Corona Virus Effect On Theatres In The USA

[Frank Cox]

You can download the War of the Worlds radio play that caused all of the panic in 1938 here:

https://www.mercurytheatre.info/

Some of the other Mercury Theatre radio plays are pretty good, too; they're all available on that website.

I also really like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_W..._of_the_Worlds

I bought the lp's when that was first released and I've always thought it's a great album.

[Randy Stankey]

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.

Some information that I have been wondering about are things like the number of people who get sick and who need to go to the hospital, etc. I haven't been able to find much information but what I have been able to find makes me think.

Out of ALL people who get infected by COVID, approximately 15% of them need to be admitted to a hospital.

Out of all people admitted to a hospital for COVID, approximately 25-30% need to go to an ICU. (Or about 4% of the overall population.)

Out of all people admitted to an ICU, about 15% need to be put on an invasive ventilator. (Approx. 2% of the population.)

The overall death rate for COVID, is approximately 4%.

The infection rate (R0) or the average number of people who can be infected by one person who spreads the virus is between 2.0 and 3.0.

Comparing this information to the SARS and MERS outbreaks in the recent past, COVID's mortality rate is one-half to one-third of SARS and MERS but the R0 is almost double... Meaning that COVID spreads faster but it's less deadly.

I had to piece these conclusions together from a few different sources and my statistics skills are rather rusty but this is what I take away from what I have read. I would like to see some better data and better stats that also include age and demographics. If others want to do some digging I'd be happy to see something from somebody who knows numbers better than I do.

Like I said, this really makes me think. If it wasn't for the fact that I would be out of work with no income for 2 to 3 weeks, I'd consider just getting infected, on purpose, just to get the damned think out of the way. My immune system would build antibodies that would last for several months. If enough people did build immunity, that could drop the R0 down below 1.0 where it would die out in a reasonably short time. Yes, I know that there are probably flaws in that idea but I'm really talking about the idea that we need more and better information so that people can make their own informed decisions.

I certainly believe in wearing masks and social distancing or other reasonable measures to slow the spread of the virus.
I am concerned about the elderly and other at-risk people contracting the virus who would be worse-off if they did get infected.
I do believe that it is every individual's responsibility to do what they reasonably can to reduce the risk of spreading the disease.

However, given my stats, above (assuming that they are right) I am absolutely AGAINST using personal data on cell phones for contact tracing by the government or other entity. I think it's okay to encourage people to keep a personal or family diary at home which is only shared if needed. If people want to use pencil and paper or make some kind of spreadsheet on their computer, it's up to them.

I don't think this outbreak is nearly bad enough to justify the government conducting surveillance on the general population. Not even close!

[Gordon McLeod]

Alot depends on the age and health of the individual that gets infected. Also the most interesting point is almost all people who actually get sick have permanent scarring of the lungs and organ issues.
Also the antibody level seems to drop very quickly after recovery and we are see in health care facilities employees get it a second time

[Rusty Gordon]

Some information that I have been wondering about are things like the number of people who get sick and who need to go to the hospital, etc. I haven't been able to find much information but what I have been able to find makes me think.

Out of ALL people who get infected by COVID, approximately 15% of them need to be admitted to a hospital.

Out of all people admitted to a hospital for COVID, approximately 25-30% need to go to an ICU. (Or about 4% of the overall population.)

Out of all people admitted to an ICU, about 15% need to be put on an invasive ventilator. (Approx. 2% of the population.)

The overall death rate for COVID, is approximately 4%.

The infection rate (R0) or the average number of people who can be infected by one person who spreads the virus is between 2.0 and 3.0.

Comparing this information to the SARS and MERS outbreaks in the recent past, COVID's mortality rate is one-half to one-third of SARS and MERS but the R0 is almost double... Meaning that COVID spreads faster but it's less deadly.

I had to piece these conclusions together from a few different sources and my statistics skills are rather rusty but this is what I take away from what I have read. I would like to see some better data and better stats that also include age and demographics. If others want to do some digging I'd be happy to see something from somebody who knows numbers better than I do.

Like I said, this really makes me think. If it wasn't for the fact that I would be out of work with no income for 2 to 3 weeks, I'd consider just getting infected, on purpose, just to get the damned think out of the way. My immune system would build antibodies that would last for several months. If enough people did build immunity, that could drop the R0 down below 1.0 where it would die out in a reasonably short time. Yes, I know that there are probably flaws in that idea but I'm really talking about the idea that we need more and better information so that people can make their own informed decisions.

I certainly believe in wearing masks and social distancing or other reasonable measures to slow the spread of the virus.
I am concerned about the elderly and other at-risk people contracting the virus who would be worse-off if they did get infected.
I do believe that it is every individual's responsibility to do what they reasonably can to reduce the risk of spreading the disease.

