So far, Lollapalooza does not appear to have been a super spreader event

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The National Review

The Lollapalooza music festival was held in Chicago from July 29 to August 1. The Chicago Sun-Times denounced the event as “unsafe” and “certain” to become “a super-spreader” — even though everyone who attended was required to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test taken within the past three days. Upwards of 385,000 people attended at least one day of the four-day festival.

Here’s the odd thing, though. This event, which was supposed to be a super-spreader, ended a week ago. The virus can incubate in a person for anywhere from two to 14 days. Eight days later, you would think we would be hearing about at least some calamitous consequences — large numbers of attendees testing positive for the virus, and perhaps even some attendees requiring hospitalization. City officials encouraged concertgoers to get themselves tested after attending. Keep in mind, the audience for these concerts is generally young people — and vaccinated young people are the demographic least likely to have a severe, or even symptomatic, reaction to infection.

According to the city of Chicago’s data, in the four days before the festival began — July 24 to July 28 — Chicago had 984 new cases. During the four days of the festival, Chicago reported 1,039 new cases — about a 5 percent increase from the previous four-day span. And in the first four days after the festival ended — August 2 to August 5 — Chicago reported 1,251 new cases of COVID-19, about a 20 percent increase from the span during the festival. (I would compare it to later periods of time, but August 5 looks like the last day of full data on the city’s website.) Someone could argue, “Egads! Increasing from 984 cases to 1,251 cases is a 27 percent jump!” And indeed it is . . . out of a city of 2.7 million people.

Among the demographic most likely to attend a music festival — those between the ages of 18 and 29 — there was a slight, irregular increase in the number of cases. Three days before the festival, 79 Chicagoans between 18 and 29 tested positive for COVID-19; the day after that, it was 73, and the day after that, it was 94. The day the festival ended, 50 Chicagoans between the ages of 18 and 29 tested positive for the virus. The day after that, it was 119; the day after that it was 113, and the day after that it was 84. Again — a slight increase, not a spike. And we don’t know whether any of these individuals attended the festival, interacted with anyone who did, or lived nearby.

But there was no surge in hospitalizations in Chicago in the days after the concert began, and no surge in deaths. On August 3, Chicago Department of Public Health commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said that any discernible rise in the city’s figures was not because of the festival, and that it tracked with pre-festival rate of increase. Perhaps she was just trying to defend the city’s decision to allow the concert to go forward. But so far, no one can point to concrete data of a surge of sick Chicagoans caused by the festival.

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