Corona Virus Effect On Theatres In The USA

[Leo Enticknap]

Before you can sit down, you need to give them your contact details, which they have to register, so in case of an infection, they can "contact trace" you. This alone isn't really something that inspires confidence and must be painful for the otherwise so privacy-conscious Germans...

I have far less of a problem with that than I do with having to have a contract tracing app on my phone that enables the government to harvest data on where I've been and when, passively, automatically, and constantly (and furthermore, it would be viable to introduce such a system in cinemas). It's your decision as to whether you want to eat at a restaurant or not, and having a log that says "Leo and family went to P.F. Chang's in Riverside on May 20 from 7-9pm," that will only be used for spread control if someone who was at that restaurant at around the same time comes down with coronavirus, seems to me to be a proportionate response. My only worry would be if that data could be used to order me into a legally mandated 14-day quarantine: if it could, then I would likely avoid restaurants (or anywhere else that required me to register my presence under the program) altogether.

By the same token, I was hearing on a talk radio show last week that Vienna Airport has started a program whereby all international arrivals are tested at the immigration checkpoint. They then sit in a lounge for an hour or two while the test is processed. If it comes back negative, they are free to go; if it comes back positive, or they decline the test, they go into a 14-day quarantine. This strikes me as a very sensible idea: finally, at least some people are trying to come up with reasonable compromises to control the disease spread without totally crashing the economy and our quality of life.

I was wondering if a local restaurant would take their "Corona Shrimp" off their menu, but noop, still there.

There is a city called Corona about 30 miles south of me, which has obviously been the subject of endless politically incorrect jokes. There is also a very popular (in these parts) brand of Mexican beer by that name. It took several weeks for quips along the lines of "is coronavirus what happens if you drink too many of them?" to do the rounds and die out.

[Lyle Romer]

By the same token, I was hearing on a talk radio show last week that Vienna Airport has started a program whereby all international arrivals are tested at the immigration checkpoint. They then sit in a lounge for an hour or two while the test is processed. If it comes back negative, they are free to go; if it comes back positive, or they decline the test, they go into a 14-day quarantine. This strikes me as a very sensible idea: finally, at least some people are trying to come up with reasonable compromises to control the disease spread without totally crashing the economy and our quality of life.

The problem is that somebody could be infected but not at a detectable level yet due to the incubation period. Therefore somebody can be cleared and not have to quarantine but be contagious a day or two later. If this type of testing was practical on a large scale (which would require bringing high throughput machines to venues), it would be much more effective to use at stadiums, arenas and even movie theaters to allow normal crowds while screening out those who have active infections.

It is very unlikely that somebody will not have a detectable infection when tested but develop enough virus to be contagious 2-4 hours later.

[Leo Enticknap]

Agreed that it won't catch everyone, but I guess that their thinking is that it'll catch enough cases to bring the risk of keeping the airport/border open down to an acceptable and manageable level.

[Frank Angel]

We used to think we are at the top of the food chain and we have no natural enemies. Looks like we certainly do; it's invisible to the human eye, but it's there and it's lethal. I has the ability to mutate and counter our efforts to thwart it. While it may not totally wipe out our species (although that is never an option that Nature has ever taken off the table), it certainly SAARS-Covid may be just Nature keeping a balance...keeping our species from over-populating. Covid certainly seems to have the ability to cull the stupid out of us as it most surely will spread wildly where stupid humans ignore all precautions and crowd together to party and drink and defy social distancing of any kind, unable to think past the moment, assuming it will be someone else in that mob who will get sick and die, not them. Maybe it is just Mother Nature performing Natural Selection for a species which for the most part has figured out how to thwart Natural Selection, to which all other species are subject. It's Nature recognizing that without Natural Selection, the human species population keeps increasing and could at some point increase beyond sustainability, although it does seem that we have something in our DNA that may, in fact, keep that in check -- you know, that propensity of our species to constantly wage war...at any time, somewhere on the globe, all the time.

At the very least, perhaps what this microscopic bug will do will be to humble us and teach us how fragile we are...that we DON'T have the absolute control that we delude ourselves with and that even in the face of calamity, we can't help ourselves -- we fight, while at the same time telling ourselves how we all come together in adversity. Yah, until adversity gets really dire, then it's every man for himself. There's a pandemic; let's buy a gun. The reason gun sales go up at the first sign of adversity is because innately, most people believe deep down that on that time-line of our history, we have barely climbed out of the primordial slime and just a small scratch on the veniere of what we call civilization, it can all collapse.

