Clapton arrives at the crossroads, but follows the wrong path

I was saddened last week to read that Eric Clapton, one of rock music’s most popular and enduring superstars, has announced that he will not perform in any venue that requires the audience to be vaccinated against Covid-19.

With a worldwide fan base in the tens of millions, Clapton is exactly the kind of celebrity who should be coming forth in public and the media to encourage every citizen to take the Covid vaccine so that someday, in some fashion, we can begin to defeat the deadly virus that has killed more than four million people around the globe.

Instead, at a time when infections are surging again and hospitals are being overrun with unvaccinated patients, many of whom wind up on ventilators before they die, Clapton is encouraging audiences to transform arenas and other music venues into super-spreader events by showing up unvaccinated and, I’m sure, unmasked as well.

Reading his comments, I was at first disappointed and later outraged that a celebrity of Clapton’s magnitude would not only take this position but also feel compelled to come out with a statement in the press. He would have been better served to keep his anti-vaccination sentiments to himself.   

(What’s worse, the stories I read linked Clapton with Van Morrison, another of my all-time favorite musicians who is, apparently, another science denier. How terribly disappointing is that?)    

For some perspective, the number of Covid cases in the United States alone is spiking nearly everywhere you look, due mainly to the number of unvaccinated people and the effects of the more contagious delta strain of the virus. In 46 states, the rates of new cases are at least 10% higher than in the previous week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, and in 31 states, new cases surged by as much as 50%.

In Florida, where Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has repeatedly boasted about his Covid response, the state now leads the U.S. in the number of new Covid-19 cases, and hospitalizations are rising at the fastest rate since the start of the pandemic. According to The Wall Street Journal, “The state accounts for one in five new infections in the U.S. and logged 73,181 cases over the past week. Florida had 341 cases per 100,000 people (and) the total of new cases reached its highest point since mid-January. Deaths in Florida totaled 319 over the past week, the most among states, with a rate of 1.5 per 100,000 people, according to the CDC.”

And USA Today projects that the current surge of cases will last through the fall and peak in mid-October, accelerated in part by the rapid spread of the delta variant.

Justin Lessler, an epidemiologist from the University of North Carolina, told NPR that if only 70% of eligible U.S. residents get vaccinated and the delta variant becomes 60% more transmissible, the current surge would climax with approximately 60,000 new cases and 850 deaths each day in mid-October. Currently, only 57% of eligible Americans have received at least one dose of vaccine – far below Lessler's 70% threshold.

Meanwhile, I continue to see television ads and even local promotions for a variety of events, based on the faulty notion that the virus is behind us and we can now return to activities as normal. This is clearly not true in any way.

And finally, after months of lashing out at mandatory mask rules and so-called “vaccination passports,” even some Republican governors and politicians are realizing that the anti-vaccination message is a serious mistake, especially since a majority of those newly infected individuals are unvaccinated science deniers who tend to follow Fox News and the GOP.

The Republican governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, is emphasizing the need to get vaccinated while acknowledging the mountain of misinformation he must climb. “I go into these town hall meetings and someone said, ‘Don't call it a vaccine. Call it a bioweapon,’” he said.  “And they talk about mind control.”

And that brings me back around to Eric Clapton again. I have always admired his musical talent and the way he overcame serious drug addiction to help establish the Crossroads substance-abuse rehabilitation center on the Caribbean island of Antigua. The man is 76 years old and still plays music for millions of adoring fans. But when it comes to Covid-19 and the wisdom of getting vaccination, Clapton has seemingly arrived at another crossroads … and unfortunately has taken the wrong path.  

I’m sorry, but knowing what I know now, I can’t think about Clapton (or Van Morrison) in a good way ever again ... and that may be the biggest disappointment of all.

A shieldWALL Extra rant

I don't know about you, but I don't care what Trump thinks about Facebook and Twitter. I don't care what he thinks about Ashli Babbitt. I don't care what he thinks about critical race theory or the Manhattan district attorney. In fact, I don't care what he thinks about anything, so please stop clogging up my news feed with his daily rantings and ravings.

He is obviously an insane person who should have been locked in a rubber room several years ago. The news media helped him become president -- a job he really didn't want -- with wall-to-wall coverage in 2015 and '16 when his campaign was nothing more than a publicity stunt to bolster his brand. They thought he was a joke, but the joke was on them.

Now it looks like they're helping him again by covering every crazy thing that falls out of his mouth.

When I see his photo on Facebook, I "hide" the post, because looking at his face makes me somewhat ill. The best thing the legitimate media can do is ignore this fascistic con man liar and limit his audience to the nutbags who believe he's still the president, the earth is flat, liberals eat babies, vampires exist and Fox News is fair and balanced.

Screw your ratings, all you media moguls. Think of the country, the future and the lives of your children, because this subhuman cretin and his under-educated followers clearly don't. I've come to the conclusion that Trump doesn't need Facebook or Twitter when he has the Washington Post to write a story about him every day, and MSNBC to repeat the story every hour of every day from 1:00 until midnight.

Please ... stop giving him time and space. They are oxygen to malignant narcissists like him. Without the adulation, he surely will shrivel up and die, and the rest of us can move on with our lives.