The comment “We can’t stay locked down forever.” seems to be common right now when discussing the future of mass gatherings.

Yes, this is absolutely true but lockdowns are only a means to short-term control.

Continued distancing is the means to maintain long-term control.

An eventual lockdown lift isn’t going to propel us suddenly to 100,000 person events.

There will be social distancing measures in place for months and months until mass vaccination happens.

It will be bare minimum to simply get people back to work and not for recreation.

This doesn’t even begin to take into account artist travel, logistics, construction or a million other issues that mass gatherings + especially festivals have to face.

This isn’t being negative. This is realization and massive complexity of the situation we find ourselves in.