Transfiguration Greek Orthodox Church
Same Sad COVID Chorus
RECEIVED Wed., Dec. 29, 2021
Dear Editor,
Austin is failing its music/bar industry … again. A quick walk through Downtown shows pretty quickly what COVID has done to our local bar and music industry. So it's particularly disappointing to find that our city is continuing to let down that same industry when it comes to COVID protections/testing. Having recently been in several other large American cities where testing is free and ubiquitous it is just so depressing coming back to Austin where testing is not only hard/impossible to find, its often very expensive. Whereas most other major cities have several free COVID sites in their downtown areas ... Austin has two to cover the entire city, one near McKinley Falls and the other at the Expo Center in far East Austin. Most convenience stores are regularly sold out of at-home tests, and a test at a primary care physician, if you can even get one, is around $200 for an uninsured individual, which is particularly common among musicians and bar industry workers.
So in an industry full of people struggling to make a paycheck, in a city rapidly growing too expensive for many workers, how many workers who may have been recently exposed to someone with COVID or who are exhibiting symptoms are going to pay $200 to get told they can't work? Especially coming into NYE, one of the more profitable nights in the industry? The city (and of course the state) are ignoring providing for even the barest of minimums to ensure the safety of its service/music industry along with many of it's other blue-collar communities, and everyone is going to pay the price for it. Y'all enjoy NYE.
Austin is failing its music/bar industry … again. A quick walk through Downtown shows pretty quickly what COVID has done to our local bar and music industry. So it's particularly disappointing to find that our city is continuing to let down that same industry when it comes to COVID protections/testing. Having recently been in several other large American cities where testing is free and ubiquitous it is just so depressing coming back to Austin where testing is not only hard/impossible to find, its often very expensive. Whereas most other major cities have several free COVID sites in their downtown areas ... Austin has two to cover the entire city, one near McKinley Falls and the other at the Expo Center in far East Austin. Most convenience stores are regularly sold out of at-home tests, and a test at a primary care physician, if you can even get one, is around $200 for an uninsured individual, which is particularly common among musicians and bar industry workers.
So in an industry full of people struggling to make a paycheck, in a city rapidly growing too expensive for many workers, how many workers who may have been recently exposed to someone with COVID or who are exhibiting symptoms are going to pay $200 to get told they can't work? Especially coming into NYE, one of the more profitable nights in the industry? The city (and of course the state) are ignoring providing for even the barest of minimums to ensure the safety of its service/music industry along with many of it's other blue-collar communities, and everyone is going to pay the price for it. Y'all enjoy NYE.
Austin Bartender