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COVID-19

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Source: Dmitri Zelenevski / Getty
Concern is growing as the rate of hospitalizations due to COVID-19 is increasing across the United States as summer winds down.
According to reports, recorded data shows that COVID-19 hospital admissions were at 9,056. That number is an increase of 12% from the week before. However, when compared to data recording peaks from the past—44,000 weekly hospital admissions at the beginning of January, almost 45,000 in late July 2022, and the 150,000 admissions during the Omicron variant surge of January 2022—this surge isn’t worrying some in public health.

One reason is that while the rising amount of COVID-19 found in the wastewater of cities across the U.S. since June has been noticed, especially in the Northeast and the South, the rate is still 2.5 times lower than last summer according to Biobot Analytics epidemiologist Cristin Young, who is working with the Centers For Disease Control (CDC). Levels of the virus are currently being monitored at over 1,300 sewage treatment plants across the nation.
Another factor is the rate of immunity and vaccinations that have already taken place and the preparation of a newly updated COVID-19 vaccine for the fall which will address the Omicron XBB.1.5 strain. This differs from previous vaccines that contained a combination of the original and more common Omicron variants. 
There is a newly detected COVID-19 variant, EG.5 which is being unofficially dubbed “Eris”. This variant is believed to be behind 17% of all new COVID-19 cases in the states. The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently called the Eris variant “one of interest”. So far, researchers are noting that it doesn’t seem to be presenting a serious issue. “The virus does not appear to be evolving to become either more transmissible or more lethal at this point,” said Dr. Jay Varma, an epidemiologist at Weill Cornell Medical College.
“It is ticking up a little bit, but it’s not something that we need to raise any alarm bells over,” said Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health infectious disease specialist Dr. David Dowdy. Health officials are again advising people to take precautions, such as masking up and sanitizing thoroughly. “I’m not sure if it’s a surge, per se, or just uptick,” said Dr. David Boulware, a professor of medicine specializing in infectious diseases at the University of Minnesota Medical School before adding that it’s a reminder “that, yes, Covid still exists.”

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Livestream concert start-up Mandolin shut down on Monday after its business struggled to survive following the resumption of in-person concerts.

Mandolin launched in the spring of 2020, alongside over two dozen similar platforms, when widespread COVID-19 lockdowns forced in-person experiences online. In 2021, the company raised $12 million from venture capital firms including Mark Benioff’s TIME Ventures to hire more staff to support its mobile version Mandolin Live+ and it to fund the acquisition of competitor NoonChorus.

Mandolin’s chief executive Mary Kay Huse, a former Salesforce executive, aimed for Mandolin Live+ to become a companion app to live concerts, allowing fans who couldn’t make it in person to watch the event live at home — just as fans of a sports team might, but with more interactive features. However, on Monday, the company said it was closing its doors and gave little context.

“We are sad to announce that after 3 incredible years of connecting artists and fans more authentically through digital experiences, we are officially closing down our product and business operations,” a statement on Mandolin’s website reads.

“We’d like to sincerely thank our clients and partners for their belief in our mission and the time spent helping us develop a platform that truly empowered artists to own their fan relationships. Though we can no longer lead the charge, we firmly believe market power will continue to shift toward better supporting artists in this endeavor and we are all so appreciative of the feedback, faith and validation you’ve provided over the years to get us this far.”

Bruce Springsteen was forced to perform without three of his E Street bandmates over the weekend after they had to bow out of the group’s Dallas, Texas show on Friday.

According to The Boss, both guitarist Steven Van Zandt and violinist/singer Soozie Tyrel tested positive for COVID-19 ahead of their tour stop at the American Airlines Center, while Springsteen’s wife singer/guitarist Patti Scialfa was also absent from the stage for undisclosed reasons.

“We got a few members missing tonight – Stevie Van Zandt – COVID, Soozie Tyrell – COVID, Patti Scialfa… But goddammit, we’re gonna give Dallas the best show they’ve ever seen,” the rocker told the crowd at the top of the show before promptly jumping into 1980’s “Out in the Street.”