The problem is that this virus doesn't cause really bad, visible symptoms except after a victim is hospitalized. Things would be a lot different if it presented immediately with horrible, visible effects like coughing up blood and vomiting or big boils on the skin that turns black and blood dripping from the eyes and ears -- you know...plague-like symptoms right there in the middle of those mob scenes at the bars and beaches. If people saw a few people at the bar spitting up blood or their skin turning black, or people falling on the ground in the midst of a group party on the beach, betcha that parting would stop in a New York minute and those laughing faces would turn to horror. And you BET they'd start washing their hands like never before!

On that happy note, be safe everyone.

[Marcel Birgelen]

There is a city called Corona about 30 miles south of me, which has obviously been the subject of endless politically incorrect jokes. There is also a very popular (in these parts) brand of Mexican beer by that name. It took several weeks for quips along the lines of "is coronavirus what happens if you drink too many of them?" to do the rounds and die out.

corona-vs-heineken.jpg

Corona is owned by AB Inbev, the Belgian Beer juggernaut that also owns Anheuser Busch (the AB in AB Inbev and known for that slightly alcoholic, yellowish water known as Budweiser) and is also known for brands like Stella Artois. I'm sure Corona will survive the pandemic just fine.

I guess you can't expect a town to change its name after a pandemic, it would be a different thing if your town would be named something like "Hitler" just after the second world war has ended.

[Frank Cox]

Swastika, Ontario?

[Leo Enticknap]

I guess you can't expect a town to change its name after a pandemic, it would be a different thing if your town would be named something like "Hitler" just after the second world war has ended.

I'm not sure about complete towns, but in the aftermath of WWII, I gather that literally thousands of streets and squares had to be renamed, because having one named after you was a perk that the regime dished out to even mid-ranking functionaries. So all of the examples of [insert name of SS colonel here]-Straße, [insert name of Hitler Youth martyr here]-Platz,etc. etc., had to be renamed. In most cases, they just reverted to what they were called before the Nazis came to power, but it kept sign printers in business for years afterwards, not to mention causing confusion on an epic scale.

[Bobby Henderson]

We used to think we are at the top of the food chain and we have no natural enemies. Looks like we certainly do; it's invisible to the human eye, but it's there and it's lethal.

This idea is nothing new. Look at the plot of War of the Worlds. H.G. Wells wrote the novel in 1898. Earth gets invaded by an alien force with vastly superior technology. Mankind tries to fight but is woefully outmatched militarily. In a conventional bullshit Hollywood story the humans would figure out some lame-ass trick to beat the aliens. In the original novel the aliens end up getting killed by all the little microbes against which humans spent many generations building up immunity. It makes perfect sense. But that plot turn is not very cinematic.

While it may not totally wipe out our species (although that is never an option that Nature has ever taken off the table), it certainly SAARS-Covid may be just Nature keeping a balance...keeping our species from over-populating.

In "rich" developed countries declining birth rates are becoming more of an issue, even here in the US. Women must have on average at least 2.1 children in their lifetimes to replace those who die. Since the early 1970's the total fertility rate in the US was hovering near or even under that 2.1 kids per female level; all of the net population gains in the US from the 1970's to now is 100% from immigration. After the Great Recession in the 2000's the fertility rate in the US has dropped further; TFR in the US is now down to 1.7. Most countries in Europe have TFR levels well under that.

At first glance, declining birth rates (or total fertility rates) would seem to be a very good thing. Unfortunately the drop-off in birth rates is happening fast and the trends are sustaining. That's leading to a nasty amount of generational and demographic imbalance. The median age in the US and other "rich" nations is skewing far older. There's a lot more middle-aged and elderly people than kids or young adults. That imbalance is worsening, thanks to many cost factors in parenting going way thru the fucking roof. Too many older people and too few young people will lead to all kinds of consequences, like corporate pension systems going broke.

Another consequence of this is the United States and various countries in Europe are becoming ever more dependent on immigration to fill big vacancies in the labor market. Here in the United States we would have no functioning food industry at all without a giant amount of immigrant labor. Visit any slaughterhouse in the Texas Panhandle or elsewhere in the Great Plains. You won't see many English speaking white dudes doing the grunt work in there. The same goes for any fields where crops have to be picked by hand. There is a lot of native hostility in the US and European countries of the populace getting more brown and cultures changing. But us greedy "honkeys" really only have ourselves to blame 100% for all of this. We turned parenthood into a high priced luxury lifestyle. And it's an OPTIONAL lifestyle at that. There's no law requiring anyone to have kids.

