Gig in Japan: music venue Covid guidelines turn the nonsense up to 11

Japan live-music lovers got some good news recently. Whereas before, the Covid guidelines for live music venues requested that venues kill the fun with capacity restrictions and requests to watch in silence…

Covid guidelines: Capacity restrictions, tell audience members to wear masks and stay silent

…from now the guidelines state that venues can hold gigs at 100% capacity and audience members can sing along! But there’s a catch.

Covid guidelines: Conditions set for audience members to be able to vocalise; 100% capacity is accepted

So what exactly are these “conditions” for allowing audience members to sing along?

On top of basic infection prevention measures being followed, voices shouldn’t raise above the level of normal conversation and the time audience members vocalise should be about 25% of one song.

The Swiss Cheese Model graphic in the background of the previous screenshot should have told you that the “conditions” were going to be ridiculous. And they didn’t let us down. Note that the guidelines are voluntary, so venues can ignore them and tell audience members sing for 50% of a song if they wish.

The full 22-page guidelines are so inane that I feel like I lost 10 IQ points after reading them. Below are some highlights.

• The word mask appears 31 times (!), and venues are advised to tell audience members to not talk while eating, drinking, or smoking. Staff are also advised to weak masks while taking out the rubbish.

• “Disinfection” appears 22 times, with special attention to be paid to doorknobs and handrails.

• Coin trays are to be prepared so that audience members don’t pass cash to staff directly, and the trays should be regularly disinfected or washed.

• Partitions should be placed on tables.

• Hand-dryers in toilets shouldn’t be used. Toilet lids should also be closed before flushing.

• Staff uniforms should be thoroughly laundered.

• Performers should not engage the audience in call-and-response and shouldn’t touch audience members’ hands.

You get the picture. A considerable amount of thought went into the guidelines, but no thought was given to the basic question “Is there any point to this?”

Although no randomised controlled trials have been conducted to test the effectiveness of disinfecting doorknobs, eating in silence, or using hand-dryers, there have been two RCTs on gig going.

The first was conducted in Barcelona in December 2020 and involved 1047 participants. After testing negative on an antigen test, the experimental arm got to attend a 5-hour music event where they could sing and dance without physical distancing, but masks were required. The control arm went home.

The primary endpoint was RT-PCR positives 8 days after the gig. The only two positives were both in the control arm.

The second was conducted in Paris, France in May 2021 and involved 6678 participants: 4451 attendees and 2227 non-attendees. The same as in Barcelona, attendees could sing and dance without physical distancing but had to wear masks. The researchers went as far as to evaluate mask compliance during the event.

Figure 2: Overall mask-wearing compliance during the gathering. Red circles represent the percentages of adequately masked (nose and mouth covered) faces, calculated for increments of 5 min. Red vertical lines represent the 95% CI for each value.

The results were similar to those of the Barcelona study too.

The day 7 RT-PCR was positive for eight of the 3917 attendees (observed incidence, 0·20%; 95% CI 0·09–0·40) and three of the 1947 non-attendees (0·15%; 0·03–0·45; absolute difference, 95% CI −0·26% to 0·28%)

In both studies, the researchers took the low infection rates among the attendees as evidence that masks, screening tests, etc. were effective. Well, they would say that wouldn’t they.

But at least all gig goers in Japan will able to make some noise for now on. Which is more than can be said for those going to football and baseball matches.

Sport in Japan suffers in silence