COVID-19 - An ounce of prevention is worth 10,000 tons of cure!
Below is a copy of the email that Danny sent out to all band and support staff on March 3rd. We've made some edits to now make hand washing a requirement before each set.
Hello everyone,
With my career before being a full-time musician being in public health and prevention, I would be remiss if I didn’t come up with a plan about how to do our best to prevent the spread of any virus, and specifically with this new COVID-19 virus. Coincidentally, my first internship at A&M was in a virology lab that studies coronaviruses. I’ve seen a few recent news articles with quotes from my old boss.
First and foremost, I DEFINITELY don’t think there’s anything to gain from panicking or being overly anxious about this. However, I do think we should approach it with the utmost seriousness and do what we can to control what we can control. While many of us may be in a low risk-group and there’s a lot we don’t know about this at the time of this writing, several of us in the band have family and friends that are elderly where infection poses a more serious risk as well as family and friends who are immuno-compromised or have a lung condition to where prevention is ESSENTIAL.
We are in a work environment where we are using our hands on a lot of things. Touching our instruments, gear, cables, giving high-fives (for reals), singing in to mics, etc. Furthermore, with weddings there are a lot of guests and family members from all over coming in to the event so naturally, we have much more exposure than a lot of industries.
As a result, I want to establish a few new protocols to do what we can to prevent what we can:
1) When you get to the gig, and before we start each set, go in and wash your hands following the CDC hand-washing guidelines.
Scrub your hands with soap for at least 20 seconds (two times through “Happy Birthday” … or pick a chorus you like to sing through :)). Try to avoid the door handle on the way out. It might be best to have one person be in charge of the door. This way we start with a baseline for sanitization.
2) Form the habit and muscle-memory of learning to cough into your elbow or shoulder rather than your hand.
I used to always cough into my hand and even though Liz would point it out to me, I couldn’t seem to break the habit. I would just reflexively do it anytime I had a scratch in my throat. So what I found helpful was even just fake coughing into my elbow/hand to form the muscle memory pattern. (As I’m typing this there’s a guy working down the table from me at Starbucks who keeps coughing into his hand … how do I lovingly point this out to him?!?)
3) Keep everyone posted on how you are feeling and don’t worry if you need to cancel out of an abundance of caution
If you are feeling like you are developing a cold or feeling weak/like you might be getting something, keep everyone you have been in contact with afloat on where you are so that they can be on the lookout for their own symptoms. Beating this is ALL about minimizing exposure and spread to others. Before a gig, of course if you develop anything concerning (fever, coughing, shortness of breath), let me know right away and don’t come to the gig. Even though we all play a huge role in creating the memories and party at our events, we can still rock a crowd if we don’t have a full team and have to make some edits. This goes for me too.
4) Hand-sanitizer
Alcohol-based hand-sanitizer doesn’t seem to be available anywhere so if anyone has some they want to donate to the mixer rack, we can keep some on there to use before sets. I will be disinfecting the mics and in-ear packs between gigs.
5) Hand shakes
I hearby declare high-fives and hand shakes no more! We’ll now go to fist-bumps or just kicking our feet together for greetings.
That’s about it for now. Keep calm, wash your hands, and keep rocking,
Danny