Community Choirs struggle to sing together againExBulletin

The Skagit Valley Choir in Washington held a rehearsal in early March 2020, making it a COVID-19 superspreader event.

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The Skagit Valley Choir in Washington held a rehearsal in early March 2020, making it a COVID-19 superspreader event.

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There are few activities to spread COVID-19 as effectively as singing. Therefore, choirs nationwide have been practicing at zoom and parking lots for over a year. However, as more people are vaccinated, many choirs are aiming to return to face-to-face singing.

For the Skagit Valley Choir in northwestern Washington, the return highlighted a philosophical division within the group.

At the rehearsal on March 10, 2020, the choir experienced one of the country’s first and most famous superspreading events.

“All schools were open, all libraries were open, all stores were open. Everything was open on the day of the last rehearsal,” said one of the group’s co-presidents in Alto. Ruth Backlund says.

Until a few hours before the rehearsal, there were no known cases of COVID-19 in the area. Skagit Valley is an hour north of Seattle. It is an agricultural center famous for the spring tulip festival.

“It was a general consensus that it was okay to observe social distances and wash your hands,” says Buckland. “So we did it. Extremely we did it.”

The choir encouraged people who were worried about getting sick to stay home. However, for those who attended the rehearsal, the leaders loaded hand sanitizers and expanded their membership to the Presbyterian Church of Mount Vernon as much as possible.

61 people came to the rehearsal. Within a few weeks, 52 people were diagnosed with COVID-19. Several people were hospitalized and two of the choir members died.

Early evidence

“This particular incident was one of the first strong evidences of possible aerial transmission. [of COVID-19]”Dr. Lee Hamner, chief infectious disease of the Skagit County Public Health Department, said.

If COVID-19 hadn’t spread in the air, “it seems mathematically impossible. After a long period of staring and working, 52 people will get sick at once,” she says.

The Superspreading event was a turning point for scientists to understand the disease.

Today, the Skagit Valley Choir is rehearsing weekly at Zoom, but the group plans to return to face-to-face rehearsals this fall. Their imminent reunion created a conflict between singers over the need for vaccines.

“Some people said I wouldn’t come back until I saw everyone else’s vaccination card singing in the room with me,” says Buckland.

One of the singers in favor of everyone who gets vaccinated is the soprano Nina Tallering. She sang in a choir with her mother, and both her parents came down at COVID-19 during the outbreak.

“Unless there is a medical reason for not being able to do that, I hope people really think of it as kindness to those around them and protection for the entire group,” says Tallering.

But she added that politics is a hindrance to group consensus building.

“It’s hard for me that this is a political issue at some level, and we don’t trust experts, and we don’t always trust science.”

Other singers are against delegation or vaccination on their own.

One is Carolynn Comstock, the second co-president of the group in the soprano.

“I vaccinated all my children. I believe in all those vaccines,” says Comstock. “But I had a COVID, and I got a pretty good case of it, and as far as I am concerned, I don’t need a vaccine.”

The CDC recommends that people who have had the disease also be vaccinated with the COVID-19 vaccine.

Comstock believes it should be a personal choice and says he is confident in the science of showing that people show an immune response after infection.

“It may mean that the Skagit Valley Choir has decided that I can’t sing with them,” she says. “I’m the president, but I get only one vote.”

But if the group decides not to need the vaccine, other singers say they will feel forced to leave.

It’s unclear what choices the choir will make, but Buckland says their love for the song wants to keep them together.

“The good thing about signatures is that they can be restored like magnets,” she says. “And how you feel politically doesn’t really matter. How I feel politically. If our voices are mixed, isn’t it important?”