From The Comic's Comic

Comedians and the comedy industry still cannot agree on how to deal with COVID-19, 18 months in

We’ve done it, America!

As of today, more than 677,000 Americans have died from the COVID-19 pandemic, surpassing the numbers who died here during the misnamed “Spanish Flu” pandemic of 1918-1920. The previous century’s pandemic, whose first reported cases originated not in Spain but on a U.S. Army base in Kansas (Kansas!), ultimately killed many millions (estimates range from 17-100 million, remarkably) worldwide over the course of four waves (two in 1918, one in 1919, and the fourth in 1920).

And we’re not done yet. We’re still in our third or fourth wave, depending upon whether you’re talking cases or fatalities. This week, more than 2,000 Americans each day die from COVID-19.

And yet. And yet!

Significant portions of my friends and fellow Americans act as if we’re already out of the proverbial woods, as if we have emerged on the other side of the pandemic, despite these unnecessary, inexcusable daily death tolls. The disconnect feels to me somewhat different from simply a case of cognitive dissonance. Perhaps it’s that dissonance combined with pandemic fatigue combined with self-centered fear about maintaining whatever lifestyle and income people thought they enjoyed in “the before times.” Perhaps that’s fueling their intense desire to get “back to normal.” In New York City, perhaps because it doesn’t feel nearly as horrible as it did in April 2020 when we couldn’t leave the apartment and heard ambulance sirens around the clock.

Whatever it is, I found it welcoming and jarring to see Seth Rogen surprise the 2021 Emmy Awards producers and the audience with his jokes poking fun at their predicament:

“Let me start by saying: there’s way too many of us in this little room. What are we doing?! They said this was outdoors—it’s not! They lied to us! We’re in a hermetically sealed tent right now. I would not have come to this! Why is there a roof? It’s more important that we have three chandeliers than that we make sure we don’t kill Eugene Levy tonight. That is what has been decided. This is insane! I went from wiping my groceries to having Paul Bettany sneeze in my face—so, that’s a big week! If anyone’s gonna sneeze in my face, Paul, I want it to be you. …All right, that’s all the jokes I wrote.”

The telecast quickly got Reggie Watts (DJing the ceremony) to issue a PSA that they were taking all of the necessary safety precautions. And Emmys host Cedric the Entertainer, back onstage later, countered with this joke: “It actually feels amazing in here unlike what Seth was talking about. It feels good. We’re all vaxxed. We had to get vaxxed to come here. I got vaxxed. I did not have a reaction like Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s friend. I got Pfizer because I’m bougie. Pfizer is the Neiman Marcus of vaccines. Moderna, that’s Macy’s. Johnson & Johnson, that’s TJ Maxx.”

Much like almost everything these days, we’ve politicized the pandemic and drawn battle lines against one another.

Joe Rogan, paid multi-millions by Spotify to become the exclusive home of his “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, has spread his ill-informed views on the pandemic throughout the past 18 months.

In late August, he railed against NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio for requiring New Yorkers to provide proof of vaccination when dining indoors or attending indoor events.. “I have a problem because I have a show there in Madison Square Garden in October, and I’ve already sold 13,000 tickets,” Rogan said on one episode. “And now they say that everybody has to be vaccinated and I want everybody to know that you can get your money back…If someone has an ideological or physiological reason for not getting vaccinated, I don’t want to force them to get vaccinated to see a f–king stupid comedy show.”

Naturally, Rogan promptly went to his next tour stops in Florida, where they’d rather make you get sick and pay for treatment than get the vaccine for free and not need to go to the hospital, and promptly contracted COVID-19 himself.

John Cleese, formerly of Monty Python, more recently focusing solely on outrage and the buzzwords of “cancel culture,” also told fans in late August that they wouldn’t need vaccines or negative COVID tests to see him on tour in the U.S. “No, you just need a certificate promising that you have not attended specifically to be offended.”

We’ve strayed a long way from silly walks.

Jim Breuer, the former Saturday Night Live cast member and co-star of Half-Baked, doesn’t have nearly the same reach as Rogan, but also made a big enough deal about boycotting venues that would require his fans to care about public health and safety, such that Tucker Carlson welcomed him with open arms to his top-rated FOX News hour to rant about it.

“Why would you do that?” Breuer asked of mandates. “I don’t want any of my fans forced to come laugh, and they gotta get a shot in them?”

Patton Oswalt, went the other way. Oswalt cancelled his stand-up comedy tour stops in Florida precisely because that state’s governor and legislature would not enforce pandemic safety protocols at venues.

