Posted on 04/21/2020 7:36:22 PM PDT by Slainte
The 2020 installment of Milwaukee Irish Fest—originally set for August 13-16 at Henry Maier Festival Park—has been canceled. Sigh.
Irish Fest joins fellow Henry Maier Park festivals PrideFest, German Fest, Polish Fest, and Festa Italiana in canceling or postponing their 2020 events due to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. Only Mexican Fiesta and Fromm Petfest typically follow Irish Fest on the Summerfest grounds. (As of March 23, Mexican Fiesta was still going ahead with its annual festival.) Summerfest itself has been moved to September.
Here’s a press release:
After much discussion, monitoring and studying the ever-evolving COVID-19 situation, we have made the difficult decision to cancel this year’s Milwaukee Irish Fest. The decision was made now to help mitigate the growing challenges of the significant planning and upfront logistics required to successfully execute the festival. Milwaukee Irish Fest, which is the world’s largest Irish music festival, was scheduled for August 13-16 at the Henry Maier Festival Park on Milwaukee’s lakefront.
Based on the information we have been able to gleam up until this point, we feel it will be concerning for large group gatherings, such as our 100,000 plus attendees, to be able to come together safely in August. Your health and welfare are our number one priority, and we want to play our part in keeping everyone safe.
If you purchased a ticket in advance of the festival, you will receive an email in the next few days, which will outline in more detail the options that will be available to you. You can either transfer your tickets to the 2021 festival, donate your ticket money back to Milwaukee Irish Fest to support us as a nonprofit, or receive a refund for your tickets. Refunds will automatically be issued to anyone who purchased the Failte Club VIP Experience.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out. You can contact us at: info@irishfest.com.
We will miss seeing you all celebrate Irish culture with us, but look forward to returning to the lakefront at the Henry Maier Festival Park the third weekend in August (19-22), 2021.
but to stop the whole of American life is insanity...
Darn it! I have been training for the peat throwing contest all year!
Grab this thought: The reason the virus has passed over us is -—— because of the cancellations of large group activities such as this one!
For the Lord’s sake think!
Why?
That is so weak. We are surrendering without a shot fired.
For Lord's sake what about the vendors who make their legitimate living on festivals like these.
Go ahead and cower at the chinese communists.
You’re nutty. August? Gimme a break....
The pandemic pearl-clutching Puritans are petrified pondering that someone, somewhere, might actually be having FUN.
Live free or die!
Death would be better than this existence.
The Vendors will not be making a living if they died from the virus!
What has cowering before the Chinese communists have to do with dying from the virus?
Look at the pearl clutching Karen’s pre-ChiCom Virus. Their existence was “we must do something” about everything from the waiter forgetting a side of Ranch and demanding the Manager to global warming.
These types never lived, they always existed.
What?
Think holding such events in mid-August hot weather will re-start the pandemic?
What about Christmas festivals, when it’s cold and the virus can survive. Let’s start closing those now!
Absolutely! I agree with you —Hold off on large activities like this and others until it is deemed safe for all.
(I just cancelled out of a trade show that the has 20,000 attendees in the Fall.)
I guess you are a prisoner of fear, and the term "Live free or die" is totally alien to you.
How idiotic.
I could see canceling it if it was scheduled for May or June, but canceling that far in advance is ridiculous.
I've been tracking coronavirus cumulative fatality data by state but I adjust it for each state's population and then equalize their timeline. Specifically, I standardize each municipality's cumulative COVID-19 fatality count by its population, then multiply the resulting quotient by the US' population of 329MM to put everyone on a common/US scale. I then index each municipality's time-series to Day 1, where their size-adjusted fatality count is right before it breaches 1,000 people. This corrects for what I call the "Golf Problem" where broadcasts of the Masters etc have to show not only each golfer's score, but which hole they're at. I also list the Day 1 date and the population for reference.
I want to compare and contrast WI and PA. Both breached 1,000 adjusted fatalities around the same time (Mar 27 and 28, reps). Around Day 5, WI starts posting more adjusted fatalities but by Day 11 each state is basically neck-and -neck. But then PA starts pulling away and since Day 20 PA's cumulative adjusted fatalities have been double that of WI.
I've been to both States and there are many cultural similarities. They are good comparable states. However, I monitored the PA response to COVID-19 and the state really clamped down hard, early - indeed, Wolf locked down populous Montgomery County in early March. I haven't monitored WI like I have PA, but from what I've read, WI's response wasn't as vice grip-like as PA's. Indeed, WI had actual in-person voting with everyone hacking up COVID-19 on their fellow citizens etc.
And yet, PA as of Day 24 was basically right at the national average of adjusted fatalities, ranking as the 8th highest on an adjusted fatality total basis. All that statism and forced social distancing etc. in PA simply hasn't delivered the goods - the best thing you can say is PA isn't as bad as D.C. or Louisiana et al.
Now, I'm not a flubro or an exponential hysteric (btw, it's actually a logistic curve but I digress). But the data are clear: WI is well below the national average in terms of adjusted fatalities and ranks lower than 18 states but higher than higher 12 states as of Day 22.
Does this argue for a total return to normalcy in WI right here, right now? Maybe...maybe not. But it sure as heck doesn't argue for sustained total quarantine. After all, Reagan and the Pope were both shot....but they eventually were released from the hospital. They went on to helped defeat communism.
Let's let the American worker and economy also recover like Reagan and Saint John Paul II. I believe Wisconsin should be released early from the hospital.
You just don’t get it.
By your rationale, with around 40,000 per year dying from auto accidents, the government should put a cap on all vehicle speeds at 30 mph.
This is about putting the hurt on the economy to take out Trump in November.
Thanks.
IIRC, the shutdown was to flatten the curve. OK, curve flattened.
This rationale was never to prevent infections & death, just smooth it out for the sake of hospitals, first responders, etc.
So they slipped the camel’s nose under the tent, and now they’ve redefined the reason for the shutdown.
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