For his part, Van Zandt took to Twitter to assure fans he was already on the mend, tweeting, “Thank you all for your best wishes and positive vibes. I’ve got a very mild case and hope to be back for Houston or Austin at the latest.” He soon followed his tweet up with another informing his followers he had received both the COVID-19 vaccine and a booster. “That’s why it’s a mild case. No real danger or damage,” he wrote.

Billboard has reached out to Springsteen and the E Street Band’s rep for comment on whether the next planned tour stop, on Tuesday (Feb. 14) in Houston, Texas, will feature the full band. Meanwhile, the band is continuing their international tour with a planned stop in Austin on Thursday (Feb. 16), before heading to Kansas City, Tulsa, Portland, Seattle, Denver and more. The U.S. leg of the trek will conclude on April 14 with a hometown show in Newark, New Jersey before the band jets off to Europe.

Check out fan-captured video of Springsteen explaining his bandmates’ absence as well as Van Zandt’s string of tweets below.

Thank you all for your best wishes and positive vibes. I’ve got a very mild case and hope to be back for Houston or Austin at the latest.— 🕉🇺🇦Stevie Van Zandt☮️💙 (@StevieVanZandt) February 11, 2023

Shania Twain has overcome a number of serious health issues during her career, battles with Lyme disease and dysphonia that robbed the singer of her signature powerhouse country pop voice and led to an extended break in the early and mid 2000s, as well as throat surgery in 2018 to shore up her weakened nerves.
But in a new interview with England’s The Mirror, the “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” star said she was so sick during the pandemic that she had to be airlifted to a Swiss hospital. “It was progressively getting worse. My vital signs were getting worse… and in the end I had to be air evacuated,” Twain told the paper about the time she got COVID pneumonia in the midst of the global pandemic while in Lake Geneva, Switzerland and got so sick she could hardly breathe.

“It was like science fiction, I felt like I was going to another planet or something,” she said of the surreal helicopter ride to a local health clinic. “It all kind of happened in slow motion.” Luckily, Twain added, husband Frédéric Thiébaud — a Swiss exec for Nestlé — was there with her through the health ordeal, scrambling to find a scarce bed for his sick wife.

“My husband was freaking out, to be honest. He was really panicking because he was the one having to pull it all together,” she said of his rush to get her help. “He spent hours and hours every day on the phone, trying to get an air evacuation coordinated, trying to get a bed lined up, as there were none, checking my vital signs. It was just a real nightmare for him.”

Once they found a bed, Twain, 57, said she was placed in isolation and given plasma therapy drugs during a frightening episode. “It took several days to start building up any antibodies at all, so it was a very dangerous time and very scary,” she said. “I made it through and I’m just so grateful.”

Soon enough, Twain began to recover and begin working on her upcoming sixth studio album, Queen of Me, which is due out on Friday (Feb. 3).

Oops! Renée Elise Goldsberry jumped into the comments section on Laura Benanti‘s latest social media post Monday to congratulate her for… catching COVID?

The LOL-worthy gaffe occurred when Benanti shared her positive coronavirus test on Instagram after taking her daughter Ella on a trip to the New York City Ballet, writing, “Happy New Year? (I tested the day of the ballet and was negative…I also wore my mask so everyone is safe, don’t worry!).”

However, the original Hamilton cast member appears to have thought her fellow Broadway star was sharing a positive pregnancy test on her feed, and mistakenly wrote, “AAAAAAH! Congratulations!” in a now-deleted comment, all while other Broadway stars like Kristin Chenoweth and Jessica Vosk added their commiseration and well-wishes for Benanti’s speedy recovery.

On Tuesday (Jan. 3), Goldsberry offered some hysterical context for her mistake via Twitter, writing, “Drunk scrolling on my birthday… Wrong positive test…” with a facepalm and laughing emoji before adding, “Love you, Laura! Feel better!”

For her part, Benanti seemed focused on making sure her recovery was as low-key and relaxing as possible. “Dear Laura: you do not need to spend this quarantine writing the great American novel, or a pilot, or a play, or a song,” the Tony winner wrote on her Instagram Story. “You do not need to clean and organize your basement. You do not need to organize your email into categories. You do not need to return the thousands of unread emails in your inbox. You do not need to journal, or reflect or read books that challenge you. You can rest and watch tv and read cheesy novels and that doesn’t make you lazy. K?”

