CMU School of Drama


Tuesday, April 20, 2021

UK Plans Concert Without COVID Restrictions to Test Impact

www.ticketnews.com: A crowd of as many as 5,000 will be allowed to attend a UK concert in early May with no social distancing or face coverings, as part of an effort to determine reopening efforts and safety plans. The concert, which features indie-pop band Blossoms, will take place on May 2 at Liverpool’s Sefton Park, which has a capacity of 7,500 without distancing. The event will “inform our approach to ensuring future big events can take place safely,” according to Health Secretary Matt Hancock.

3 comments:

Kaisa Lee said...

This is an interesting concept. However, I would think that there would be a more scientific framework so that it could produce conclusive data. I would be interested to learn more about the follow up process behind this. If the follow up is not conclusive this could easily turn into a super spreader event. I think that if done correctly however, this event could provide useful data that would be applicable to live events globally. I am curious to see how this event pans out. I hope that the Health Secretary and others will follow up with this event with testing and quaratining if necessary. One thing that article didn't mention was the percentage of people vaccinated versus not as I think this could make an exponential difference in the outcome of this study. I am also curious who will attend this event, as right now I would not feel comfortable in such environment.

Bridget Grew said...

I had heard a bit in the news that there would be some type of pilot events like this one in the U.K. and it is definitely interesting to see how it will be put into practice. While this is obviously a data-driven exploration and it is being carefully monitored, I think I would still be hesitant to be one of the concert goers in this situation. However, it seems like this is one of many steps that will lead to a good, safe summer for people in the United Kingdom, and it is good that they are taking their time to reopen and studying the data before rushing a reopen. It will be extremely interesting in my opinion to see the results from this concert, to see if there is much spread among the concert goers, and see if there is any other data that comes from this event.

Mattox S. Reed said...

This is interesting because honestly I’m kind of surprised that it has taken this long for a study like this to have come out. Now I understand the dangers and the concerns the people will have with it but I do imagine that there are enough people that aren’t concerned and what to go back to live concerts as soon as possible. It’s also surprising as there is too much money in the concert industry especially for artists that they need these kind of studies to happen so they can truly justify coming back in full swing. I imagine they’ll come back with or without this data driven study but as long as the study doesn’t drastically dis approve of live events I think they will come back no matter what happens. Money talks and the music and touring industries are hurting the faster they can’t get butts in seats and pits full of people the faster they can recover from the damages caused by the pandemic.