“Eric Clapton refuses to play venues that require proof of vaccination – Clapton says he won’t perform for a ‘discriminated audience’ after vaccination passports made mandatory for clubs and venues this autumn”: https://bit.ly/3hVvgiY

Telegram post delivery Clapton’s announcement: https://bit.ly/3i45IAp

Eric Clapton is doubling-down.

This week’s must-read article is Paul Krugman’s in the “New York Times”: https://nyti.ms/2V9i3tG

Now I know you hate the “Times,” and dismiss whatever Krugman has to say, but this article is really about the paper of New Zealand social scientist Xavier Márquez entitled “The Mechanisms of Cult Production.” Bottom line, it’s all about “loyalty signaling.” Doesn’t matter If what is being said is insane, it is uttered to show loyalty to the cause, the fearless leader, to be a member of the group. Which is why it’s impossible to get the anti-vaxxers to get vaxed. Forget science, forget the truth, IT’S A CAUSE!

Same deal with Eric Clapton.

So he had a reaction to the Astra/Zeneca vaccine. Boofuckinghoo. What’s worse, having side effects for a limited time or taking the risk of DYING?? Come on, I got the Moderna shot and I felt the side effects of the first shot for a week and then sweated through the night after the second. Am I busy complaining, saying I’m a wuss and I just can’t handle a little physical disorder, that evaporates, all in the name of protecting me? OF COURSE NOT! Come on, Clapton is 76 years old. You don’t make it that far without a whole bunch of medical intervention. It’s not like Eric has never had a jab before. As a matter of fact, Clapton pulled out of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert in 2009 because he had to have his gallstones removed. I wonder, did they do it without anesthesia? Did Clapton jump off the operating table and say I’M CURED! And play a gig the very next day? NO WAY!

You can’t be too scared to get better. I’ve had a slew of operations and someone once said this to me. I had a friend who recently had a brain tumor, the size of a croquet ball, benign, thank god, and he was hesitant to get the surgery. But he did and how is he now? FINE! Was he fine right thereafter? No, he was in the hospital for a week and then a rehab facility. Is he still feeling the pain now? NO!

But somehow western medicine is seen as inferior. The health industry is looking to rip you off, never mind in England they have the NHS, where the profit incentive is eliminated, not that Clapton would use it, he probably has his own high class private doctors, but why all this anti-vaccine crap?

BECAUSE HIS BUDDY ROBIN MONOTTI IS ANTI-VAX! So who is this mystery man with such power over Eric C… An Italian architect and film producer! Eric, let’s say you’re on vacation and you have a mishap, do you want Mr. Monotti to stitch you up, perform surgery, or do you want to go to the hospital and use the services of a professional? There’s no doubt in my mind you’d use the pro. But too many people in the world today believe they’re medical experts, even though they never went near a medical school. Come on, if you’re educated and have a health problem the first those in your circle say is…YOU NEED TO TAKE VITAMINS! CHANGE YOUR DIET! Steve Jobs tried that, what happened to him? HE DIED!

As for vaccines causing autism… One guy writes a discredited paper and you’ve got all these people refusing to believe he was wrong. Do these people still believe the earth is flat? That was the belief before explorers proved it to be round. Why this investment in crackpot theories? Because they need answers, they just can’t believe the luck of the draw harmed them. But that’s the reality folks. My father was dedicated to the doctor but died of multiple myeloma at 70. Meanwhile his buddy Harry was sloughing off, but somehow lived past 90. Am I asking somebody to pay me for the early death of my father? No, I ACCEPT IT! But no one can accept misfortune anymore, someone has to pay. If not a corporation then the same government they want to put in the bathtub and drown.

As for negative opinions… Go on Amazon, I dare you to find any product without a one star review. I just looked up Apple’s 13″ MacBook Pro, a great leap forward with the M1 chip. Are there one star reviews? OF COURSE! 3% of the reviews are one star. But do I put my faith in them or the 2,660 five star reviews representing 90% of all responders?

You can find support for any cockamamie theory online.

I remember when my back went nuclear, everybody surrounding me said not to have physical therapy. Online they told me not to have injections. So I went for months of acupuncture… Did it work? NO! I’d had a good experience with the needles twice previously, but now that I was in excruciating pain with a herniated disk and could barely walk, they did not help, not a whit. So at loose ends I went to the dreaded physical therapist. Granted, the best guy in the city that the best doctor in the city recommended. End result? I WAS CURED! Meanwhile, both of those professionals take insurance, it’s just a matter of doing the research, making the phone calls, putting in the effort to find these people. As for the shot? Wouldn’t get one. But suddenly, literally two decades later, when my back went insane again, I decided to take the plunge…ONE SHOT CURED ME! I felt like an idiot for not getting the shot before, enduring a year of insane pain. The same way these people feel like idiots when they’re unvaccinated and get Covid and nearly die. But do we have to experience everything personally, can we learn nothing from those with expertise?