Back in October, Goldsberry’s musical sitcom Girls5eva was officially renewed for a third season and will find a new home on Netflix after originating its first two seasons on Peacock.

See Benanti’s post lamenting her positive COVID test and Goldsberry’s amusing response to her accidental congratulations below.

A California judge says Metallica’s insurance company doesn’t need to pay for six South American concerts that were canceled when COVID-19 struck, thanks to an exclusion in the policy for “communicable diseases.”

The band earlier sued a unit of Lloyd’s of London after it refused to cover their losses stemming from a South American tour, which had been set to kick off on April 15, 2020, but was postponed when the governments of Argentina, Chile and Brazil imposed strict restrictions amid the worsening pandemic.

Though Metallica’s insurance policy expressly excluded any coverage for events canceled by “communicable diseases,” Metallica’s lawyers argued that COVID-19 itself wasn’t clearly the most direct cause of the tour cancellation.

But in a decision on Nov. 30 obtained by Billboard, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Holly J. Fujie said she didn’t buy it.

“The travel restrictions which caused the concert cancellations were a direct response to the burgeoning COVID-19 pandemic,” the judge wrote. “The evidence … demonstrates that the COVID-19 pandemic spurred the travel restrictions to South America and restrictions on public gatherings. The COVID-19 pandemic was therefore the efficient proximate cause of the concerts’ cancellations.”

Metallica’s lawyers had also argued that the “diseases” exclusion didn’t apply at all, since the exact wording of the policy said Lloyd’s wouldn’t pay coverage stemming from a disease “or fear or threat thereof.” Citing that language, the band said “none of its bandmembers felt threatened or fearful.”

But Judge Fujie was similarly unswayed, ruling that the Metallica policy’s language “does not require that the policyholders [themselves] feel fearful or threatened.”

The ruling granted Lloyd’s so-called summary judgment, meaning the case is dismissed. Metallica’s attorney did not immediately return a request for comment on the decision. The ruling was first reported by Law360.

Metallica’s case is one of many that have been filed by music venues, bars and other businesses seeking insurance coverage for harm caused by COVID-19. Like Metallica’s case, the majority of those lawsuits have thus far been won by insurers. Many policies include express carveouts for problems caused by diseases, like the one in the band’s contract; other policies for brick-and-mortar businesses often require “physical damage” that’s tricky to show with a pandemic shutdown.

The biggest such case in the music industry is a sweeping lawsuit filed by Live Nation, seeking coverage from Factory Mutual Insurance Co. for more than 10,000 shows (encompassing a whopping 15 million tickets) that were canceled or postponed during the pandemic.

Factory Mutual tried to end the case by arguing that virus shutdowns are not the kind of “physical loss or damage” that would be covered under the wording of Live Nation’s policy, but a federal judge ruled in February that Live Nation might have a valid case: “The complaint sufficiently alleges that infectious respiratory droplets, which transmit COVID-19, are physical objects that may alter the property on which they land and remain.”

The lawsuit remains pending.

DENVER — Tennyson’s Tap was the kind of music club where, on packed nights, the lone frazzled employee serving drinks, running sound and manning the door might ask one of the bands to help out and collect the $5 cover charge. I know because I sang in one of those bands, Smaldone Faces, and our bassist Luke and I pretty much let everyone in for free.

The Tap, at 4335 W. 38th St. in Denver, specialized in whiskey and scruffy musicians of every conceivable genre — my two bands that played there did country, punk and metal covers, and we opened for screamo indie-rockers, jazzy improvisationalists and dreadlocked funk-and-reggae combos. The bar smelled like cigarettes and beer, and had a capacity of about 90, but when we drew our crowds of 20 or 30 people, it roared like Springsteen at the Roxy.

“It’s one of those places where everybody’s right in your face. You don’t just hear the music, you feel it,” says singer and guitarist Aaron Garcia, whose Denver band 78 Bombs played its first gig there. “It’s so comfortable, it’s like an old shoe — an old Chuck Taylor.”

A few weeks ago, I drove by the Tap and the beige-colored, shack-like building was now a pile of collapsed lumber and cinder blocks as tall as the nearby telephone poles. The band I’m currently in, Sid Delicious, played its last gig at the Tap on March 6, 2020, and we soothed our small crowd that was feeling nervous about COVID-19 through the healing power of the MC5’s “Kick Out the Jams.” Cody, the big-bearded sound guy, had assured us that, just as 9/11 had brought people together, live music would never die, and offered plenty of hand san.

