Dakota Smith and Ben Welsh of the Los Angeles Times reports:
Los Angeles may hold off on allowing big gatherings until 2021 because of the coronavirus threat, according to an internal Los Angeles Fire Department email reviewed by The Times.
Mayor Eric Garcetti raised the issue during his weekly briefing Monday with a group of high-level staff from several departments, including Fire Chief Ralph Terrazas. Garcetti indicated during the conference call that “large gatherings such as concerts and sporting events may not be approved in the city for at least one year,” according to the email…
…Fire Department spokesman Peter Sanders said Tuesday that Terrazas was “paraphrasing information he received from the mayor regarding possible scenarios for reopening timelines across a range of events.”
Garcetti spokesman Alex Comisar confirmed the mayor’s comments at the meeting. “The mayor was generally referencing studies of current and historical data and best practices for safely reopening our economy,” Comisar said.
Comisar said the mayor doesn’t have a timeline for Los Angeles to begin resuming large-scale events. Garcetti himself has repeatedly told Angelenos during his nightly press briefings that it would be a mistake to reopen businesses and stores before the pandemic can be controlled…
…The coronavirus pandemic has caused the cancellation of sporting, music and cultural events across the globe.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday that events that draw hundreds or thousands of strangers will be off limits for the near future, based on current guidelines. The state needs to boost testing, protect high-risk residents from infection and expand hospital capacity before the stay-at-home order imposed last month can be modified, he said.
“The prospect of mass gatherings is negligible at best until we get to herd immunity and we get to a vaccine,” Newsom said…
…Elsewhere, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell has recommended that large events in that city be pushed off until 2021, according to a local news report.
Read more at the Los Angeles Times.
8 Responses
Looks like the 2020 concert season can pretty much be written off at this point. Although certainly not the same, I wonder if live online performances are being considered by some. If they can hologram deceased artists, this doesn’t seem like such a stretch.
Shit’s gettin serious now. “ These are crazy, crazy, crazy nights! “
Nobody cares about the Chargers in Los Angeles anyway, so it doesn’t matter that gatherings at sporting events are canceled.
Safety first, fun second….i agree with the Mayor. Stay safe everyone!
this is more terrible news for our nations economy and for rock music which has been in a bit of a decline recently- so many bands from the 80’s and 90’s as well as new bands who don’t have much royalty money coming in anymore from past or current physical/digital music sales count on touring to make a living – I am taking a guess here, but I think those type of rock bands are a huge percentage of the rock music out touring and now – what makes me crazy is, even though there are differing points of view on how to navigate this pandemic and our health care system and government are working hard on this , there are literally no real answers , no timelines , it seems like half the people are scared and half the people feel their rights and freedoms are being taken away and on top of that there are no real therapies yet that help other than vitamin C in high doses – and our economy continues to go down the toilet – I hope the music business and our nations economy can somehow rebound and make a huge comeback from this -I’m hopeful…. stay safe and healthy ~ Bob
Doesn’t make much sense the way this is being dealt with. Maybe we just need to learn from the Eastern countries that wear masks all the time in public. Seems that’s where we’re going with all this stuff. Strange to see how quickly we’re all assimilating. I’m not sure that is a good thing.
I do like seeing musicians jamming via Youtube like the guys from Anthrax have been. Music is such an important outlet for all of us. I hoe we get back to live shows soon. Cheers and take care all. \mm/
we got the news in my state yesterday our governor is reopening our economy starting may 1st possibly middle of next week, not sure exactly how I feel about that yet , thankfully my state has had very little corona death or related hospitalizations – people are desperate for live music again , local musicians are streaming live on FB , but honestly not many people I personally know care to watch any of that, so I suspect most people feel the same way – I really hope this is the beginning of getting back to normal –
I’m in beautiful Oregon, Kate Brown will do something along the lines of what Washington Stare is doing and a lesser version of what California’s doing. Only 4.2 million here and half of those are in the Portland Metro and Oregon is the 9th largest land mass state. So, lot’s of rural areas here with either single or zero cases in their respective counties. Many of them suggesting they should not have to be in lockdown mode. I can see their point, but it’s more from the losing of income and businesses suffering. There has to be a balance somewhere between healthy commerce and testing. Not sure it will happen as a Nation, most likely will be a stat-by-state protocol.