Looking toward the end of the Coronavirus shutdown - Making plans, doing projects?

[Scott Jentsch]

At some point in time, we will come out on the other side of this shutdown, and I thought it might be good to have some conversation about what that's going to look like for the industry.

How long are you expecting to be shut? I know that's not up to any of us, because the virus is setting the timeline, but I'm curious as to how long people are anticipating, when it comes to the upgrade/repair projects they have planned, advertising strategies, and when you expect to begin ramping up toward an eventual reopening.

On The BigScreen Cinema Guide, there are several projects that always seem to get delayed because of the busyness of everything and the desire to not impact our readers any more than necessary. I've already started working on the to-do list in that regard, and have made some progress. However, when it comes to some of the larger projects, they are going to require a fair amount of finite resources, and which ones I tackle largely depend upon how long we can expect this shutdown to continue. For example, if we're going to be up and running full-steam by the end of April, that would put emphasis in one direction, but if I anticipate this going through May and into June, then the priority list gets reordered a little.

Are you playing this all by ear, or are you putting together some plans. and how are you approaching the timeline?

[Frank Cox]

I don't think it's possible to set any kind of a timeline on this shutdown. The shorter the better, of course, but the closest parallel that I'm aware of is the 1918 flu pandemic and that lasted for two years (1918-1920). So it's not unreasonable to take two years as a worst case but still possible timeline.

Having said that, there's a great deal of hope being placed in the creation of a vaccine, so the length of the pandemic could be determined by how long it takes to create, manufacture, distribute and inoculate everyone against the virus. 18 months seems to be the generally accepted time that this would take.

On the other hand, do we want to "stop the world" for the 18 months or two years that it may take to stomp this out completely? Perhaps this is one of those close enough is good enough scenarios, and we don't need 100% eradication if it's just confined to a few small and hopefully remote areas before it can be completely eradicated.

I don't think it's unreasonable to hope that things will get sufficiently under control that life can return to something approaching normality within a few months from now (sometime this summer perhaps), though I would be surprised if it's any sooner than that.

It would be a mistake to go back to regular life too quickly, so a little longer is better than a little less in my opinion. Rushing it would be a worse mistake than taking extra time to be sure.

At a minimum, I think we're looking at a period of months rather than a few weeks. Unfortunately.

Of course, that also leaves those of us in the theatre business with the problem of what to play when we can re-open. As I told someone else yesterday, even if something magical happened and the powers that be said "all clear" tomorrow morning, there wouldn't be anything to play for a while after that since everything has either been moved or put directly onto video.

After all of this, many people may be less inclined to sit in a room for a couple of hours with a whole lot of other people, so the theatre business might take longer to recover than other businesses might.

Of course, this is all just my opinion and I don't know any more about it than any of the rest of you do.

[Carsten Kurz]

I think they will now first look at the development during the closures - each country for his own, also in other 'preceding' countries. The way this illness 'works', I suppose they will define rules about when and how certain business will be allowed to reopen, and how to protect persons with a higher risk. In the meantime, they will work on more efficient treatments for those with the more severe progression. And it seems they are confident that a vaccine will be available within one year. I guess, not only one, but some sooner, some later. It will probably take some time to make enough, but I consider it fair that, once it is available, it should be given first to nursing staff and the like, and those with a higher risk. Those are fewer than the general public, and they will profit most, and the initial first supply will not be enough for all anyway. A lot of people will have acquired natural immunity until then even without a vaccine.

I think this will be a great summer for open-air cinema.

[Frank Cox]

Here is some actual data, stating that this will continue to be a problem until June and into late July. (Hey, my wild guess wasn't too far off!)

https://canoe.com/news/world/coronav...rsity-analysis

Coronavirus could kill 81,000 in U.S., subside in June: Washington University analysis

