Live Comedy Can Wait: Stop Running Shows During the Pandemic

At the end of March, the only responsible comedy show was a virtual one. As of July, it still is. Despite having one of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in the world, America’s governors and mayors are allowing businesses to reopen and comedy has followed suit in the form of indoor shows and outdoor shows. While one is clearly better than the other, neither make sense.

The early days of COVID were frantic and confusing as scientists around the globe were discovering and reporting on a threat in real time, but that uncertainty is solidifying into a more unified consensus. Here’s what we know now.

We know surface contact is likely not a cause of transmission, rather COVID is spread person-to-person via respiratory droplets produced from speaking, coughing, and sneezing. You can be positive and asymptomatic with only a minority of patients developing a fever. Wearing masks is an effective means of protecting yourself and others and widespread use can save thousands of lives in addition to regularly washing your hands and keeping six feet apart from others.

Knowing this, the precautions many venues boast about—the distance between tables, routine deep-cleaning, and temperature checks— are essentially “hygiene theatre” instead of an actual safety net. Table spacing doesn’t matter when you have a crowd talking and laughing, spreading droplets throughout an enclosed space for an extended time. It’s not an option.

You’d think DL Hughley collapsing on stage at a Nashville club would have been the end of indoor shows. Or maybe Bryan Callen and Brendan Schaub having to tell the hundreds of fans that fist bumped them on their way out of a Texas club that they might have contracted COVID would have been the real final straw. It was not. Instead, some venues continue to bury their heads in the sand and pretend ordering another case of hand sanitizer will prevent them from becoming a headline.

Outdoor shows offer a different facade of safety, but a facade still. While open spaces greatly reduce attendees chances of infection, social distancing guidelines still need to be in place. But how well can you patrol a public park? Or a rooftop? Can you ensure social distancing in the elevators and stairwells needed to access these spaces? These shows seem to run on the honor system and, judging from what we’ve seen around the country, it’s a system people are failing en mass. Not only are audience members unmasked and closely clustered together, but comics are sharing mics (which, unlike doorknobs, come in direct contact with people’s mouths and whose rough, cage-like surface is difficult to clean), and taking group photos, unmasked and hugging. If you can’t, or won’t, enforce these rules, then what’s the point?

Regardless if you try to establish any social distancing or not, a show still encourages people to congregate. In March, the CDC went from recommending parties no greater than 250 to 50 then down to just 10 within hours. While there seems to be no current agreed upon number, we are clearly in a worse place now then we were four months ago.

But it’s not purely a numbers game, it’s also the fact that these gatherings are composed of strangers coming together from varying, unknown locations that makes them high-risk. The reason sports leagues are resuming operations—apart from greed—is due to the creation of a bubble (or pod). The recent NWSL Challenge Cup tournament was a success because athletes and staff were tested regularly while isolating individually before isolating together as one large pod where everyone’s activities and travel were monitored and severely limited for the duration of the tournament. People can form their own pods with neighborhood friends and family, but you cannot replicate this on the fly with a group of strangers and a rotating lineup of comedians. It takes only one “tourist” to pop the bubble.