New Poll Suggests Most Americans Won’t Go to Concerts Again Before There’s a Coronavirus Vaccine

At the risk of beating a dead horse: concerts aren’t coming back for a long, long time. There’s really just no way to pack a bunch of people tightly together in a venue before we have a vaccine for COVID-19, and that’s not gonna happen before sometime next year at earliest. And even if health experts and government officials decided to look the other way and allow large public gatherings to take place before that happens (which would be monumentally stupid and unsafe), a new Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll suggests most Americans wouldn’t be interested in attending unless there was a proven vaccine, anyway.

The poll, which surveyed 4,429 American adults, found that “only 27% of those questioned would go to a movie theater, concert or live theater performance when venues reopen.” 32% asserted that “they would wait for a vaccine before going back to the movies, theater or concerts.” And four in ten of those surveyed “said they were willing to wait, even if it takes more than a year to develop a vaccine,” while “said they either ‘don’t know’ what to do or may never attend those events again.”

Those are some scary numbers for music industry. Do you seriously think bands like Guns N’ Roses, Mötley Crüe, and Megadeth are gonna play to venues that aren’t even half full? Is there any way they’d ever be able to recoup the costs of producing their shows with that kind of attendance? No. No, there is not, and they will not.

This is the new reality, everyone. It sucks, but we all have to learn to live in it.

[via]