The coronavirus pandemic could kill more than 81,000 people in the United States in the next four months and may not subside until June, according to a data analysis done by University of Washington School of Medicine. The number of hospitalized patients is expected to peak nationally by the second week of April, though the peak may come later in some states. Some people could continue to die of the virus as late as July, although deaths should be below epidemic levels of 10 per day by June at the latest, according to the analysis.
The analysis, using data from governments, hospitals and other sources, predicts that the number of U.S. deaths could vary widely, ranging from as low as around 38,000 to as high as around 162,000.
The variance is due in part to disparate rates of the spread of the virus in different regions, which experts are still struggling to explain, said Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, who led the study.
The duration of the virus means there may be a need for social distancing measures for longer than initially expected, although the country may eventually be able relax restrictions if it can more effectively test and quarantine the sick, Murray said.
The analysis also highlights the strain that will be placed on hospitals. At the epidemic’s peak, sick patients could exceed the number of available hospital beds by 64,000 and could require the use of around 20,000 ventilators. Ventilators are already running short in hard-hit places like New York City.
The virus is spreading more slowly in California, which could mean that peak cases there will come later in April and social distancing measures will need to be extended in the state for longer, Murray said.
Louisiana and Georgia are predicted to see high rates of contagion and could see a particularly high burden on their local healthcare systems, he added.
The analysis assumes close adherence to infection prevention measures imposed by federal, state and local governments.
“The trajectory of the pandemic will change – and dramatically for the worse – if people ease up on social distancing or relax with other precautions,” Murray said in a statement.
The analysis comes as confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States continue to mount, with the World Health Organization saying the country has the potential to become the world’s new epicentre of the virus.
The coronavirus causes a respiratory illness that in a minority of severe cases ravages the lungs and can lead to death.
The United States has reported around 70,000 cases of the virus and more than 900 deaths since January. Globally, it has infected more than half a million people, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
The University of Washington has been at the centre of the outbreak in United States, which first was detected in the state of Washington and has so far killed 100 people in that state, according to date from Johns Hopkins University.

So maybe things can go back to normal by August?

[Jim Cassedy]

So maybe things can go back to normal by August?

Last I heard, the the 4th of July was being moved to October.

[David Bird]

I think this will be a great summer for open-air cinema.

We sure wish. We're telling fans that we really need to come out the other side to where the indoors are open again as we need product of course. Reality is that we're basically under the same orders of closure, due to snack bar, restrooms, etc. There were a couple drive-ins near Toronto that opened a couple nights last week under very strict distancing/sanitary guidelines, but they weren't comfortable with the risk to staff and patrons, and with stricter guidelines or closings imminent, closed again. I don't believe legally we could be open at the moment, and nothing to play anyway.

Of course, with very little testing available in Canada, and some taking more than a week for results, I suppose the hope would be that the exposure among the general population is much greater than we know and that would be the best at this point, it would taper off sooner. Of course, we won't know that until mass testing arrives, and who knows if it will? Not looking good for that here.

In theory we are doing a full prep and clean with some extra painting and minor construction in time for our usual mid-May opening, though I'm really not imagining opening before first of July at earliest. If it drags past that, we'll see what the general "risk" factor still is, if treatments/vaccines are on the way, hospital capacity improves, or it's deemed to have somehow already washed through, I guess we'd open the remainder of summer. If not, we'd likely just stay closed for this year. We're thinking of ways to be more sanitary and considering things like advanced ticketing.

Dave Bird
Port Elmsley Drive-In

[Mitchell Dvoskin]

China authorized cinemas to re-open, and less than a week later shut them down again. While they are slowly restarting their economy, two months apparently too soon for any kind of mass gatherings.

[Scott Jentsch]

So, everyone, what's the one thing that could be done in your theater during this downtime to make the movie-going experience better for your customers?

[Carsten Kurz]

I have a long ToDo list, e.g.

- finalize LED retrofits in the building
- adjust screen masking to full size (until now, even with digital, it was still set to fit our 35mm lenses, but there is quite a bit of screen estate left behind the masking
- improve sound isolation of our emergency exits. When they were built-in in the 1960s, nobody cared about them being sound-proof. With todays movies, we should do better
- improve our auditorium heating scheme with a JNIOR
- wire our smoke detectors together (until now, they are all isolated devices), maybe also wire them to the JNIOR
- sit down on every single of our 398 seats to find and replace those with broken seating area (there are always a few)
- add two more surround speakers to our 7.1 setup
- clean auditorium cladding (that is a major project)
- fix a dozen torn armrests
- repaint a few worn surfaces
- think about how to implement admission restrictions once we're allowed to reopen
- sort through poster archive
- get rid of scrap that has accumulated over time
- check expiration time of food and beverages regularly. Eat and drink expiring stuff until your sick, then give the rest to the neighbourhood kids until they're sick

[Geoff Jones]

So, everyone, what's the one thing that could be done in your theater during this downtime to make the movie-going experience better for your customers?

If there's any stray light on your screen (from exit doors, aisle lights, etc,) find a way to mask it so that it no longer shines on the screen. AMC and Regal ought to be doing this at their Colorado locations.

Run an audio check. Make sure all of your speakers are producing audio from the correct channel. Left, Center, Right, Right Surround, Left Surround, ETC.

[Carsten Kurz]

YUP. Now is the time to sit down in your auditorium, front, mid, back, left right, with all equipment switched on, but no movie running. Take your time, turn round, think. Once I noticed that our emergency exit lights send light reflections into people's eyes. No one ever thought of changing something about these safety items. Well, they are not meant to shine into your eyes, they are meant to light up floor and wall below them. It was easy to cure this with tiny pieces of black-wrap.

