New York and Los Angeles Mayors Concur Concerts Won’t Return Until 2021

Both New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti cannot see major concert events returning in 2020.

Bill de Blasio told Wolf Blitzer on CNN, “I think everyone should recognize that those big events should be one of the last things that we bring back online.

“I’ve got to see my city have real steady progress even before starting to think about relaxing some of those social distancing standards. Even a little bit.

“I want to get people back to work, I want to get kids back to school. I think it’s going to take months to go through that whole sequence. The last thing we should do is gather 10,000, 20,000, 50,000 people in one place. That is the complete opposite of social distancing. We shouldn’t do that until we are really sure we are out of this crisis.

“I think it could take quite a while. People want to get the basics back. They want to get back to work, they want to get back to school. I am a big baseball fan but that’s the thing I can live without to make sure people are healthy and safe”.

Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles agreed. “It’s difficult imagining us getting together in the thousands anytime soon,” he told Blitzer. “I think we should be prepared for that. We have all never wanted science to work so quickly but until there is a vaccine or some sort of pharmaceutical intervention or herd immunity, science is the science.

“Health officials have been very clear. We have got many, many miles and miles to walk before we are going to be back in those environments. We can perhaps watch sporting events without audiences on TV or listen to concerts as we have been doing. It’s important to us as we are physically distanced to have that spiritual and social connection. That is something we are doing very much here in Los Angeles.

He added that arena and stadium concerts most likely won’t occur again until 2021. “It would be very difficult to see that,” he said. “If public health officials say we have the green light (maybe). People have to think about it this way. This is not about a Mayor bringing bad news. These are difficult decisions to make physiologically. I have always been clear. If we get together and hundreds of people come down with the coronavirus, we might only have 5 or 10% who come down with COVID-19 by the fall. That means 90 or 95% of use could still get it. Nothing I’ve heard would negate that we could be in a large gathering soon and probably not for the rest of this year”.