El Paso County Judge Worried COVID Might Spread With Live Music Coming Back

For a year now, we have heard nothing but cancellations of festivals and musicians staying home and not touring because of the COVID-19 pandemic. All of our station's events were cancelled last year, the Sun City Music Festival, wine festivals, all gatherings that used to draw thousands of El Pasoans and others from out of town were quiet last year for fear of spreading coronavirus. But that could all be changing, and it has El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego upset.

A couple of days ago, the County Judge spoke to a local news outlet who asked the question, is bringing back live music a good idea? The judge answered rather emphatically, "Absolutely not!" He said that he felt that El Pasoans had finally gotten the message that the COVID-19 pandemic is something that needs to be taken seriously and we need to be prudent in the way we deal with our day-to-day lives.

Samaniego also said that we need to remember that we are now dealing with a virus that is mutating. Worldwide, there are a handful of mutations of the the coronavirus that are not considered to be more deadly, but they are considered to be more easily transmissible. The United Kingdom, Brazil, and South Africa have all had COVID-19 variants named after them and they have all been detected in the United States over the past few weeks. Those variants could set us back in reopening completely and getting completely back to normal. So what are businesses to do? One business owner said he wants to see live bands return to the El Paso scene.

I'm not a business owner so I'm not dealing with the kind of economic impact that they are due to the pandemic, but really, live music? We shouldn't be getting together with our families for special occasions to prevent spread, but having a bunch of people in a bar with live music? It sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Hopefully if this does happen people take a lot of steps to be safe, but it should probably be something we aren't encouraging.