[Bobby Henderson]

Provided if there is a budget to allow it, install some upgrades during the down time. I'm a big fan of Dolby Atmos, provided if it is configured properly. Just beefing up the amps and speakers to make regular 5.1 or 7.1 more effective will be good.

Coronavirus could kill 81,000 in U.S., subside in June: Washington University analysis

That's a pretty conservative estimate of the death toll for when this crisis is all said and done. On Sunday Dr. Anthony Fauci was mentioning the 100,000 level and Dr. Deborah Birx was discussing American death tolls as high as 200,000 early Monday morning on NBC's Today Show. And that's if we're doing everything perfectly. Maintaining social distance and what not.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to be able to extrapolate possible worst case scenarios for the death toll of SARS-CoV-2 virus infections in the United States. The United States has around 330 million residents. If the pandemic was allowed to spread freely despite our mitigation efforts, around 70% of all Americans would end up being infected. That's 231 million out of 330 million people.

At at mere 1% mortality rate that equals a death toll of 2.3 million Americans. That's actually the figure lawmakers are running with for a worst case scenario. But the mortality rate can scale higher based on how good or bad our health care system is able to treat the sheer tide of cases.

The death toll in Italy is over 10% of confirmed coronavirus cases. Their health care system is overwhelmed. They have double the number of hospital beds per capita that we have here in the US. Thousands of health care workers are getting infected and dozens are dying of the COVID-19 respiratory infection. Even if a health care worker gets infected and has minor symptoms or no symptoms at all he or she is still taken out of service and sidelined. When enough first responders are unable to work on the front lines of this crisis a simple, treat-able problem like pneumonia can turn into a death sentence.

The real, worst case scenario for the United States is a death toll between 20 million and 30 million people. That's what will happen if our health care system gets totally decimated by this crisis. It's what will happen if scores of health care workers contract the COVID-19 respiratory illness and have no one else to replace them on the front lines of this battle. Those are the numbers to keep in mind when some people complain about business being shut down, implying we're over-reacting to a "flu virus."

Business is certainly being hurt by all these shut downs. But if we just went back to business as usual and let this virus do its own thing the economic penalty would be far more severe. America's economy is overly reliant on the real estate market. This pandemic poses an extreme threat to that business based on the demographics of who is most able to buy high value properties. If we have millions of Americans die of COVID-19 it would create a massive amount of high value mortgage failures and vacated properties. Banks and insurance companies would be overwhelmed with the outstanding mortgage liabilities. And that's just one single angle on this whole mess.

[Lyle Romer]

Provided if there is a budget to allow it, install some upgrades during the down time. I'm a big fan of Dolby Atmos, provided if it is configured properly. Just beefing up the amps and speakers to make regular 5.1 or 7.1 more effective will be good.



That's a pretty conservative estimate of the death toll for when this crisis is all said and done. On Sunday Dr. Anthony Fauci was mentioning the 100,000 level and Dr. Deborah Birx was discussing American death tolls as high as 200,000 early Monday morning on NBC's Today Show. And that's if we're doing everything perfectly. Maintaining social distance and what not.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to be able to extrapolate possible worst case scenarios for the death toll of SARS-CoV-2 virus infections in the United States. The United States has around 330 million residents. If the pandemic was allowed to spread freely despite our mitigation efforts, around 70% of all Americans would end up being infected. That's 231 million out of 330 million people.

At at mere 1% mortality rate that equals a death toll of 2.3 million Americans. That's actually the figure lawmakers are running with for a worst case scenario. But the mortality rate can scale higher based on how good or bad our health care system is able to treat the sheer tide of cases.

The death toll in Italy is over 10% of confirmed coronavirus cases. Their health care system is overwhelmed. They have double the number of hospital beds per capita that we have here in the US. Thousands of health care workers are getting infected and dozens are dying of the COVID-19 respiratory infection. Even if a health care worker gets infected and has minor symptoms or no symptoms at all he or she is still taken out of service and sidelined. When enough first responders are unable to work on the front lines of this crisis a simple, treat-able problem like pneumonia can turn into a death sentence.

The real, worst case scenario for the United States is a death toll between 20 million and 30 million people. That's what will happen if our health care system gets totally decimated by this crisis. It's what will happen if scores of health care workers contract the COVID-19 respiratory illness and have no one else to replace them on the front lines of this battle. Those are the numbers to keep in mind when some people complain about business being shut down, implying we're over-reacting to a "flu virus."