However, given my stats, above (assuming that they are right) I am absolutely AGAINST using personal data on cell phones for contact tracing by the government or other entity. I think it's okay to encourage people to keep a personal or family diary at home which is only shared if needed. If people want to use pencil and paper or make some kind of spreadsheet on their computer, it's up to them.

I don't think this outbreak is nearly bad enough to justify the government conducting surveillance on the general population. Not even close!

Do you want to find out you're one of the healthy that gets this and thinks you'll be fine but ends up with permanent health problems or death? If you wouldn't play Russian roulette, why purposely infect yourself?

[Leo Enticknap]

Out of ALL people who get infected by COVID, approximately 15% of them need to be admitted to a hospital.

By "out of ALL the people who get infected" do you actually mean "out of all the people who test positive" ? Many if not most of those who are infected never experience any symptoms, and are never tested. A couple of months ago, some researchers (UC Berkeley, IIRC) pulled 500 people off the street and tested them for antibodies. I can't remember the exact figure, but something like a third tested positive, and of all those, only 15 remembered experiencing any symptoms. Of those 15, only two were tested for the actual bug at the time they experienced symptoms, and got a positive result.

If (and it's a very big if) you can scale up those numbers to the entire population, that makes it likely that a significant proportion of the population have been infected and don't know it. Though not enough to achieve herd immunity, obviously, because the number of symptomatic cases testing positive (for the actual virus, not antibodies) is continuing to rise.

[Randy Stankey]

No, I really wouldn't want to get infected on purpose. I was speaking hypothetically. It's my fault for not making that clear.
What if it turned out I was one of the unlucky 4%? Dead is dead.

I guess I'm trying to say that there isn't a lot of helpful information available and all that most people have to go in is hearsay and partial truth. That leaves me (and most people) feeling frustrated and the only thing we can do is stew in our own frustration.

Hypothetically speaking... Maybe it would be better to get the disease and get it over with. Maybe it would be better to just let the disease run its course through the population and eventually die out. What's the better course? I don't know.

It's frustrating because it feels like governments and other officials are playing their cards too close to the vest so that people don't know what they need to know.

How easy is it to get the disease? Well, it seems like it's pretty easy with an R0 above 2.0 but, on the other hand, it could be worse.
How much worse? What's the comparison to other similar diseases? I don't know and, if I want to know, I have to dig for it and the information I can get from Google isn't necessarily authoritative, let alone reliable.

If I do get the disease, how sick will I really get? Why can't I find more of those statistics like I talked about, above?
I can't say my stats are authoritative but it's the best I could find and I had to dig for what I got.

How many people who get infected (medically diagnosed) with COVID will need to go to a hospital?
How many people can just have a doctor's visit but stay home until they get better?
What are the demographic breakdowns on people who need hospitalization, ICU care, ventilators, etc?
How many people will have lasting health effects like Gordon mentioned? (I had heard of lung damage but didn't think to mention it.)

There are a lot of questions I think are important that, not only aren't being answered, but aren't even being asked in a meaningful way. The only thing that people have to go on is fear and disinformation. That's why we hear stupid stories about people drinking chemicals, trying to save themselves from the virus.

Years ago, my wife (now ex) went to her regular OB/Gyn visit and was diagnosed with a precancerous lesion and she freaked out about it. I tried to ask the doctor but got a pat answer. I tried to Google it but didn't get anything authoritative. I went to the library but they didn't have any good and current medical books on the subject. I finally had to sneak in to the medical library at a local hospital. I had to convince the librarian to let me in because the library was suppose to be for doctors and medical students only.

After a couple of hours of reading and note taking, I found out that the type of lesion was >90% harmless if treated early and that treatment could be done during a simple office visit. After the dust had settled, everything was fine.

But why should there have been any "dust" in the first place? Why couldn't I have found out what I needed to know by asking a few simple questions?

The same thing goes for COVID. There is a lot of proverbial dust in the air because people don't know what they need to know or, at least, for the people who want to know.

BTW: Leo reminded me... I did get pretty sick, back in February. I got a cough, headache, fever, respiratory symptoms and a general malaise that lasted for over two weeks. My GF got it too. Turns out, I hear that this virus was going around as early as January or even December of last year. Maybe I've already had COVID and didn't know it, just like Leo said?

I don't know and the information I need to know and it's not easy to find.

Maybe I could get an antibody test but, honestly, would it be worth the cost?
If I did get the test and it came back positive, what would that mean for me in real terms?
Again, I don't know and people aren't talking.

Maybe all I need to do is just keep wearing a mask, stay 1.8288 meters away from others and ride it out until the thing goes away.

I would certainly feel a lot better about this whole thing if I knew more.

[Martin McCaffery]

Has anyone heard anything about New Vision Theatre's plans? They have not seemed to have made any announcements since the initial shutdown, and now their website appears to have gone away.

