Closed again

[Leo Enticknap]

And the slippery slope argument attached to that. One of the more, shall we say, colorful talk radio show ranters on Friday opined that if the SCOTUS allows the vax mandate for private businesses to stand, the precedent it set would allow the government to "ban beef and force us all to eat tofu and lentils." While a little bit extreme, I agree with that sentiment as far as noting that what are originally sold as emergency measures have an unhealthy habit of becoming permanent. After all, income tax and daylight saving time were both introduced as "emergency" measures to enable wars to be fought more effectively. We're still handing over a big chunk of our earnings, and having to drive to work in the dark until late April, over a century after the wars in question finished.

[Steve Guttag]

I, reluctantly, agree with Leo here that when an entity is "given" powers in the name of an emergency, that power tends to feel that it is their power use at their own desire, indefinitely.

A local government official wanted to extend a masking mandate, the county council voted it down...so the same official merely declared a NEW mandate as an emergency. Regardless of which side one is on a position, there is something fundamentally wrong when a group of (representative) officials, get quashed by an individual through a technicality. The purpose of the emergency measures is to allow a rapid response when there isn't time for a committee (e.g. a flash flood...etc.) not as a means to subvert a committee decision that a single person doesn't agree with. That person didn't overrule a council decision, the person merely made up a new emergency despite that same person just wanting an extension of the previous one.

If a single individual can invoke an emergency measure over and above a ruling body on something you might agree with...they can do it just as equally on things one may not agree with. That is the rule of law and if we don't all abide by it we don't have it at all. The only reason such entities like the SCOTUS have authority is that we agree that what they say, like it or not, is the law of the land.

We NEED emergency authorities but we also NEED limits as to when they can be invoked.

[Lyle Romer]

Possible, but I think they just hate to admit they were wrong. Nobody ever likes to admit that.

Some people also don't want to admit that there are things which are out of their control.

[Lyle Romer]

I, reluctantly, agree with Leo here that when an entity is "given" powers in the name of an emergency, that power tends to feel that it is their power use at their own desire, indefinitely.

A local government official wanted to extend a masking mandate, the county council voted it down...so the same official merely declared a NEW mandate as an emergency. Regardless of which side one is on a position, there is something fundamentally wrong when a group of (representative) officials, get quashed by an individual through a technicality. The purpose of the emergency measures is to allow a rapid response when there isn't time for a committee (e.g. a flash flood...etc.) not as a means to subvert a committee decision that a single person doesn't agree with. That person didn't overrule a council decision, the person merely made up a new emergency despite that same person just wanting an extension of the previous one.

If a single individual can invoke an emergency measure over and above a ruling body on something you might agree with...they can do it just as equally on things one may not agree with. That is the rule of law and if we don't all abide by it we don't have it at all. The only reason such entities like the SCOTUS have authority is that we agree that what they say, like it or not, is the law of the land.

We NEED emergency authorities but we also NEED limits as to when they can be invoked.

Florida did a lot of that in the laws passed in the last legislative session. They made it so that any non-weather related emergencies declared by local governments needed to be renewed ever seven days and had a maximum limit of six weeks. They can't be replaced by a substantially similar declaration after expiration. Only the Governor can declare longer states of emergency and the legislature can overrule the governor.

[Frank Cox]

Today's (local) paper:
scan.jpg

[Mike Blakesley]

Do you supply the buckets when they buy that big bag of corn? We never have, but nobody has ever asked for any either -- I suppose they just use a bowl from the cupboard. (And our big bag isn't near as big as yours!

[Frank Cox]

I actually sell the buckets as a separate item. Some people want the buckets but most just want the big bag. Or two.

[Scott John]

We have a regular crowd for what we call Monday Night at the Arts where we have a musician in the lobby, a wine bar, and a talk before art house screenings. It has been super resilient to Covid downturns still getting 150-200 people on Mondays vs. our old regular numbers of 200-250 before Covid. It is also what has kept us open as other regular screenings are often 0-10 people since we re-opened. A really good crowd for most screenings now is 25 with the occasional 40+ thrown in there. Our full capacity is 371 and are allowed 50% right now.

It has been amazing since the Monday crowd skews older 50's-70's and that is the age group that largely stopped going out to movies lately. Our booker has been shocked by how they came back after we were allowed to re-open. It is the only reason our doors are open as we can operate at just a small loss because of them and break even with some Covid relief.

As of just after Christmas our Monday crowds have evaporated to a third of their regular size. We have had 3 Mondays in a row with 50-80 attendees total between 3 screenings (we moved from 2 to 3 on Mondays because of capacity restrictions). It is absolutely Omicron, and our nearby restaurants have dropped by similar numbers, our downtown is a ghost town right now at night.