“90 percent of the feedback was very positive,” Oswalt told Jimmy Fallon last week on The Tonight Show. “’Thank you. We’ll see you in the future when things are saner.’ I did get the even split between ‘You’re a Nazi for demanding the cards,’ cause yeah, that was Hitler’s big thing, was making sure that no one was vaccinated….I either get that or I get the ‘You’re a pussy!’ And I was like, why? When did everyone become Thanos where it’s just like, whoever dies, dies. Just go out there. And by the way, if that is your philosophy, don’t die for a (comedy show). Go die seeing Lizzo! Like that’s a good last concert to see.” Laughter. He added: “By the way, you shouldn’t die for any entertainer, but if you are, make it count. Don’t be in the hospital going, ‘I’m so glad I got to see that fat nerd whine about The Mandalorian.’ Beeeeeeep! (imitating flatline).”

There’s so much noise over this, you might wonder just how much comedians care about safety versus how much they care about clout and capitalism, because virtue signaling works even when you’re not so virtuous.

At least have some fun with the chaos.

Thank God Doug Stanhope still lives.

For those of us who have lost loved ones to COVID-19 or related illnesses where overwhelmed hospitals couldn’t save them, none of this seems funny or even imaginable that we’re still having these discussions and debates.

For those of us who’ve been largely spared, the past 18 months still have been tough in a variety of ways, from lost income to lost relationships, and a myriad of other mental, emotional and physical stresses. We’ve lost too many people during the pandemic to suicide and drugs, too.

Within comedy, we certainly had no idea in March 2020 how things would shake out, whether stand-up would have to change or adapt or even whether it could. It seemed a more significant question then than even when some asked it after Sept. 11, 2001.

Of course, we all needed to laugh. And comedians needed to get onstage one way or another.

Remember this New Yorker short video from November 2020, documenting the movement of stand-up comedy out of the clubs and into the streets and parks?

That same month, stand-up comedian Sam Morril, who had released an hour special through Comedy Central’s YouTube in February 2020 (more than 7 million views for I Got This by now), put out a rooftop special called Up On The Roof.

Morril and director Matthew Salacuse returned last week with a new YouTube doc called Full Capacity, talking to comedians starting in April 2021, when New York City’s comedy clubs began reopening with plexiglass barriers and capacity limits.

And Dave Chappelle will premiere his new documentary, Oct. 7, 2021, at the Hollywood Bowl with a special live performance. The film, directed by American Factory’s Oscar and Emmy-winning filmmakers Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar, followed Chappelle’s project creating a “Summer Camp” of shows in his small town in Ohio in 2020.

Morril’s film is striking in how much time we focus on the apprehension of comedians that has nothing to do with getting sick. Instead, they’re self-absorbed about their acts and whether they’ve gotten rusty as performers. That’s not entirely surprising, seeing the irony of comedians who are supposed to be so skilled at reading the room, but if you talk to them, they’d much rather obsess over themselves and how all of this affects them and their careers. Because what’s so funny about an extra one in every 500 Americans dying in the past year and a half?

Ronny Chieng (also seen on The Daily Show, Crazy Rich Asians and Shang-Chi), tells Morril while they’re mocking Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, that the pandemic forced comedians to take a time out in the spring of 2020. “A true vacation,” Chieng said, “whatever you think you had planned for the next month isn’t happening.”

Morril added: “And whatever you put off in your head by being busy, it hits you right in the face. You’re like, I gotta look at this a little bit.”

Some comedians, such as Jessica Kirson, noted the positives of time off from the road and late-nights in clubs, because she could spend more time with her kids.

But here we are in September 2021, and everyone’s attitude now harkens back to the ol’ show biz motto: The shows must go on.

Broadway musicals and productions have reopened. But some small theaters and comedy clubs (including SoHo Playhouse and Broadway Comedy Club) have filed a lawsuit claiming the city’s vaccine mandates unfairly affect their smaller venues.

Meanwhile, the CDC still advises everyone to wear a mask indoors, regardless of vaccination status, because of the Delta variant and the ongoing surge in cases and deaths in just about every state in the United States. In this graphic, updated daily, red and orange represent high and substantial community transition of the coronarvirus.

I know there are reasons not to have the vaccine — aside from the fact that you might have an allergic reaction, there’s also the weirdly ironic case of you already having gotten COVID, so you either have antibodies from successfully surviving it already, or you don’t think you’ll get it a second time. Except you can get it again.

We shouldn’t have to debate any longer over whether COVID-19 is an airborne virus. It is. So wearing a mask just makes sense to help prevent transmission. We shouldn’t have to mandate it, but we have too many people who are too selfish to care about how their selfishness keeps the virus moving and mutating.

Breuer said he hasn’t gotten vaccinated because he already had gotten COVID. “I know my body,” claimed.

Of course, there’s cognitive dissonance between the anti-vaxx crowd wanting control over their own bodies, while also, almost to a tee, passing legislation to control the bodies of other women in the name of “life.” But, of course, they know that, too. They’re trolling us. But that’s another story for another day.