[Harold Hallikainen]

The web site was there a month ago: https://web.archive.org/web/20200605...ntheatres.com/

[Martin McCaffery]

Yeah, I check it weekly just to see if there are any updates for the one in this town. Still down today. As New Vision Theatres was created by a group of investors to buy the theatres AMC had to shed after buying Carmike, it is not as if they are deeply rooted in the movie business. Just wondering if they are cashing in. Or it could just be a technical glitch.

[David Buckley]

If I do get the disease, how sick will I really get? Why can't I find more of those statistics like I talked about, above?

If you, Randy, get the disease, only once it takes it's course will you find out how sick will you get, how an individual suffers varies. A lot of people seem to laugh it off like a flu, some die quickly, some die slowly, some recover with terrible damage to their internal structures.

This is a news article that brings up some of these issues. If you are lucky and get the disease and it washes over you, great. if you are not so lucky, well, then, its not so good. I'd recommend a strategy of hoping an effective vaccine is developed before you come into contact with the disease.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7111094/c...alth-problems/

Scientists are only starting to grasp the vast array of health problems caused by the novel coronavirus, some of which may have lingering effects on patients and health systems for years to come, according to doctors and infectious disease experts.

Besides the respiratory issues that leave patients gasping for breath, the virus that causes COVID-19 attacks many organ systems, in some cases causing catastrophic damage.

“We thought this was only a respiratory virus. Turns out, it goes after the pancreas. It goes after the heart. It goes after the liver, the brain, the kidney and other organs. We didn’t appreciate that in the beginning,” said Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California.

In addition to respiratory distress, patients with COVID-19 can experience blood clotting disorders that can lead to strokes, and extreme inflammation that attacks multiple organ systems. The virus can also cause neurological complications that range from headache, dizziness and loss of taste or smell to seizures and confusion.

And recovery can be slow, incomplete and costly, with a huge impact on quality of life.

The broad and diverse manifestations of COVID-19 are somewhat unique, said Dr. Sadiya Khan, a cardiologist at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago.

With influenza, people with underlying heart conditions are also at higher risk of complications, Khan said. What is surprising about this virus is the extent of the complications occurring outside the lungs.

Kahn believes there will be a huge healthcare expenditure and burden for individuals who have survived COVID-19.

Patients who were in the intensive care unit or on a ventilator for weeks will need to spend extensive time in rehab to regain mobility and strength.

“It can take up to seven days for every one day that you’re hospitalized to recover that type of strength,” Kahn said. “It’s harder the older you are, and you may never get back to the same level of function.”

While much of the focus has been on the minority of patients who experience severe disease, doctors increasingly are looking to the needs of patients who were not sick enough to require hospitalization, but are still suffering months after first becoming infected.

Studies are just getting underway to understand the long-term effects of infection, Jay Butler, deputy director of infectious diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters in a telephone briefing on Thursday.

“We hear anecdotal reports of people who have persistent fatigue, shortness of breath,” Butler said. “How long that will last is hard to say.”

While coronavirus symptoms typically resolve in two or three weeks, an estimated 1 in 10 experience prolonged symptoms, Dr. Helen Salisbury of the University of Oxford wrote in the British Medical Journal on Tuesday.

Salisbury said many of her patients have normal chest X-rays and no sign of inflammation, but they are still not back to normal.

“If you previously ran 5k three times a week and now feel breathless after a single flight of stairs, or if you cough incessantly and are too exhausted to return to work, then the fear that you may never regain your previous health is very real,” she wrote.

Dr. Igor Koralnik, chief of neuro-infectious diseases at Northwestern Medicine, reviewed current scientific literature and found about half of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 had neurological complications, such as dizziness, decreased alertness, difficulty concentrating, disorders of smell and taste, seizures, strokes, weakness and muscle pain.

Koralnik, whose findings were published in the Annals of Neurology, has started an outpatient clinic for COVID-19 patients to study whether these neurological problems are temporary or permanent.

Kahn sees parallels with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Much of the early focus was on deaths.

“In recent years, we’ve been very focused on the cardiovascular complications of HIV survivorship,” Kahn said. (Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; additional reporting by Caroline Humer and Nancy Lapid in New York; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

[Ronda Love]

Thank you, David, this was very useful.

We are back open, and doing basically total crap for business. We decided to only open for Fri-Sun for now, and even limiting so drastically, the numbers are like 20 peeps a day. We're move over, and normally charge $3/$5, but because it's all old stuff, we're charging $2. Our state, PA, just dropped our attendance allowed from 50% capacity to 25 peeps at a time in the building, including staff. We picked up a bunch of movies for next week that were released VOD, plus I think one that we never got to play when the close down happened. If it sucks as bad as this does so far, we'll almost certainly have to close until at least November when maybe we can get some product. FWIW. Good luck, folks.

