Opening in the Fall? Remember: The Vaccine is No Magic Bullet

Last week, the LA Opera announced it would be going back into Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in September with a full season of shows. In the statement on its website, the LA Opera only briefly addressed the threat of COVID-19, confident that the creation and effective distribution of a vaccine would make such worries a thing of the past:

“And we’re confident thunderous applause will fill the walls of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion next September. Why? There’s promising news of viable vaccine options on multiple fronts (plus 2020 will be long gone).” 

It makes a certain amount of sense to assume that the virus will be well under control by September. Pfizer has applied to the FDC for emergency approval on its vaccine and the company Moderna also has a vaccine in the works. Anthony Fauci recently told the USA Today editorial board that front-line healthcare workers and vulnerable populations could get the vaccine as early as January, and the general public could start receiving it in April. Surely, by September, we’ll start seeing the positive effects of the vaccine and begin to return to normal. Right?

Not so fast! Having a vaccine and being able to properly distribute it are two different things. Getting the vaccine into people’s arms will require coordination between federal, state, and local governments, nonprofit organizations, and private companies. Nothing we’ve seen up to now should give us any confidence that these entities can work smoothly together. All of these entities also need money to do what they do, which is in short supply right now. And, of course, there are large groups of people who are either reluctant to get the vaccine without seeing how it works first, or who won’t get it at all, slowing up the entire process for everyone.

Health experts like Fauci also warn that we will need to continue to act like the virus is around after we’ve been vaccinated, continuing to wear masks in public, practice social distancing, and avoid large crowds of people (such as the relatively large crowds at operas, perhaps?). The vaccine may only mitigate the effects of the virus—think of how the flu shot makes you “less sick” than if you had never gotten it—or may not work at all in some people. It’s hard to know. Virologist David Ho expects that we will need to continue our prophylactic practices “for much of 2021.”

When you look at all the steps involved, all the roadblocks to overcome, in distributing the vaccine to the point where people can feel safe, returning safely and comfortably to an opera house by September is no sure thing. The LA Opera is certainly not the only organization who has blithely announced its return to full-scale, full-attendance productions in the fall: the Metropolitan Opera has done so, as has Los Angeles’s Center Theatre Group (which begins in late August). All of them should be aware of the risks of not being straight with patrons about what a fall 2021 event will look like, if it happens at all. They should inform their audiences now about procedures, such as mask wearing, they may need to follow and safety protocols that may need to be in place. Communicating realistically about what our future could be doesn’t make organizations look like buzzkills, it provides peace of mind for audience members by making a murky, uncertain future look as realistic and vivid as possible.