The Met. Cancelled.

The New York Times alert came across my phone. “The Metropolitan Opera Won’t Reopen for Another Year.” The Met’s entire 2021 season cancelled until next September.

I guess it’s no surprise. The world is still dealing with the Coronavirus pandemic. No vaccine. No end in sight. How do you plan for anything?

Now the opera’s cancelled, too. You can’t just be Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney and say, “Let’s go into a barn and put on a show.” It’s opera. Big, grand opera. You gotta plan that.

I think about all those people who make their livings in New York theatre. The performers. The stage hands. The orchestra members. The box office folks. The list is endless. This is a long time to be out of work.

No opera. No Broadway. No concerts. No fans. No travel. No hotel stays. What’s left?

The New York Times also said some of the hotels that closed temporarily in March are now closing permanently. Big hotels too like Hilton and Courtyard by Marriott. How many workers are out of jobs?

That’s just New York City. But it does give an indication of how far we still have to go in this country to overcome the pandemic.

The same piece about The Met said this: “…the Met, the nation’s largest performing arts organization, may well prove to be a bellwether.”

There’s no denying it. The arts has taken a hit during the Covid pandemic. We’ve lost many great artists.

I seem to be using The New York Times as my source here, but there is a heartbreaking piece about Amanda Kloots. She’s the widow of Nick Cordero who lost his battle with Covid after many months of illness. She presses on though. She has to. She has a baby boy, Elvis, to raise.

I guess my point here is that while we may be getting numb to all the news about Coronavirus—maybe even done with hearing about it—it’s not over. It’s nowhere near over.

There’s no vaccine. People are still getting sick. People are still dying. That’s the medical truth.

The financial truth is that it may take years to get beyond this. In a KPMG consumer survey, some believe we may never get back to a pre-Covid economy.

That might be a bit dire, but it’s the thought of some. When consumer sentiment is that low, you know you have a long way to go to get it back.

It’s like the old saying, “The show must go on.” Except… not this year. The show has stopped. And the fallout will be great.