

The microphone is literally on their lips - even before COVID, we didn't enjoy that," Althoff says.

"We've all seen those people we swear are trying to eat the microphone. They may be uninhibited because of the effects of alcohol, so people let their guard down," he says.Īnd we need to talk about the microphone. "It's more about the environment - typically a windowless, small area where a lot of people are gathered.

With karaoke, it's not just the singing that's an issue, Naunheim adds. Projecting our voices requires heavier breathing, and that makes all kinds of vocal performances a challenge right now. "The truth of the matter is that when we sing, we put more droplets into the air than when we speak," explains Keri Althoff, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. These sorts of regulations make sense given how high the risks of karaoke can be.