The bar closed a week or so later, and remained that way. “LOVE,” read the marquee. Eventually, somebody painted “Thank you!” on the wall outside.

Through quarantine, Fauci, Trump, vaccines, anti-vaxxers and the triumphant return of live music, I drove by, waiting for the band names to reappear on the marquee. But the Tap, like B.L.U.E.S. On Halsted in Chicago, the Satellite in Los Angeles and, this year, Exit/In in Nashville, couldn’t make it — despite the Small Business Administration’s multimillion-dollar grants to thousands of music venues forced to temporarily shut down during the pandemic.

According to the National Independent Venue Association, more than 25 U.S. clubs have permanently closed in 2022.

“For a whole year, I kept that place open and legal and ready to open the doors,” says Dave Fox, one of the club’s co-owners, who also ran a recording studio as part of the same corner complex. “But it was really the landlord’s decision to not proceed with the corner.”

The neighborhood surrounding Tennyson’s Tap is a long-since-gentrified portion of Northwest Denver known as Berkeley, and over the past 20 years, condos and coffee shops have replaced the old hardware store, the family-owned window-repair business and the music shop that used to repair my keyboard after I banged the “E” key too heavily during the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” The previous, longtime property owner suggested to Fox he could keep paying the Tap’s lease, but, according to Fox, new owners went in another direction last year.

(Representatives for the property, listed with the Colorado Secretary of State, did not respond to calls and e-mails about what they might do with the site of the former Tennyson’s Tap.)

In January 2011, Fox and a partner opened the Tap and began booking music. The odd national touring name played there, like metal-and-bodybuilding star Thor, but the club showcased mostly local artists, as many as five per night. A bartender, Cat Ackermann, was also a musician, and inaugurated a karaoke night; Leonard Apodaca, one of the club’s managers, had the idea to merge Taco Tuesdays and dance music, and it became a high-grossing, heavy-drinking success; the bar’s lack of genre discernment drew metal, ska, funk, jazz, reggae and, yes, punk-and-metal cover bands.

“We found the underlying grit in the DJ scene,” says Apodaca, who indulged me when I showed up at the bar on Tuesday afternoons to beg for new gigs, sometimes after we managed only 15 or 20 people at the previous ones. “All those people are used to going to clubs and paying a big cover. One night a week, they didn’t have to get all dressed up, they didn’t have to worry about going downtown. They can just be themselves. The girls would come out in sweatpants and backwards baseball caps.”

Sid Delicious hasn’t played a gig since that March 2020 night at Tennyson’s. A couple of our members were dedicated quarantiners and were reluctant to expose their young kids until they were eligible for vaccines. Then, last summer, we booked a date, but it was on a difficult night, in an inconvenient part of town, and, unlike band-friendly Tennyson’s, required us to rent our own PA, haul it in, figure out how to set it up and sound-check it ourselves.

We eventually canceled the gig. We’re figuring out how to move forward, but the band is adrift without the perfect venue, one like Tennyson’s Tap, where you could rock an hour long set on a tiny stage, closing with Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades,” after which Cody would hand you an envelope containing one or two crisp $100 bills. Of all the things we lost during the pandemic, a dingy old club with a back room for darts was not the most consequential.

Or, maybe, it was.

“It was just a community,” Apodaca says. “It’s all basically dirt now.”

What remains of the site of Tennyson’s Tap in Denver.

Steve Knopper

Ice Cube has confirmed reports that he lost an opportunity to make $9 million because he wouldn’t get a COVID-19 vaccine.

In the newest episode of the Million Dollaz Worth of Game podcast this week, Ice Cube revealed that his refusal to get vaccinated forced him to turn down an acting gig. “I turned down a movie because I didn’t wanna get the motherf—ing jab,” he shared, adding, “I turned down $9 million because I didn’t want to get the jab. F— that jab and f— y’all for trying to make me get it. I don’t know how Hollywood feel about me right now.”

He then clarified, “I didn’t turn [$9 million] down. Them motherf—ers wouldn’t give it to me because I wouldn’t get the shot. I didn’t turn it down. They just didn’t give it to me.”