So Clapton plays on a Van Morrison anti-lockdown tune, “Stand and Deliver,” it’s linked in the Telegram post, but to make it easier, check it out here: https://bit.ly/3wZrGJ1 It’s got 386,265 views on YouTube in six months. It’s doing a bit better on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3rAKKfp where it’s got a whopping 776,332 listens. If you were a newbie you’d still be a barista, you can’t live on that number of streams. As for Morrison’s post insanity double album “Three Chords and the Truth,” most people aren’t believing, they think it’s all false, because of the fourteen tracks therein only three break into seven digits, which is single-digit millions for the math-challenged. VERY LOW SINGLE DIGIT MILLIONS, one three plus, one barely two and another bubbling under two. As for the rest of the tracks, one has only 360,164 streams. This guy is an international icon, with Clapton on guitar, AND NO ONE CARES! BECAUSE HE’S OUT OF HIS MIND! The crowd may not be getting vaxed, but they do know Van Morrison’s off his rocker.

“Stand and deliver

You let them put the fear on you

Stand and deliver

But not a word you heard was true”

Yup, those vaccines contain a microchip to track you! Meanwhile, the auto business is hobbled because it can’t get any chips. Where did Bill Gates get the hundreds of millions of chips? From Qualcomm? The ones used to make 5G cellular radios? I don’t see these same anti-vaxxers throwing away their smartphones, they need them to spread their falsehoods on social media!

So Clapton wakes up when his phone stops ringing. He posts a video online saying everybody is abandoning him but he’s gonna stay the course. Because god forbid he’s wrong. An educated man admits mistakes, it’s the only way you can get to the truth. But not the Republican party, and not Eric Clapton.

Did he ever wonder if everybody else was right and he was wrong?

As for delivering his messages via the architect/film producer… That’s like promoting your album via the social media site of a poet, or an auto parts manufacturer. What if someone told Clapton streaming was bad and he needed to take all his tracks down. Even Bob Seger, the Luddite, put his tracks on Spotify, although he still won’t put up those Warner LPs, despite the fact that “Back in ’72” is one of his best and contains the haunting original version of “Turn the Page.” Proving, if you’re taking guidance from musicians…let them not be your only source of information.

So Eric wants the unvaccinated to come to his shows. I’m sure the oldsters will bring the youngsters to experience Slowhand. Meanwhile, did you read today that thirty one kids at a summer camp in New York tested positive? https://nyti.ms/3BAnmU6 Hmm… So let’s say the kids get infected during the show, god forbid one even dies, because youngsters can get Covid and a five year old died in Georgia yesterday, not that Marjorie Taylor Greene will admit it: https://nbcnews.to/3ruFMkv I’d expect most people to know these stories, because they’re all over the news! But most people are not paying attention. Lewis Hamilton won the F1 race in England last weekend after Max Verstappen crashed after contact with Hamilton’s car. End result? Tons of racial hate on social media. But my friend, Mr. Formula1, said it was just online trolls, he didn’t see the story so it must be small. But if you Googled it was all over the big news sites, even NBC, which he professed to watch! As for regular F1 news, I’m constantly referencing stories from formula1.com, but he doesn’t check that site so he doesn’t know, even though it’s the main F1 site. So I ask you, what else do people not know? And to what degree are they invested in their positions? I had to send my friend four mainstream news articles re the racist Hamilton hate before he believed it was a major story. You see people are invested in their takes. So if you’re expecting them to back down and get vaxxed…

Meanwhile, my vaccination did not work, because I take Rituxan, which wipes out your B cells, I still don’t have any, the immunologist told me NOT TO LEAVE THE HOUSE! A month ago he told me I could meet people outside if we were both masked, but no longer, BECAUSE OF THE DELTA VARIANT!

Meanwhile, we’ve got Fox telling you not to get the jab, yet all these reporters have gotten it. But not the police and firemen, and those are the ones you might interact with.

But no, trust Eric Clapton and Van Morrison. Go out and take the risk of being infected. As for the odds of a bad vaccine result, they’re far outweighed by the risk of getting Covid-19. Then again, in America it all comes down to how you feel. Or you’ve got some bogus story how science doesn’t apply to you. Like my friend who said she once had a negative reaction to a vaccine and her mother told her she doesn’t need any more so she won’t get it. She says she’s playing it safe. Come on, how many people do you know who said they were playing it safe who got Covid? Never mind spread it to others.

As for Clapton, he’s got no power against Covid-19, against science. He can say what ever he wants, it makes no difference. Change a chord in a song, miss a note, the penalty is not DEATH! But art is fuzzy and science is not. As for the vaccines being new science…WRONG! They’ve been working on mRNA vaccines since SARS, it’s just that you weren’t aware of it. But no, they’re untested. Give me a break.

As for Clapton’s evisceration of his image, it’s similar to Solzhenitsyn, who made it to the west and great acclaim with “The Gulag Archipelago,” but ultimately went back to Russia and became a supporter of the government. Sure, the art remains. Then again, Jeff Beck is a superior guitarist to Clapton, it’s just that he doesn’t write or sing so all the attention has gone to Eric. You see popular image does not align with skill. Oh, you may think Clapton is superior, even Page, but it doesn’t matter, art is subjective, BUT NOT SCIENCE!

And the truth is Clapton is not in control of the gigs anyway, it’s the government and the promoters. And it’s the promoters who are paying Clapton, so they want to protect their investment. So Eric, if the shows don’t sell out because people are afraid to come are you willing to give back part of your guarantee? Are you willing to forgo a guarantee completely and get paid on percentage of box office? NO! You’ll talk about startup costs, you want PROTECTION! And the truth is, SO DOES EVERYBODY ELSE! (Well, at least reasonable people.)