There's nothing fundamentally different about the virus now than when people started letting their guard down at 4th of July or when they ignored it earlier on in March/April. The reason states such as my own here in Florida have trended down is because people finally started taking it seriously and more private businesses took it upon themselves to enforce mask requirements. Doing a 180 and opening up festivals and theaters and clubs and arenas would undo that progress in a heartbeat if it's not done responsibly.
Most areas where live events are held are not the rural Midwest where people generally have less contact with each other to begin with and spend less time (no time) on mass transit. If you think Miami and New York and Chicago and Los Angeles are going to have bustling events happening anytime soon without repercussions, you're sorely mistaken. Human behavior aside, we're also a couple months away from flu season restarting and if aren't in good shape before that hits we'll be in trouble when it ramps up. Also a contributing factor to the virus not being worse right now is that many people are outdoors. Come October when people are spending more time indoors in closer quarters, that also contributes to making things worse.
Also should note that a number of the universities that have tried to open have failed miserably. I've been following UW-Madison and
it's a total cluster. They've locked down 2 dorms for quarantine because they can't just
send everybody home and disperse the virus into those students' households. Campus dining is now carryout only and they're delivering food to the locked down dorms because those people can't go out. Students have been on campus for less than 2 weeks and now the state of WI is at the highest peak of cases they've had all year.
If you're saying we should
throw 20,000 people in arenas a few nights a week for sporting and concert events, you might as well be thumb-tightening fixtures to trusses, leaving safeties off of everything, and letting the new guys run the motors because statistically, the consequences are very similar if you
drop a
truss or a
speaker cluster on a group of people. Some will end up in the hospital, a few will die, most will see what happens in person or watch it on the news and decide to stay away for the foreseeable future -- which leaves producers with large overhead and little revenue, who will go bankrupt if they keep hosting events but can't get butts in seats.
You can look South Dakota's increase from 10 cases per 100k population up to 35 as not a lot, but that's a 350% increase in 6 weeks, largely from a single event. Virus transmission is statistically relative and its growth is exponential, so iIt's not going to be +25 cases/100k if you try that in Chicago or New York City. A
three-fold increase every 6 weeks in cases in New York, sustained over a 2-3 month period would put us at some high death tolls. Thankfully, New Yorkers are taking this more seriously relative to other states, so in all probability you end up with unprofitable shows where not a lot of people attend and maybe the
three-fold increase takes place over 12 weeks instead of 6, and within a few months the producers are filing for bankruptcy.
All of this is to say that there's no evidence a
return to pre-COVID live events is viable right now or just around the corner. At best you can say things aren't as bad right now as they were at the worst of the pandemic, but we can still make that happen if we don't take precautions.