Business is certainly being hurt by all these shut downs. But if we just went back to business as usual and let this virus do its own thing the economic penalty would be far more severe. America's economy is overly reliant on the real estate market. This pandemic poses an extreme threat to that business based on the demographics of who is most able to buy high value properties. If we have millions of Americans die of COVID-19 it would create a massive amount of high value mortgage failures and vacated properties. Banks and insurance companies would be overwhelmed with the outstanding mortgage liabilities. And that's just one single angle on this whole mess.

While most of what you are saying is valid, there is no projection that got anywhere near your worst, worst case scenario of almost 10% of the population dying, even taking into account the non-COVID patients that wouldn't be able to get treatment. Don't forget all of the mortality rates are based on confirmed cases. Studies indicate that, when accounting for asymptomatic cases, there could actually be 7-10 times as many cases out there.

Also, even in the unmitigated scenario, all of the infections and hospitalizations don't happen simultaneously. IIRC, the other day Dr. Birx mentioned that the 60% infected model was over 3 "seasons" of the virus, not a few months.

There will be some metropolitan areas (obviously NYC) that have some pretty severe hospital capacity issues. However, the overall beds per capita for the country is a little misleading. Even unmitigated, rural areas which tend to have fewer beds per capita will also have fewer cases per capita. There is some level of "social distancing" built into a rural area that makes it different from New York City.

So yes, the mitigation efforts are a necessity right now but the worst case scenario was probably a lot closer to the 2.3 million death estimate than 20-30 million. The models also don't take into account the availability of any effective treatment. If any of the treatments being tested have some success (even if they are only effective in something like 30% of patients), they will serve to significantly reduce the mortality rate.

The serology test they have been talking about to determine who has already had COVID-19 is a very important next step in this situation. If it turns out that millions of people had asymptomatic or very mild cases and now have some period of immunity to it, a much quicker "return to normal" will be possible vs. if the number is close to the confirmed case number. We won't know the answer until that test is widely available, or at least available for wide use in an area like New York.

[Bobby Henderson]

While most of what you are saying is valid, there is no projection that got anywhere near your worst, worst case scenario of almost 10% of the population dying, even taking into account the non-COVID patients that wouldn't be able to get treatment. Don't forget all of the mortality rates are based on confirmed cases. Studies indicate that, when accounting for asymptomatic cases, there could actually be 7-10 times as many cases out there.

The absolute worst case scenario I mentioned, 20-30 million deaths, is really a hypothetical scenario. It's one that would have been possible if all cities and states in the US followed a "let's keep doing business as usual" policy with no mitigation efforts at all. The SARS-CoV-2 virus would spread out of control throughout our population. Our health care system would utterly collapse trying to bear the brunt of literally hundreds of millions of infections. Nearly all health care workers would eventually end up being infected. The hospitals would basically shut down. Countless numbers of people with treat-able cases would end up dying. This scenario, thankfully, is not going to happen.

The worst case scenario of a 2.3 million death toll in the US is one that assumes our health care system would still be functional in the event SARS-CoV-2 was able to spread across most of America's population via no mitigation efforts.

While no one is absolutely certain of the mortality rate of SARS-CoV-2, enough positive and negative tests have been recorded that a mortality rate between 1% and 2% is getting to be pretty consistent and more clear. That's a lot higher than the average .05% mortality rate of seasonal flu. 1 out of every 5 confirmed SARS-CoV-2 cases are requiring hospitalization. That ratio has stayed pretty consistent as the number of cases scale upward.

Also, no one should be assuming all of the unconfirmed and untested cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection are minor or asymptomatic. Many people in hospitals have not been tested due to the sheer lack of testing kits available. There are dead who have not been tested. It is very likely some deaths assumed to be flu-related were really from COVID-19. It's possible people are developing COVID-19 illness and yet staying away from hospitals out of fear. It's also possible people will be discovered in their homes after having died of COVID-19.

The current forecasts of 100,000 to 200,000 deaths in the United States seem plausible. But it's possible those fatality numbers can be driven much lower if everybody can just get serious about isolating themselves and taking other precautions, like cleaning and disinfecting all high-touch surfaces in the home, at work, in the car and other places in public.

[Mike Blakesley]

We are thinking about possibly fast-tracking our anticipated seating project. We had penciled it in for a few years from now, but it has a few things going for it in light of the "new world" we'll be emerging into that make it worth moving to the front burner:

- The new seats will be faux-leather covered, easier to clean and won't stain like our current cloth-covered seats do
- The rows will be farther apart, better for keeping people a little farther apart (that stigma is NOT going to go away very soon..... I feel sorry for arenas)
- If we go to reserved seats, we can make sure people spread apart if we have to.

All depends on whether the banker gives the go ahead or not..... he is an avid moviegoer so we'll see.