“A few nights ago, I joined more than 3,000 audience members from all over the world at the Metropolitan Opera for a performance of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman,” writes Justin Davidson in Wednesday’s (3/11) New York magazine. “As Wagner’s boiling music swirled around the auditorium, it seemed to me that it was carrying microbes on currents of sound…. We’re not taking this threat seriously enough. It’s time to close. Opera, theater, movies, clubs, bars …. are vectors for accelerating the spread of a disease that takes advantage of the human instinct to get on with life…. As a critic, I make my living as a consumer of cultural events. Even so, it’s easy for me to call for a shutdown. I’m not the one who’ll be hemorrhaging millions every night or facing months of unemployment…. It’s not fair or sensible to leave decisions up to institutions and presenters whose business agendas run directly counter to sound public health. If they shut down preemptively, they have to take the hit. If they are forced to close by government edict, they can at least start haggling with their insurers…. The choice is not between a shutdown and no shutdown; it’s between shutting things down now … or waiting until …. the virus has propagated further, and the medical system starts to be overburdened.”
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