My low-medium level of stress has just ramped up to speaker blowing levels. If that Monday crowd doesn't come back to close to regular numbers we will be closed by sometime in the summer. If we got closed down again in the province I am in (British Columbia, Canada) for any stretch of time I don't know how long we can cover our fixed expenses (we lease our space) without any revenue. We are a single screen in a fairly small town with a 6 screen multiplex a 3 minute drive away. We have had sustained losses for a while now with public health restrictions opening and closing us down or imposing different mandates. I am not complaining that they aren't necessary, but that doesn't change the impact.

Good news at least, we got the Lord of the Rings combo drive and are doing some special 20th anniversary screenings. Tonight we already have 61 pre-sales so should have a crowd of at least a 100 which is double of any non-Monday screening we have had since we opened.

[Ed Gordon]

Where you’re most likely to catch COVID: New study highlights high-risk locations

Jan. 21, 2022 at 5:09 am Updated Jan. 21, 2022 at 5:41 pm

By MITCHELL WILLETTS
The Charlotte Observer

What are the odds of catching COVID-19 after a night at the movie theater? How about an afternoon at the gym, unmasked? Or an early morning jog in a neighborhood park?

It’s well known that certain places and activities carry varying risks of coronavirus exposure, but a new study published in the peer-reviewed Environmental Science & Technology journal takes away much of the guesswork, offering clear estimates instead.

Researchers behind the paper analyzed outbreaks and superspreader events and studied factors that hinder and aid the virus’ spread, to design a mathematical model that takes many factors into account before giving a percentage risk of infection.

The percentage isn’t a perfectly accurate estimate, but it helps answer several complex questions: In what situations am I mostly likely to catch COVID-19? Least likely? And how likely is “likely?”

Go into a crowded movie theater with poor ventilation and a mostly unmasked audience, and there’s a 14% chance of being infected, assuming everyone in the room is silent before, during and after the movie, according to the study data.

But if there are people talking throughout — potentially launching viral particles into the air as they do — the odds of infection when unmasked jump to 54%.

If the crowd is masked, the risk of infection drops to 5.3% without talking and 24% with talking.

Given that COVID-19 spreads primarily through airborne particles, masks, ventilation, the number of people in a room or building and time spent in that space all factor heavily in the equation.

Also critical is what’s happening around someone. Heavy exercise poses the most risk, followed by shouting and singing, then normal speaking. Least worrisome is the “silent” category.

Unsurprisingly, being outdoors, masked and surrounded by silence is the best way to avoid coronavirus, researchers found. And the opposite is true: heavy exercise in a poorly ventilated place packed with maskless people is a nearly surefire way to catch COVID-19 — it’s 99% effective.

But in between those two extremes are findings that may surprise some.

For example, working out for even a short amount of time in a well-ventilated gym carries a 17% chance of infection if masks aren’t in use.

And if it’s poorly ventilated? There’s a 67% chance.

In many situations, changing just one single factor can be the difference between being relatively safe or likely infected.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that along with wearing masks, getting vaccinated and keeping at least six feet apart, improved ventilation — including open windows, ceiling fans and portable air cleaners — can help curb the spread of COVID-19.

“With good ventilation, the concentration of virus particles in the air will be lower and they will leave your home faster than with poor ventilation,” the agency says.

But researchers concluded that many indoor facilities, businesses, schools, houses of worship — the buildings where we spend our daily lives — are not adequately designed or equipped to handle the pandemic.

“We urgently need to improve the safety of the air that we breathe across a range of environments,” researchers wrote in their paper. “Data from COVID-19 outbreaks consistently show that a large fraction of buildings worldwide have very low ventilation rates despite the requirements set in national building standards.”

The 13 page study this article is based on can be found HERE

[Steve Guttag]

I have looked at the article and the study. Did you read that study? It is one that is primarily about coming up with equations to be able to model spaces for predictions. You know what space is not covered in that study? Cinemas. They didn't gather ANY information from cinemas to base their study. Furthermore, there was no presentation whereby they used their equations to accurately predict and show the results. I'm not discounting the research but to take that paper and then apply it as if "We've got this one solved" is just folly. The only thing that the paper itself cited with respect to cinemas is they lumped them into the group of indoor facilities (of which most any indoor facility would seem to quality) as needing better ventilation. Yet this outdoorsman reporter has, somehow, come up with unverified numbers. There have been billions of cinema admissions since C19 has been about...not he nor anyone else has has been able to trace an outbreak to cinemas. With a 54% rate for the those that talk (and I presume laugh and other exhale moments) for a movie like Spiderman, you'd think you'd wipe out the entire business. It didn't happen. In fact, they kept coming back for more. They did have data on approximately 20 settings, none of them cinemas.

