Fauci: it won't be safe to go to the theater until the back end of 2021

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

MIke, Yes a bandanna or shirt piece is pretty useless against anything. Looking the attached graph you can tell when the mask mandate began. Here they are quite serious about it too. People have been fined and or arrested for not wearing a mask in public. Lowering the curve allowed them to reopen down town bars and restaurants at lower capacity too.

https://media.tenor.co/images/83536b...d8d/tenor.gif?


Here is the CDC Director saying today pretty much what I posted this morniong. Except he added that face masks actually help to protect a person more then the first COVID vaccines will.


https://thehill.com/homenews/adminis...than-a-vaccine

[Mark Lane]

I am not wearing a mask until I see the science that says it will actually help. The government's story about the mask is all over the place. First we don't need it, then we do need it, then it is symbolic and it doesn't help and now back to that it does help. It was to protect other people and now it is to protect others and the mask wearer. It is easier to get the government to tell us the truth about UFOs.
I don't wear on but have two in my pocket. I have a bandana if I only have to wear it for five minutes or less, and a mask from cargo netting in case I have to wear it for any period of time. We don't require people who come into the theater to wear one. About 20% of our customers choose to wear a mask and we respect that.

[Bobby Henderson]

I have zero problem at all following a mask mandate. We have one here in Lawton (finally). I'm not going to wait until the year 2022 until all scientific theories are proven/disproven to don a mask when out in public. Yes, there are masks with varying degrees of success at containing your own respiratory droplets (or blocking out droplets exhaled or coughed out by other people). But it is pretty clear most kinds of face masks are more effective than wearing nothing on your face at all.

When I see someone walking into a grocery store or other public place here, deliberately violating the mask ordinance, I see that person as being nothing less than a selfish asshole.

Bobby, unless something has changed in the past week...there have been ZERO cases of cinemas spreading COVID-19 and there have been millions of visitors (gotta factor in China too).

Just to get a stupid, obvious question out of the way: are you suggesting it is somehow impossible to transmit SARS-CoV-2 in a movie theater?

To repeat what I said earlier, few if any documented cases of SARS-CoV-2 have taken place at all (particularly in the United States) because the movie theaters were among the first businesses to completely shut down at the start of this pandemic and among the last to re-open. Again, our movie theaters here were completely closed before we had any of our first confirmed cases of COVID-19 appearing. Hardly anyone had any chance to see if they could spread SARS-CoV-2 in a movie theater because the theaters were already closed.

I personally don't see a movie theater auditorium being structurally any different at all in terms of cubic air space than a church sanctuary. And there has been a LOT of confirmed SARS-CoV-2 spread in church services, weddings and funerals. Albany, GA was the site of a vicious super-spreader event seeded by a funeral service in a church. That's just one of many examples. My own feelings are if churches, restaurants and bars should be allowed to re-open and serve customers inside the building then movie theaters should be afforded the same courtesy. However, I don't think any kind of indoor business anywhere is completely immune from SARS-CoV-2 transmission risk.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I am not wearing a mask until I see the science that says it will actually help.

There is tons of data out there from all over the world... so perhaps do a little research.

[Lyle Romer]

I have zero problem at all following a mask mandate. We have one here in Lawton (finally). I'm not going to wait until the year 2022 until all scientific theories are proven/disproven to don a mask when out in public. Yes, there are masks with varying degrees of success at containing your own respiratory droplets (or blocking out droplets exhaled or coughed out by other people). But it is pretty clear most kinds of face masks are more effective than wearing nothing on your face at all.

When I see someone walking into a grocery store or other public place here, deliberately violating the mask ordinance, I see that person as being nothing less than a selfish asshole.



Just to get a stupid, obvious question out of the way: are you suggesting it is somehow impossible to transmit SARS-CoV-2 in a movie theater?

To repeat what I said earlier, few if any documented cases of SARS-CoV-2 have taken place at all (particularly in the United States) because the movie theaters were among the first businesses to completely shut down at the start of this pandemic and among the last to re-open. Again, our movie theaters here were completely closed before we had any of our first confirmed cases of COVID-19 appearing. Hardly anyone had any chance to see if they could spread SARS-CoV-2 in a movie theater because the theaters were already closed.