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Back in October, it was reported that Ice Cube departed Sony’s upcoming comedy Oh Hell No, in which he would’ve co-starred with Jack Black, after declining a request from producers to get vaccinated. Ice Cube and Black partnered on the project in June, and the Sony film was looking to shoot this winter in Hawaii with Kitao Sakurai in the director’s seat. The film has since pushed back its production start.

Watch the full episode of Million Dollaz Worth Of Game featuring Ice Cube below.

After years of trying to sell his hard-charging sound to Canadian country radio, Cory Marks had finally found his hit song and opening tour slot to propel his career forward in 2020. The year prior he released his first bankable hit, “Outlaws and Outsiders” — an anthemic track produced by his new label boss and  collaborator Ivan Moody from Five Finger Death Punch with features from country legend Travis Tritt and rock icon Mick Mars of Mötley Crüe.

The song hit No. 1 on Billboard’s rock chart and helped earn him an opening slot for Canadian country legend Gord Bamford’s 2020 tour. 

Then the pandemic hit, and the breakout career of the former Royal Military College hockey player was temporarily put on ice. But after a three-year wait, Marks is returning to the road, opening for a joint headlining tour with 5FDP and country singer Brantley Gilbert. 

“I am ready to get out there,” Marks tells Billboard from his home in North Bay, Ontario. “We came out of the COVID-19 lockdown much later than everyone else and now I’m ready to get back out there and perform some of the new music I’ve been working on.”

In August 2020, Marks released his debut album Who I Am, a mix of hard rock and metal with a countrified guitar-style and lyric-play on songs like “Blame it on the Double,” “My Whiskey Your Wine” and “Another Night in Jail.” Marks recorded the album with award-winning producer Kevin Churko in Churko’s Las Vegas studio and the pair will soon be dropping an EP with more rock-oriented tracks, including new single “Burn It Up” on Moody’s label Better Noise Music as a track for BPM’s 2021 film The Retaliators.

Staying busy, Marks said, helped his mental health and kept him balanced – he also got his pilot license during the pandemic and recorded a video at an airbase belonging to the Royal Canadian Air Force for his new song “Flying,” which will be his hardest rock oriented track yet. 

“I almost got into some Lamb of God vocals with that track” Marks jokes. “It’s inspired by fighter pilots, which has always been my dream, and the intensity of that type of flying as well as the time spend waiting on the tarmac, sometimes for hours.” 

Marks is managed by Jim Cressman. His tour with Five Finger Death Punch and Gilbert opens Nov. 9 at the Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, MI. Learn more at CoryMarks.com.  

Car Seat Headrest singer Will Toledo told fans on Tuesday (Oct. 18) that he is unable to embark on the band’s planned West Coast U.S. tour and an appearance at this weekend’s When We Were Young festival due to what he described as ongoing serious health issues.

“After another month of struggling to regain my health, I am currently forced to face the fact that my body lacks the basic levels of functionality necessary to leave the house most days, let along embark on a tour,” Toledo wrote in a note to fans.

Though the 30-year-old singer did not specify what is ailing him, he said as a result of his illness they’ve been forced to pull out of the all-star When We Were Young event at the Las Vegas Festival Ground (Oct. 22, 23, 29) slated to feature sets from Paramore, My Chemical Romance, AFI, Hawthorne Heights, Jimmy Eat World, Bright Eyes, The Linda Lindas, Manchester Orchestra, The Used and many more.

“We are unfortunately forced to pull out of the When We Were Young festival dates and cancel our upcoming California tour,” Toledo noted of scheduled October dates in Pioneertown, CA (Oct. 20), Los Angeles (Oct. 25), San Diego (Oct. 26) and Santa Ana (Oct. 27). Refunds for the headlining dates will be available at point of purchase.

The band also pulled out of the Frantic City Fest in New Jersey on Sept. 24 citing unspecified “continued health issues as well as a planned Sept. 2 slot at Out of Space in Evanston, Illinois due to a rebound case of the post-COVID condition “histamine intolerance,” which Toledo said involves “heavy nausea, fatigue, dizziness and a ‘buzzing’ nervous system.”

Check out Toledo’s note below.