[Andrew Thomas]

Thank you, David, this was very useful.

We are back open, and doing basically total crap for business. We decided to only open for Fri-Sun for now, and even limiting so drastically, the numbers are like 20 peeps a day. We're move over, and normally charge $3/$5, but because it's all old stuff, we're charging $2. Our state, PA, just dropped our attendance allowed from 50% capacity to 25 peeps at a time in the building, including staff. We picked up a bunch of movies for next week that were released VOD, plus I think one that we never got to play when the close down happened. If it sucks as bad as this does so far, we'll almost certainly have to close until at least November when maybe we can get some product. FWIW. Good luck, folks.

Realistically we will be lucky to get back to normal releases by March of 2021

[David Buckley]

I don't want to be seen to be rubbing anyone's noses in it, but here in New Zealand, we're essentially virus free, albeit at a significant toll on our economy, our cinemas are able to open as they like, but of course, because USA cinema is closed for business, there is no new product, so we're recycling old stuff. Rocky Horror was on the break a week or two ago.

Until you guys get back to some semblance of normal, the world's cinema is held in abeyance.

We (a community cinema) filed a return for The Incredibles for four kids, two adults recently. It's a good job there is no MG on these movies, but we lost money nevertheless.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I don't know and the information I need to know and it's not easy to find.

Maybe I could get an antibody test but, honestly, would it be worth the cost?
If I did get the test and it came back positive, what would that mean for me in real terms?
Again, I don't know and people aren't talking.

Maybe all I need to do is just keep wearing a mask, stay 1.8288 meters away from others and ride it out until the thing goes away.

I would certainly feel a lot better about this whole thing if I knew more.

You know a bit about how science works, so you know that anything we know about this, is a moving target. While for many viruses and diseases in general, we've got years and years of global data, everything we learn about this particular virus is totally new.

Yet, the best we can do is listen to the people who have years of experience in the field. Yes, they may backtrack on earlier decisions, but you as I do know, that's how science works. So as of now, that will be: keeping distance, limiting your social circle and wearing a mask in places where keeping distance is challenging or generally when indoors at another place than your own home. And from the preliminary data we have collected around the globe, this seems to actually work pretty well.

If you happen to live in a place where people generally don't give a fuck about science, because of... <instert randomly bold but utterly braindead reason here>, I'd personally consider to get the fuck out of there if you can and if you can't, to limit public exposure as much as possible. In the end, most of those places will go through the same ordeal as New York or Bergamo a few months ago... you don't need to be a stable genius to see that one coming...

[Randy Stankey]

If you have a car accident while traveling 10 or 20 mph, you can expect fender damage and there is a small possibility that somebody will get hurt but, for the most part, property damage will likely be minimal and you'll probably walk away from the scene.

If you have an accident at 30 or 40 mph, you can expect your airbags to deploy, you'll see damage to your car that will put it in the shop for a week or more. It is more likely that there will be property damage, injuries or even death. Your car might end up being totaled but, if you were wearing your seat belt, you can still walk away from the scene.

If you were traveling at 50 mph when you had an accident, your car will likely be totaled, you will likely need to go to the hospital, even if only a non-admit visit to the E.R. Severe injuries are more likely. Somebody might die. The cost of property damage could mount, significantly.

If you are traveling even faster, damage will be greater, in direct proportion to speed. You'll probably end up being admitted to the hospital. Death, to yourself or others, becomes likely. It is unlikely that anybody will walk away from such a collision, airbags, seat belts or other things considered.

This is the kind of information I was hoping to find.
People between the ages of "A" and "B" will likely have X% chance of recovery if they have no other health problems or risk factors.
Y% of cases can recover after a doctor's visit and home care. Z% might need to be admitted to hospital... etc., etc...

With as many cases of the disease, worldwide, there has to be some information, like this, available.

Yes, there are a lot of people who don't listen to scientific reason but I think than many people, even those who are closed-minded, can benefit from such knowledge.

I work in a closed shop (for ITAR reasons) where everybody has to buzz in and out of the building.
Everybody has to get a temperature scan before being admitted. Surgical masks are required 100% of the time. We have to wash hands after going outside and returning from break. We have to wipe down our workstations with alcohol after every shift. Anybody who has more than a sneeze or sniffle gets sent home for 48 hours and can't return without a doctor's note.

I go to work. I come home and stay there until the next day. We go to the grocery store on Saturday and, if we want to splurge, we stop at the ice cream stand on the way home. We keep surgical masks in the glove box of the car and often carry one in the pocket whenever going outside. The masks go on whenever we are inside a public building or near other people.

As much of a PITA as all of this is, I'm okay with it in order to stop the spread of the virus.

I just think this whole situation would be more tolerable if we had more reliable information about real life outcomes.