I personally don't see a movie theater auditorium being structurally any different at all in terms of cubic air space than a church sanctuary. And there has been a LOT of confirmed SARS-CoV-2 spread in church services, weddings and funerals. Albany, GA was the site of a vicious super-spreader event seeded by a funeral service in a church. That's just one of many examples. My own feelings are if churches, restaurants and bars should be allowed to re-open and serve customers inside the building then movie theaters should be afforded the same courtesy. However, I don't think any kind of indoor business anywhere is completely immune from SARS-CoV-2 transmission risk.

Of course it isn't impossible for it to spread in a movie theatre. However, a movie theatre is very different from a church in terms of what people are doing and how they interact with each other. At a church service (especially a funeral), people are interacting with each other and each person interacts closely with many other people. There is also a lot of speaking from prayer and singing. At funerals, people also tend to make physical contact to comfort the bereaved.

In a movie theatre which has limited capacity and distanced seating it is a completely different scenario. People are spread out and don't interact closely with the other patrons. Vocalization is limited and is done at low volume even before the movie.

The virus doesn't spread like a game of telephone. A single infected person in a movie theater isn't going to spread it to a large percentage of people in the auditorium. There is some risk to the people seated closest to the infected person. A single infected person is only going to be able to spread it to people that they are close to for a prolonged period of time. At a funeral service, that could be 20 or 30 people. In a movie theatre it will be somewhere between zero and a couple of people.

As far as risk in places where there can be "large gatherings" the rank of risk from least to highest would be:

Outdoor stadium/beach
Domed stadium
Movie theatre/indoor arena
Restaurant
Bar/Church
Night club/strip club

Nothing except a strict and secure quarantine where you have absolutely no interaction with anybody that has left your household is zero risk. However, I still fail to see why it is seen as a "risk" for anybody under age 60 who doesn't have morbid obesity or diabetes if you don't live with people or spend time with people who are over 60 or have those risk factors.

You can get the flu from going to a movie but nobody ever cared about that. For non-elderly people the risk of a serious issue from COVID is not any higher than it is from the flu. A friend of mine's healthy daughter in her 30's died from the flu in 2019. It is rare but it happens. In Florida, the case fatality rate for people under 55 is 0.18% and that doesn't include the countless asymptomatic cases that were never discovered. In reality it is somewhere between .02% and .09% if you knew how many cases were undiscovered.

Life is short. Live your life. Use common sense like social distancing and not packing into a small space with a bunch of people. My dad passed away last month (not from COVID) and had spent the last five months of his life when he was healthy never going anywhere or doing anything except for a couple of doctor's appointments. During those months I only saw him twice for a short time outdoors. Point being that he did everything "right" to hide from COVID but ended up passing away anyway from something else.

[Steve Guttag]

Just to get a stupid, obvious question out of the way: are you suggesting it is somehow impossible to transmit SARS-CoV-2 in a movie theater?

Of course I'm not suggesting it is impossible. I'm suggesting, based on a growing pile of statistical evidence that one's risk of catching it within a movie theatre is becoming one of the lowest-risk indoor environments.

You need to look beyond the US for information. Other countries have had movie theatres open for months now. To date, there have been zero instances of contact tracing of cinemas being the spreader of the COVID-19. And you are talking about millions of visitors around the world now.

As to what is different between a movie theatre and other venues you mention...for those cinemas with assigned seats, it is easier to have people spread out. Everyone faces the same direction so you don't have face-to-face interaction (at least with people outside of your party). People, generally don't talk, sing or do other activities where they are actively expelling air at higher velocities than normal breathing...except maybe laughter. There has been no study, within a cinema, that shows that its HVAC system picks up the virus, makes it through the system, and deposits it on another person in a manner that can infect them...and statistically, it is showing that the odds are increasingly very low.

