When Will Concerts Be Back? By Goldie Ancis

     I, along with many others are huge fans of music. Music is exactly what I need to function, it's constantly in my day-to-day life. Over quarantine, I had plenty of time to explore more genres of music and many other artists. With this comes the urge to hear those artists in person. The loud booming music, the flashing lights, and being packed so close to everyone feels like a fever dream to me. It has been so long since I had last been to a concert. Of course, back in March, we had no hopes of returning to concerts anytime soon but 2021 gives us an idea of when concerts may potentially return. 

    This may sound crazy to some but Anthony Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease claims that if we follow all of the proper rules, concerts may resume in the fall of this year. All of this depends on how successful the distribution of the vaccinations are. As of right now, about 9 million Americans have been vaccinated so far. Dr. Fauci has hopes that soon at least 1 million people will be vaccinated per day in the U.S. In a recent interview, Fauci claims, "If everything goes right, 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,". The hard part about this is getting the majority of the population vaccinated, which means 75% to 85% of Americans would need a vaccine in order for this to be safe. With some being against the vaccine or for some reason not able to get it, this can be a real challenge.

    As we all can imagine, concerts that could potentially come back won't be anything like the ones in the past. So many safety precautions will need to be taken for concerts to have a safe return. The concert venues will need to be very open with lots of ventilation and air filters. The audience would still most likely be expected to wear masks and maintain socially distanced which means not many people would be able to attend. 

    It is clear that we collectively still have a long way to go before we return to "normal" life. The best and only thing we can do is to just continue to take proper health precautions to make sure we all stay safe. By us working together to do this, we just may be back listening to our favorite artists perform. So for right now, I will sadly have to continue daydreaming about seeing Harry Styles, Arianna Grande, and so many more of my favorite artists live again. 

Click the link to see a short clip from the Taylor Swift concert I went to back in the summer of 2018!

https://youtu.be/wngAuUi_joU