South by Southwest had barely finished its comeback year in Austin, Texas, with hundreds of bands playing packed clubs and music, tech and movie attendees filling conference rooms, when the COVID-19 posts began on social media.
“Yes sxsw was a superspreader event,” singer-songwriter Charlotte Cornfield tweeted, “and yes my entire band got covid, as did many others.” Added Kat Burns, her Canadian colleague known as Kashka, also on Twitter: “Every person I know that played sxsw this year got covid. How can we resume making a living when it’s not safe yet?”
But was SXSW, with its maskless out-of-town visitors sharing air in and out of indoor and outdoor venues for three straight weekends, truly a significant COVID-19-spreading event? Austin statistics suggest a spike, but not a dramatic one: 67 new cases when the festival opened March 10, compared to 211 March 29, nine days after it closed; hospitalizations have dropped. “We are aware there have been some social-media posts,” says Desmar Walkes, Austin Public Health’s medical director, “but from what we’re seeing, we’ve had a very small percentage of people becoming positive as a result of attending South by Southwest.” Texas cases increased in the same period, which Walkes attributes to spring-break “travel and massive movement.”
Still, some SXSW attendees speculated that the numbers were low due to at-home tests, plus out-of-town visitors returning home and testing positive afterwards, away from Austin.
In this time of reduced pandemic restrictions, with kids and workers returning to schools and offices and vaccinations largely preventing serious illness, is the idea of a super-spreading event still relevant? The music business is contemplating this question as it prepares for more SXSW-like events, from next week’s Grammy Awards to next month’s Coachella.
(Billboard’s parent company PMC is the largest shareholder of SXSW and its brands were official media partners of SXSW.)
Although the risk of severe illness or death from COVID remains minuscule, bands whose members test positive must derail tours to recover. After their SXSW showcase March 18, singer Livvy Bennett of Atlanta band Mamalarky tested positive (along with keyboardist Michael Hunter) and is now “able to just recuperate and quarantine.” Fortunately, the band had no immediate touring plans. “It hurts to blink and move my head,” Bennett, who is vaccinated and boosted, said by email because she felt too sick to talk by phone. “It felt like we were in another one of those golden periods where transmission was lower, but maybe those are just a myth.”
SXSW was one of the first major music events to cancel after the pandemic began in March 2020, and last year it returned virtually. For the hybrid 2022 version, which included live events and online performances and panels, the conference required attendees to wear masks at official conference rooms and exhibitions and show proof of vaccination or a negative test. At many crowded performances and panels, though, the number of attendees wearing masks was minimal.
“SXSW was the least mask-enforced of all the shows on this run so far,” says Sasami Ashworth, who, as Sasami, performed an Austin showcase during the conference. “Many of the shows were outside, but people seemed to think we were in some alternate reality.”
For Sasami, SXSW was more evidence that concert venues everywhere need to remain vigilant about protecting artists and fans, regardless of regional public-health guidelines. “Some venues are very, very supportive. All venue staff wear masks, they put up signs to encourage mask wearing,” she says. “Some venues, you arrive, and you have to have the awkward conversation of asking everyone working to please put a mask on and sometimes they will stop wearing it unless you ask them repeatedly. It’s definitely very draining for an artist to have to do this.”
With COVID-19 cases declining since the omicron variant peaked in January, Austin and SXSW were following the lead of many state and local governments, as well as the CDC, which relaxed mask-wearing guidelines last month for lower-risk communities. Public-health officials, according to University of Southern California medicine and public health professor Jeffrey Klausner, have pivoted from preventing COVID-19 spread to preventing serious illness and hospitalizations, using tools such as vaccinations, treatments and testing.
Organizers of upcoming events, according to Klausner, , should remind attendees that vaccinations are “highly effective” and work on improving ventilation at indoor venues. Alex Huffman, a Denver University aerosol scientist and associate chemistry professor, adds that social-distancing, wearing masks, staying outside and staying home with COVID-like symptoms remain crucial tools to prevent the spread of disease. “I’d love to normalize the targeted use of masks,” he says. “Seeing a mask as a political symbol is just short-sighted and misinformed.”
Whether SXSW was a “super-spreader event” or not, the conference reflects public-health rules and government mandates at this point in the pandemic: Get vaccinated, to ensure that even if you test positive, you’re almost certain to not get seriously ill. But, yes, as the world resumes to normal, there is still risk of contracting COVID-19.
Many who tested positive for COVID-19 after attending SXSW did not blame festival organizers. Kevin Buist, who works on design strategy for Gray Matter Group, moderated a March 15 panel during the tech portion of the festival, then tested positive three days later after developing a fever, cough and fatigue. “To pick up your badge, you needed proof of vaccination, and they did on-site rapid tests,” says Buist, who is fully vaccinated. “I feel pretty good about that.” Kat Rodgers, who attended the tech portion of the festival as a community manager for Web3 publication Water & Music, tested positive afterward. “When people were doing stuff in the evening, they were generally without the mask,” she says. “When I saw my positive COVID results, I was like, ‘Makes sense.’ I wasn’t surprised at all.”
“It’s not really SXSW as an institution that can do that much about it,” says Mamalarky’s Bennett. “It’s a crowd mentality.”