Statistically, if cinemas were particularly bad with respect to spreading COVID-19, we should have seen that already. I'm not saying there won't be a case down the road (or a case isn't forming while I type this)...but even with such a case, the number of visitors/cases remains as low or lower than most any other indoor facility and, quite frankly, is doing very well against outdoor activities though those have more variables in play than a confined space.

It's time for the cinema industry (From studios through exhibitors) to start using our growing statistical evidence to get that information out to the public and the governments so we are treated with right level of caution and not be made out as death traps...as they currently are doing (health agencies).

[Bobby Henderson]

Of course it isn't impossible for it to spread in a movie theatre. However, a movie theatre is very different from a church in terms of what people are doing and how they interact with each other. At a church service (especially a funeral), people are interacting with each other and each person interacts closely with many other people.

While there is a good amount of greeting and hand-shaking at churches the differences between a church and theater is not really all that different. Normally there is a good bit of socializing in a theater lobby and in the ticket lines. Once people are in a church sanctuary they're usually facing the same direction to listen to the pastor. That's not fundamentally any different than movie-goers facing a movie screen. I believe the thing that makes a church sanctuary more risky than a cinema auditorium is all the singing. That's going to do more to expel respiratory droplets than movie goers occasionally talking to each other and munching on popcorn.

Of course I'm not suggesting it is impossible. I'm suggesting, based on a growing pile of statistical evidence that one's risk of catching it within a movie theatre is becoming one of the lowest-risk indoor environments.

What growing pile of statistical evidence? Theaters in the United States have been closed for just about all the duration of this pandemic. There is hardly any actual real-world track record to measure. Even now with theaters recently re-opening (except for the largest big city markets) the attendance is pretty dismal. The new movies being released (Tenant, The New Mutants) have limited appeal. Older catalog movies that people can watch at home on their TV sets have possibly even less appeal. So that's going to color those "good" statistical numbers in an even more skewed fashion.

Early in this pandemic there may have been packed movie theaters in places like China. But we all know the Chinese government hasn't exactly been 100% honest and forth-coming with its SARS-CoV-2 statistics. Theaters in Europe started re-opening in July, but with safety measures in place like empty seats between customers mandatory mask wearing in the lobby and theater corridors. Again, with little in the way of good quality new movies to watch, cinemas aren't exactly hitting the ball out of the park in terms of attendance numbers. That skews the safety situation far better than it would be if a theater was playing a must-see movie to a packed house.

[Steve Guttag]

What growing pile of statistical evidence?

Are you kidding? First, while cinemas have been open in the US for about 1-2 months now (depends on the state), they have been open around the world (and not just China), for several months. There are countries, like Germany where they require your contact information in case they need to trace and still...ZERO infections traced to cinemas. We now have millions of people that have visited cinemas since COVID-19 hit and zero instanced of spreading it have been at cinemas. How can you ignore that type of evidence? Because the local cinema near you is doing miserable with attendance. People are people...if cinemas were going to be a particular problem, we would have seen it from other countries.

As for lobbies of churches versus theatres. I don't know how churches are currently handling distancing but I do know that theatres are not allowing any sort of "gathering" in their lobbies. Due to the low title count, they are running the same title on multiple screens with staggered show times to keep the lobby as empty as practical (while still trying to get as much soda/popcorn sales as possible. Even the "free refills" requires disposing of the old vessel so that only a fresh cup/tub/bag goes near the dispenser. When people go to church, it is a social event where communities see one another. With theatres, people tend to stay within their group and not mix with other groups of "strangers."

The bottom line is, not you or anyone else has any evidence that cinemas are particularly risky places. Each day they are open and with each ticket sold, the statistics favor the cinema experience compared to other indoor activities.

If you want to dispute it, prove it.

[Mark Lane]

There is tons of data out there from all over the world... so perhaps do a little research.