There is also the false equivalency of the various strains of C19 and how lethal they are, how infectious they are. The paper puts C19 as one category when it is well established that the Omicron variant is significantly more transmissive than Alpha or Delta yet Omicron is significantly less lethal/harmful.

It is one thing to do a study, set up experiments in a lab. it is another thing to take you predictive model and then go out and apply it to real-world conditions. I suspect that their predictions are going to be much more accurate on the venues they drew their data from than from those venues they did not. Back when I was taught "science" in my science based curriculum, you did indeed always start with a hypothesis, but as data came in, the data is what you went with. Show me some data, from a cinema, where any form of C19 is spreading as wildly as some are predicting. They don't have the data.

[Bobby Henderson]

There are no peer-reviewed scientific studies proving it's impossible to get infected with SARS-CoV-2 inside a movie theater either.

My own opinion is any indoor public space where it's possible for you to breath in air exhaled by other people poses a risk for infection. There is nothing magic about commercial cinemas that makes them separate from any other large indoor commercial space, such as a grocery store, a church, etc. There is nothing that makes movie theaters worse than any other indoor public space either. The notion "there isn't any data" is not proof that SARS-CoV-2 transmission can't take place in a cinema. When there is widespread community transmission of a virus most people who are infected would be damned if they can pin-point specifically where they got infected. At this stage of the pandemic, 2 years into it and 1 year after vaccines were made available to the public, what difference does it make anymore where it's more likely to get infected?

Responsible individuals should have already taken the steps to get vaccinated. It's ridiculous for those of us who have been vaccinated and boosted to have to keep making adjustments for the anti-vax hold-outs. They've had plenty of time to take whatever steps they were ever going to take to protect themselves. I think it's time to get operations back to normal and let the people who want to take their chances really take their chances. Speed down the highway without wearing a seal belt too for all I care. Everyone else needs to be able to live their lives at some level of normalcy.

Omicron is highly contagious, but it poses minimal risk to anyone that has been vaccinated. And not as much of a risk to the unvaccinated. Over the past 2 weeks we had several break-thru infections in my work place. All were very minor; no worse than a common cold or minor flu. The sheer volume of infections is troubling because the ratio and proportion of fewer serious Omicron cases is still overwhelming hospitals. But so many infections have been happening that the wave is showing signs it could dissipate rapidly due to running out of available hosts to infect. It's burning itself out. Hopefully Omicron will burn itself out in a big enough way to not leave room for another SARS-CoV-2 variant to establish itself. It will kind of suck otherwise to have to get COVID booster shots once a year.

[Steve Guttag]

Bobby, nobody said it was impossible...there just hasn't been any verified cases. And definitely no super-spreader events traced to one...ANY ONE! Also note, it is not proper science to "prove a negative." If one is going to predict a high infection rate in a venue, it is incumbent upon them to back up the claim. And, if their science is good, the data should indeed back up the reasoning to predict the infections. They don't have that.

How are theatres not like the other indoor venues? Well, other than in the lobby, everyone faces 1-direction and not each other. With few exceptions, each row is at a different elevation (even if a sloped floor or a "stadium" like riser), which is unlike an airplane and everyone is in the same elevation and in a much tighter spacing). Perhaps it is a learnable moment where the scientists could go to a "typical" cinema (or better, a collection of cinemas) to see how the air flows and how a an airborne virus travels in a theatrical setting to better assess risk in various venues, including cinemas and airplanes, sporting stadiums, concert halls, Broadway Theaters...etc.

[Sam Chavez]

It seems to me Steve is peddling a weak argument. Unusual to say the least. It seems to be based on wishful thinking from concern for our industry. IMHO, the only thing working for us is sparse attendance.

Hopefully, this latest variant is on its way out and we can go on to some new reality. Meanwhile, we now have cinemas playing day and date with streaming and some ugly divides as to whether vaccinations for communicable diseases are a government plot.

[Frank Cox]

I was just reading an article stating that attendance is way down at churches since people get out of the habit of going, find other things to do, and just don't come back.

Hopefully that doesn't happen to theatres.....

[Steve Guttag]

It seems to me Steve is peddling a weak argument. Unusual to say the least. It seems to be based on wishful thinking from concern for our industry. IMHO, the only thing working for us is sparse attendance.

Not at all. There have been billions of tickets sold world-wide...yet nothing pointing to cinemas as risky. Seriously, where is yours or anyone else's evidence? Please show your data. The weak argument is to continue to spew BS without evidence. It is nothing short of slander. When the CDC and WHO claim cinemas to be particularly risky, yet have no evidence to back it up, I call BS.

We've had our well attended movies (e.g. Spiderman) and that was during the highly contagious version, Omicron, yet cinemas haven't been linked to anything. I do think that the "riskiest" part of going to the cinema is migrating through the lobby. I, honestly, don't think sitting in a cinema is a risky activity with respect to COVID.