If these trends don't reverse themselves anytime soon around 20-30 years from now the world's geo-political landscape could go into great upheaval. By that time the African continent will hold, outright, the majority of the world's children and young adults. That could change a lot of power and cultural structures for better or worse. The continent could turn into an economic powerhouse. Or it could turn into a military nightmare. "White" nations can decide the outcome with how involved we want to be at improving conditions there.

[Marcel Birgelen]

ISwastika, Ontario?

That one sounds more like an attention grab to me than anything else. Who else would know about a little town with a few hundred souls somewhere in Ontario otherwise? Heck, it even has a Dutch Wikipedia article... Apparently, their official name became Winston during or somewhere shortly after WWII, but they didn't like that. Probably wouldn't have had a Dutch Wikipedia-article either then.

I'm not sure about complete towns, but in the aftermath of WWII, I gather that literally thousands of streets and squares had to be renamed, because having one named after you was a perk that the regime dished out to even mid-ranking functionaries. So all of the examples of [insert name of SS colonel here]-Straße, [insert name of Hitler Youth martyr here]-Platz,etc. etc., had to be renamed. In most cases, they just reverted to what they were called before the Nazis came to power, but it kept sign printers in business for years afterwards, not to mention causing confusion on an epic scale.

It's not directly in the aftermath of WWII, but city names aren't entirely sacred, "Stalingrad", "Leningrad" and in East Germany "Karl-Marx-Stadt" come to mind. Or even more recently, Astana to Nur-Sultan. New regimes don't settle for puny street names. Even entire countries tend to swap names or suddenly become "Democratic Republics" (most often by name only).

Getting back to "Corona", it's essentially just Latin or Spanish for "crown" or "The Crown" or in astronomy, it refers to the glowing hot atmosphere of a star, like the sun. This "crown" like structure around the corona viruses is what got the corona virus family its name.

This idea is nothing new. Look at the plot of War of the Worlds. H.G. Wells wrote the novel in 1898. Earth gets invaded by an alien force with vastly superior technology. Mankind tries to fight but is woefully outmatched militarily. In a conventional bullshit Hollywood story the humans would figure out some lame-ass trick to beat the aliens. In the original novel the aliens end up getting killed by all the little microbes against which humans spent many generations building up immunity. It makes perfect sense. But that plot turn is not very cinematic.

Maybe some slight spoiler alert here, but that's also the way the aliens get killed in Spielberg's 2005 adaptation of H.G. Wells' story. While the movie did some things right, it unfortunately also was riddled with problems though. I guess the ending was one of them, because it was solved via an easy way: narration.

[Carsten Kurz]

There is actually a multiplex in germany with the name 'Corona Kinoplex'. I guess staff was relieved from serious roll-eye stress when they finally were allowed to close in march.

[Martin McCaffery]

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/03/media...rus/index.html
AMC Theatres has 'substantial doubt' it can remain in business

New York (CNN Business)AMC Theatres, the world's biggest movie theater chain, said on Wednesday that it has "substantial doubt" it can remain in business after closing locations across the globe during the coronavirus pandemic.

The theater chain, which closed its theaters earlier this year, expects to have lost between $2.1 billion and $2.4 billion in the first quarter.
The company also said that its revenue fell to $941.5 million, which was down roughly 22% from $1.2 billion in the same quarter last year. This quarter, the situation has gotten substantially worse.
"We are generating effectively no revenue," the company said in a regulatory filing Wednesday.AMC (AMC) will continue to monitor the "potential lifting of various government operating restrictions," but added that the chain has serious challenges even if restrictions are lifted. That includes studios holding back new films from being shown.
"Even if governmental operating restrictions are lifted in certain jurisdictions, distributors may delay the release of new films until such time that operating restrictions are eased more broadly domestically and internationally, which may further limit our operations," the company said.
The company said that it had a cash balance of $718.3 million as of April.
"We believe we have the cash resources to reopen our theatres and resume our operations this summer or later," AMC said. "Our liquidity needs thereafter will depend, among other things, on the timing of a full resumption of operations, the timing of movie releases and our ability to generate revenues."
The company's stock rose 4% after initially declining 8% in early morning trading on Wednesday.
The coronavirus outbreak has ravaged the movie theater business. Movie theaters large and small were closed because of the outbreak and some of the year's biggest films — "Mulan," "Wonder Woman 1984" and "F9" — were delayed.Movie theaters like AMC also faced another existential threat because audiences can watch movies at home. This was the case with Universal's "Trolls World Tour," which bypassed theaters for a digital release.
Universal's decision to release "Trolls" on demand caused a feud between the studio and AMC leading to the chain to ban Universal's films from its theaters.