Please share. Everyone says there is science but no one actually present any. The government has not produced any. State courts are ruling in favor of businesses because the states have not been able to product science. Michigan court allowed a barber shop to open because the state did not present much more than "trust us, it is dangerous". If there is real science that will hold up to why isn't it being presented?
When I see someone not wearing a mask, I see someone standing up for the rights of everyone and not being selfish. I see someone who have a medical condition that keeps them from wearing one.

I have seen reports from OSHA inspectors who have shown the air being breathed in by those that wear a mask violates the OSHA health codes. I have seen where my state has suspended the freedom of information act so they don't have to present the science. If there was real science that would get non-mask wearer to wear one, why not share that information?.. why suspend the freedom of information act to hide the information that would support the claims?

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

There's a thing called Google, lean how to use it. None of us are here to hold your hand. . I'm today, busy and have to pick up dog poop in the back yard before the lawn guys get here....

[Ed Gordon]

In most countries, more than 70 percent of survey respondents don’t yet feel comfortable resuming their “normal” out-of-home activities. For more than three-quarters of consumers who adjust their behaviors due to the health crisis, the easing of government restrictions won’t be enough. Instead, they’ll wait for guidance from medical authorities, reassurance that safety measures are in place, and the development of a COVID-19 vaccine and/or treatments.

Consumers do plan to resume some of their out-of-home activities soon, and shopping is first on the list. Large events and air travel, on the other hand, are last on the list.

Quote from Consumer sentiment and behavior continue to reflect the uncertainty of the COVID-19 crisis by McKinsey & Company.

Link to article: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-fu...amid-covid-19#

My take: Going to a theater is at the bottom of the list of things I miss doing in the last six months. I don't think movie theaters are going away for good, but it is going to be awhile before, 1) the audience wants to return, and 2) there is enough content to attract larger audiences and last but not least, 3) we have an effective vaccine.

[Steve Guttag]

I suspect a strong reason people aren't going to theatres is that too many agencies are still spouting the company line of how risky movie theatres are in comparison to other activities. They just aren't turning out that way. Unfortunately, it will really be up to NATO and hopefully the distributors to "educate" the public and, quite frankly, the medical community that is continuing to spout the BS about risks in cinemas. The medical community should adjust their position(s) as data comes in to replace hypothesis. That said, they are not going to go out of their way and take their time to give to craps about cinemas so they will need to be confronted with the data that is already amassing to at least get them to calm down about it.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

There is an interesting animated time line for Tennessee in this article. See if you can tell when the mask mandate began and what effect is has had....

. https://www.tennessean.com/story/new...19/5788011002/

[Jim Cassedy]

I don't know how churches are currently handling distancing

Here in the SF Bay area (and I think Los Angeles and several other California Counties) Churches have
been lumped into the same category more or less as theaters, and have not re-opened yet. Some have
been able to hold outdoor services in their parking lots or an adjacent garden, but even those gatherings
have mandated limits on attendance. Most of the Churches & Synagogues, etc here have been holding
their services online since mid March.

This sign is on the garden gate of a
church around the corner from me:
MassSign.jpg

The good news, is that if the air quality from the surrounding wildfires turns the skies any darker,
the drive-ins around here will be able to start holding matinees!

- - and on a somewhat related topic, I know one theater owner who might be facing the following
situation: He was renting his theater out Sunday mornings for services by some religious group.
We may have actually have a situation here in SF where The City will allow Churches to re-open,
but not theaters. But what about "church theaters" like this, of which there are several in the area?
That's going to be a Gordian Knot someone will have to figure out how to untie.

[Mike Blakesley]

So, I am listening to the weekly NATO "state of the industry" webinar right now. It mentions the Dr. Fauci story that this thread is based on. Turns out that Jennifer Garner was asking Fauci about when it would be safe to attend LIVE STAGE theater, NOT movie theaters. So it's apples and oranges. As happens so frequently, it's yet another case of the media not getting it right in the name of having a sensational scary story. Stage theaters (as is pointed out in the webinar) are smaller, people on stage are talking, they are usually sold-out venues, more intimate, etc. so it's a completely different scenario from movie theaters where you can have more showings per day, more possible distancing, and everyone is not talking.