Good news, everyone! Concert venues and theaters could reopen by fall of this year! According to Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci in an interview with The New York Times, vaccines may provide enough herd immunity to allow live music to resume this fall.
"If everything goes right, this is will occur some time in the fall of 2021," Fauci said, "so that by the time we get to the early to mid-fall, you can have people feeling safe performing onstage as well as people in the audience."
Fauci still suggested that even though live music will resume and participants will be vaccinated, masks still may be mandated "for the foreseeable future" as a safety precaution.
"We’ll be back in the theaters — performers will be performing, audiences will be enjoying it," he said. "It will happen."
Fauci has been pretty accurate with his predictions. He previously predicted a vaccine would be available before the end of 2020, and was right. Hopefully, he'll be right in this case as well.
It should also be noted that President elect Joe Biden will take office on January 20, meaning we'll have an actually effective government handling the pandemic. So that'll be nice. Though I am a little bummed that plastic bubble concerts aren't our future anymore.
With the coronavirus pandemic shutting down any sort of live entertainment, it's hard to get a gauge on when a return to any sense of normalcy will be. When will there be shows again? Will they be social distancing? Will mosh pits ever be permitted again? We have to start somewhere.
