Anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist Eric Clapton cancels shows after he gets COVID!
Musician Eric Clapton, an anti-vaxxer, was forced to cancel a part of his European tour after contracting the coronavirus while performing in London. Clapton, 76, who claimed earlier that he experienced serious adverse effects from his AstraZeneca shot, will not play the dates in Zurich or Milan.
According to a statement posted on his Facebook page on Monday, he got the virus after playing at the Royal Albert Hall on May 8. According to the statement, "intensive internal discussion" led to the decision to cancel his next two gigs in Zurich and Milan in the hope that he would be able to perform in Bologna on May 20. The musician, who is believed to be completely immunized, slammed the global vaccine rollout as a 'mass formation hypnosis' earlier this year and produced an anti-lockdown song titled 'Stand and Deliver' with Van Morrison in 2020. The statement read: "Eric Clapton is unfortunately suffering from Covid having tested positive shortly after the second concert at the Royal Albert Hall. He has been told by his medical advisors that if he were to resume travelling and performing too soon, it could substantially delay his full recovery."
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It concluded: "It is very frustrating that having avoided Covid throughout lockdown and throughout the period when travel restrictions have been in place Eric should have succumbed to Covid at this point in time, but we very much hope he will be sufficiently recovered by the end of the week to be able to perform the remainder of the planned performances."
"The shows are due to be rescheduled within the next six months and tickets purchased will remain valid for the new rescheduled date."
In a January 2018 interview with The Real Music Observer YouTube channel, the 76-year-old singer lambasted the vaccination deployment, claiming that subliminal messages buried in advertising drove people to get the shot. He said, "Whatever the memo was, it hadn't reached me. Then I started to realise there was really a memo, and a guy, Mattias Desmet [professor of clinical psychology at Ghent University in Belgium], talked about it."
"And it's great. The theory of mass formation hypnosis. And I could see it then. Once I kind of started to look for it, I saw it everywhere.Then I remembered seeing little things on YouTube which were like subliminal advertising. It had been going on for a long time: that thing about you will own nothing and you will be happy.And I thought, 'What's that mean?' And bit by bit, I put a rough kind of jigsaw puzzle together. And that made me even more resolute."
Scientists have extensively dismissed mass formation psychosis, which attempts to hypnotize masses of people into following instructions against their will.
Clapton explained why he felt compelled to speak out in the first place. He said, "My career had almost gone anyway. At the point where I spoke out it had been almost been 18 months since I'd been forcibly retired.I joined forces with Van and I got the tip Van was standing up to the measures and I thought, 'why is nobody else doing this' so I contacted him."
He said, "I'm just objecting really. But it seems like we're not even allowed to do that. And nobody else is doing it. He sent me 'Stand and Deliver', which he'd already recorded. And it was during the process of talking about that with another musician, getting excited, and sharing the news I found that nobody wanted to hear that. I was mystified, I seemed to be the only person that found it exciting or even appropriate. I'm cut from a cloth where if you tell me I can't do something, I really want to know why."
He further added, "My family and friends got scared, and I think they were scared on my behalf."
Clapton also stated that he quit watching the news because of the one-way traffic about obeying commands and compliance, which aided in his artistic motivation. After expressing his thoughts, the 'Wonderful Tonight' hitmaker, father to daughters Ruth, 37, Julie, 20, Ella, 19, and Sophie, 16, added, "'My family and friends think I am a crackpot anyway."
"Over the last year, there's been a lot of disappearing - a lot of dust around, with people moving away quite quickly. It has, for me, refined the kind of friendship I have. And it's dwindled down to the people that I obviously really need and love. Inside my family, that became quite pivotal... I've got teenage girls, and an older girl who's in her thirties - and they've all had to kind of give me leeway because I haven't been able to convince any of them."
Clapton added: "I would try to reach out to fellow musicians and sometimes I just don't hear from them. My phone doesn't ring very often. I don't get that many texts and emails anymore."
Clapton collaborated with fellow classic rocker turned anti-vaxxer Van on his song, 'Stand and Deliver', in December 2020. The lyrics read, "Do you wanna be a free man / Or do you wanna be a slave?" and "Dick Turpin wore a mask too." Clapton previously revealed a 'disastrous' encounter with the AstraZeneca vaccination, which he blamed on 'propaganda'. The artist went on to say that he had "peripheral neuropathy and should never have gone near the needle."
In a note to his music producer, he stated: "I took the first jab of AZ [AstraZeneca] and straight away had severe reactions which lasted ten days." He added: "My hands and feet were either frozen, numb or burning, and pretty much useless for two weeks, I feared I would never play again.I should never have gone near the needle. But the propaganda said the vaccine was safe for everyone."