[Leo Enticknap]

Another version of the same story, but with a mention of Cinemark. AMC warns (in a regulatory filing) that it may not survive, but Cinemark can survive through the end of the year, even with no reopenings:

Movie theater chain AMC warned Wednesday that it may not survive the coronavirus pandemic, which has shuttered its theaters and led film studios to explore releasing more movies directly to viewers over the internet.

All of AMC’s theaters are shut down through June, which means the company isn’t generating any revenue. AMC said it had enough cash to reopen its theaters this summer, as it plans to do. But if it’s not allowed to reopen, it will need more money, which it may not be able to borrow.

The company said that even when local governments allow theaters to reopen, AMC may still have problems if entertainment companies delay releasing new films. “Due to these factors, substantial doubt exists about our ability to continue as a going concern for a reasonable period of time,” AMC wrote in a regulatory filing.

And people may not want to go sit in crowded spaces because they fear the virus. AMC believes that desire for social distancing is temporary and that people will want to go to the movies again. Apart from the pandemic and its economic aftershocks, the movie business in the U.S. and Canada has benefited from rising ticket prices, but admissions have been gradually declining since 2005. Sequels, remakes and superhero movies dominate the box office. Meanwhile, the rise of streaming services — Netflix and a growing stable of rivals — is providing new competition.

Theater chains are also concerned that film studios could push more movies straight to the streaming services that they own. Since the pandemic shut down theaters, entertainment companies have delayed most movies. But Comcast’s NBCUniversal released “Trolls World Tour” on video on demand in April, triggering an angry response from the theater industry, and Disney will release “Artemis Fowl” to its streaming service, Disney Plus, in June, rather than in theaters.

AMC, a publicly traded company controlled by Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda, has 1,000 theaters in the U.S. and Europe. It’s the largest U.S. theater chain. Cinemark, another major movie chain, plans to begin reopening U.S. movie theaters on June 19. It said in a Wednesday filing that it believes it has enough cash to last it the rest of the year, even if its theaters remain shut.

[Martin McCaffery]

Even if AMC survives, I suspect the one here in Montgomery is a goner. AMC got it when they took over Carmike, who got it when they took over RAVE. Needless to say, it was a dump by the time AMC took it over (I have refused to go to it for several years now), but it apparently still makes some money as a discount house. Can't see them wanting to invest anything in it to get it back going.
Has anyone heard how New Visions is doing? If they go belly up, we'll be the only theatre left in town.

[Harold Hallikainen]

About a month ago, Lyle Romer posted a link to the CDC that tracks various things including the overall number of deaths in the US in a week compared to the same week over the last 3 years. It can take up to 8 weeks for all death reports to reach the CDC, but I found it interesting nonetheless. I've put together a web page that graphs that data long with an accumulated percentage of expected deaths at https://mai.hallikainen.org/cv/ .

Another interesting bit of information to graph would be average age at time of death for each week to see how that is changing. I have not been able to find a source for the raw data yet.

Harold

[Frank Angel]

In a conventional bullshit Hollywood story the humans would figure out some lame-ass trick to beat the aliens. In the original novel the aliens end up getting killed by all the little microbes against which humans spent many generations building up immunity. It makes perfect sense. But that plot turn is not very cinematic.

Actually, Hollywood played that one pretty close to the Wells' version. In George Pal's WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953, 4?) yes, the Homo Sapiens technology was in fact, useless against the superior technology of the Martians. But at the end of the movie, the inferior Earthlings are seen standing on the mountain side viewing the devastation but also their salvation as the Martians invasion is over due to microbes to which they have no immunity (you know, those all-to precious antibodies we damn wish we had now!), The voice-over is that of Cedric Hardwick solemnly intoning how we were saved by the littlest things that god in his infinite wisdom put here on earth...music swells up, choir intones "Amen," church bells ring, The End title card, fade-to-black. I ran it at a festival awhile back -- for a week. Yea, I know it pretty well. Turns out, it actually is a pretty cinematic ending actually, while at the same time, leaning quite a bit more on the side of divine intervention over scientific evolution as our salvation, but needless to say, true to Mr. Wells.