Funeral homes and grave diggers have to struggle to keep up with the demand. In Florida, according to CBS News, employees of funeral homes are absolutely swamped. In July 2021, the CDC reported that one in five new COVID-19 cases in the United States was occurring in Florida. CBS News’ Khristopher J. Brooks explained, “In the last week of August 2021, Florida hospitals averaged 279 deaths per day — up from 52 in July, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The spike in fatalities, is strongly suspected to stem from the ongoing surge in cases caused by the Delta variant.

Flight Fight

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There have been over 4,385 reported incidents of air rage this year, and only one person has been criminally charged.

Airline workers told Congress the lack of criminal enforcement puts public safety at risk. There have been 789 investigations; 162 enforcement cases, and $1.1 million in fines. It is like the Capitol rioters have all decided to take their grievances to the friendly skies.

As a civil authority, the FAA cannot criminally charge anyone, so criminal cases in aviation are the purview of the FBI and the Department of Justice. To say the enforcement process is turning a blind eye would be an understatement.

The only person to be charged is Vyvianna Quinonez, who was filmed in May 2021 punching a flight attendant in the face as a Southwest flight approached San Diego. Federal aviation regulations allow the FAA to impose fines of up to $35,000, but the criminal penalties – up to 20 years in prison if convicted of interfering with the operation of an aircraft – require the DOJ to prosecute a case. The FBI declined to comment.

September 25, 2021 a passenger on flight 261 from Boston to San Juan, Puerto Rico kicked and choking a flight attendant as he tried to storm the front of the plane, federal authorities said. The passenger, Khalil El Dhar, was arrested in San Juan and faces felony charges. He attempted to rush the cockpit and had to be restrained by seven flight crew. He was restrained with a tie and seat belt extenders in a seat at the back of the aircraft until the flight safely landed in San Juan. Passengers who revolt on a flight should be given the same rights as those who planned the World Trade Center attack. Some time in Guantanamo with waterboarding as justice might do them some good. Feeling like drowning might be a wake up call for weak individuals who are fearful of putting a mask over their face to help protect others.

 

Pro COVID-19 Advisors

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Florida has surpassed 50,000 dead from COVID-19.  Abput 9,000 people in the state have died over the past month. Florida Governor Ron DeathSantis just shopped around for a new surgeon general and thee person he picked,  Joseph Ladapo, appeared in the ‘Demon Sperm‘ Doctor’s COVID Conspiracy Video. That video was removed from Facebook, YouTube and Twitter for violating their policies on sharing COVID-19 misinformation.

DeathSantis really does not want a health expert as his surgeon General, he just ants someone who agrees with  blocking funding for schools in the state that have attempted to make students wear masks so they can safely study. The funds that were blocked are being covered by president Joe Biden. The new pro COVID surgeon General stated that getting vaccinated is a personal choice that individuals have to make. He seems to feel that eating fruits and vegetables are equally important to getting vaccinated. Ladapo has so far not outlined any measures to help prevent Covid deaths in Florida.

The former president embraced the ravings of Scott Atlas, the Rasputin of 2020, whose training was in neuroradiology, not infectious diseases. Atlas promoted herd immunity, or allowing the virus to infect everyone no matter how many people died to build natural immunity. He felt all public health restrictions were unnecessary. In other words, his policy advice was, “letting ’er rip”. This is pure insanity. Enter Ron DeathSantis who invited Atlas to Florida to give him advice. All of the DeathSantis policies are following the “letting ’er rip” objectives. He wants all Floridians to get infected, starting with the children, and yes many will continue to die needlessly. The unvaccinated only realize their mistake as they are gasping for their final breaths. You can’t make an omelet without breaking some 50,000 plus eggs.

Every Brilliant Thing at the Shakes

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I had a blast designing posters for this season’s shows at The Orlando Shakes (812 E Rollins Street Orlando, FL 32803). The first show now on stage is Every Brilliant thing by Duncan MacMillan with Jonny Donahoe. The show stars Suzanne O’Donnell as the narrator.

Laughter is the antidote to all things. When mom is depressed, a young child sets out to assemble a list of all the things that make life wonderful. From “ice cream” to “sunshine” to “laughing so hard milk shoots out your nose”. The list grows as the child progresses from adolescence to adulthood. Told in collaboration with the audience, this uplifting story explores resilience, and the lengths we will go for those we love.

The creative team consists of, Director: Anne Hering
Scenic Designer: Kurt Bippert
Lighting Designer: Delonte Smith
Sound Designer: Britt Sandusky
AEA Stage Manager: George Hamrah*
AEA Assistant Stage Manager: Anne Hering*

*Member of Actors’ Equity Association

The Shakes will require proof of vaccination or a negative test result for audience members. This brave move puts my mind at rest. They are also providing a special section in the upper mezzanine for patrons who wish to be distanced from other parties. When purchasing, seats for this section are indicated in bright red.

The poster underwent a series of adjustments and explorations and I will share the sketches leading up to the final version shown above.

The first version consisted of colorful post it notes being covered with children’s drawings. I loved the idea of a large children’s drawing of the sun being the idea that encircles the title. The child’s hands drawing gave off the vibe that the show might be for children. It needed a touch of darkness to balance the light. The child’s hands had to go.

The next ides as to show the mom and to paint her in black and white to contrast the colorful sun and post it notes. I planted a post it right over her face, as if to protect her identity. Part of the challenge is that we did not know who would be playing the lead roll in the production yet. We were not sure of the lead would be male of female. I liked the notion of portraying the mom but anyone who does not know the show would likely think the person portrayed was the lead actor. That presented a new challenge.

Next I made it clear the yellow post its were falling from the sky with the children’s drawings on them. I removed the post it not covering the mom’s face and had to lean her head back in such a way that it would be difficult to tel if the person portrayed was female or male. I failed. she clearly looks female. I would have to try another tack.

Since the show was running in September and October I decided to try changing the vibrant sky to a view of fall foliage with the post its falling like leaves. A thicker fall coat and scarf might help further make the sex of the character less obvious. I tilted the head even further back to dance on the end of the pin. The fall scene however evoked a bit of menace that I didn’t intent. Since the first production of the play had a male actor in the lead roll we decided I should do a version with a man where I wasn’t tilting the head back as much.

So this version with the man shouting for joy was considered to be the best option at the time. I did an earlier version where he had closed fists but that was interpreted as showing hints of protest rather than joy. For me this worked because the face was clearly visible and his joy radiated from his expression. Months passed and then I heard that Suzanne O’Donnell was cast in the lead roll. We decided to have her pose in the same way and she was worked onto the poster at the last moment before marketing began for the season. I turned that painting around in one day but it was so worth it. Her expression exuded a pure serine joy that was truly needed.

I can’t wait to see the show. I will be sketching from the socially distanced seats but I am so happy the Shakes is bringing live theater back to Orlando responsibly. Hopefully others fill follow in their footsteps.