Concerts, Festivals, and COVID 2021

There is no better evidence that live music is back with vengeance than the upcoming Wasteland Festival in the Mojave Desert in California this September.   Attracting upwards of 4000 attendees it will feature world-class talent like Militia Vox, a costume ball, and a car show, plus lots of flames.  Along with Wasteland, the festival season includes  Riot Fest, Imagine Festival,  ARC Festival, Austin City Limits, and many more in the Fall plus the festivals that livened up June, July, and August.

I was especially interested in the Wasteland Festival because it is 5 days, with “tribes” setting up camps, folks staying in RVs, tents, and homemade structures which means lots of opportunities to intermingle. Because of the inherent problems of putting 4000 or more people together for a wild week in the desert, Wasteland has many pages of rules covering costumes, vehicles, safety, courtesy, structures, fires,  and other stuff, all quite reasonable and responsible.  Many of the other festivals and outdoor events like Grand Performances in Los Angeles also have pages of rules designed to keep people happy and safe.  But I was interested in the fact that few, if any, have rules about Covid 19.

 I recently hosted an event for my music friends while I was on vacation in LA.  We moved the event outside, although the venue, Casa Sanchez on the Westside, has a cavernous indoor dining room with a full stage for mariachi music and the guests included a major, award-winning mariachi artist.  Everyone had to be vaccinated and no one could attend with symptoms even if they were fully vaccinated (one popular pop singer dropped out when her boyfriend got Covid although they were vaccinated and he and she tested negative before the event).

These precautions seemed reasonable to me and to my guests, so I wonder about several thousand people occupying the same space, dancing, breathing, and who knows what for hours or even days without masks or vaccine requirements. Given the high rates of vaccination in many, but not all, parts of the country, music festivals and outdoor concerts are not likely to be the super spreader events they could have been in pre-vax days. So far, festivals in the previous months have not caused major infections. 

Nevertheless, I noticed that the cities of  Los Angeles and San Francisco have tightened the rules in the wake of Delta and are moving forward with requirements that patrons show proof of vaccination against COVID-19 before entering into indoor spaces like concert halls. The State strongly recommends but does not require, that organizers of large outdoor events over 10,000 screen attendees to make sure they’re either fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or have recently tested negative. Some venues are going beyond that to require vaccinations for entry, no exceptions. On Tuesday, Los Angeles County health officials announced that anyone attending large outdoor events such as concerts and festivals would need to wear face coverings, regardless of whether they’ve been vaccinated for COVID-19. 

In my experience, despite characterizations to the contrary, musicians are a pretty responsible bunch.  No one wants to give his or her band members Covid – witness my pop singer friend’s refusal to come to an outdoor event even though her boyfriend had apparently recovered and they both tested negative.

Music audiences,  however, may be different animals. My pop singer friend said she and her boyfriend (who also performs) quarantined for almost a year, stayed safe, got vaccinated, and then decided to perform at one large show.  The one time they left the house and performed, he caught Covid, probably from an audience member. 

Music audiences are bombarded with messages from the stage and various screens to get vaccinated. But statistics show that the messages are not working well – people between the ages of 18 and 24  have lower rates of getting the shots than their parent’s generation, or their older siblings and they are filing hospitals nationwide.

So what about the music festivals and outdoor concerts?  

They may not be a major problem since studies show that the transmission of the virus is massively reduced outdoors, although the virus can survive in air droplets for as long as three hours and on some hard surfaces for up to three days.  But  Covid is killed quickly by the ultraviolet rays in the sunshine (quoting reports broadcast by the BBC), so the hot days in the desert at Wasteland may produce nothing but a lot of dead viruses, at least on the medical front.  

We won’t know until late fall if the resurgence of festivals and outdoor music does give Delta new pathways.  Perhaps if states and promoters decide to impose mask mandates like the one in LA county, the question will be moot. In the meantime, Wasteland attendees have a great opportunity to creatively incorporate Covid masks into their Mad Max headgear and maybe start a festival fashion trend.