She Couldn’t Open for Outdoor Dining. The Film Crew Next Door Could
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
> I work in film and can confirm that the cast and crew test 3x per week to be able to work. Only 2 people per 6 foot table while eating. Tables are actually 6 feet apart. Covid positive numbers in the LA film industry are about 1 out of every 3500 test. Also since filmmaker have to test negative to work most filmmakers, in their personal lives, don’t socialize with the outside world hence the very low positivity rate. from /u/Alexis-in-Texas, https://www.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusCA/comments/k71v7w/outdo...
> My Roomate works on set for a network. He/everyone he works with are required to get rapid tested before they step on the set every single day. Anyone he comes in contact with on set has passed the same rapid test.
from /u/buffyscrims, https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/k6y5f5/bar_owne...
Movie productions are big money, they have the money to implement strict protocol and the money to acquire the relevant resources. Therefore they can do the thing which requires the strict protocol and relevant resources.
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They produce shows that keep people inside?
The cost benefit is enormous. The same argument applies to things like vaccinations for sports. A fairly small number of people will keep millions of others indoors over the winter.
Sunlight is great! But socializing indoors is what spreads the virus. America is not reknowned for being a land where everyone was outdoors in the sunshine in normal times: vitamin D deficiency was already rampant.
And going for a walk is not exclusionary to TV. In places where it is present you can get enough vitamin D with 30-60 min sun exposure.
Not even in LA?
> And going for a walk is not exclusionary to TV.
No, it's not. But the argument was that TV encourages people to stay inside, which it does. If it's ok for people to go for walks, maybe it is not vitally important that we produce new TV shows right now.
Plus people watch TV in the evening. You can’t get vitamin D in the evening.
I’m a huge advocate of walks and getting outside! My point is TV is a substitute for socializing, and America needs less socializing now.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/time-for-more...
"Other non-essential activities", not having the means to acquire these resources and implement these protocols, get to not operate.
Any links?
It's crazy how much weight Hollywood has in this country. Hollywood can open doors sometimes that even Apple and Google cannot, even though the entertainment industry is tiny compared to tech.
I believe it's because politicians get star-struck. Just look at how many celebrities visited the white house in years past. It's insane how much access they have to the highest levels of government.
It's because the studios are willing to spend lots of money and implement extremely strict protocols so that they can keep filming, because if they don't they will literally go bankrupt and die. And because the studios and the crew depend on filming for their economic survival, everyone involved is willing to do what it takes.
I have friends who work in Hollywood. They're not allowed to socialize when they're working on set, nor for the two week period before they start working on set. They can't use public transportation. They can't visit friends or families for Thanksgiving or Christmas. They must get tested multiple times a week: a rapid test nearly every day (or every day for some sets), and the regular test at least every two weeks. The stricter sets won't even let crew go to the groceries when they're off set; they must use Instacart or limit themselves to eating at the crew stations on set. When traveling, they must stay in lodging provided by the studios, usually AirBnbs because hotels are too risky.
I can't think of a more "non-essential" business than Hollywood movie production.
Why is Hollywood essential? It's basically the piggy bank keeping LA alive right now.
Hollywood isn't just the actors and studio executives. Hollywood includes over a hundred thousand specialists, ranging from tradesmen like carpenters and electricians, to caterers, stylists, and landscapers. Those several hundred thousand individuals further support smaller local businesses like restaurants, hair salons, etc. There are dozens of restaurants in LA that are still alive right now because a Hollywood shoot used them for catering and that money has kept thousands of restaurant employees employed. There are hundreds of stylists still getting by because of the one week they worked on a set, which paid more than they would have made working at their local hair salon for several months.
Do you honestly believe that the states or cities have the ability to take over supporting those 2 million jobs and 400,000 businesses if they ban film shooting?
(On another note: Film/TV shoots can be managed in ways that eliminate the possibility of spreader events, because Hollywood can and does require cast and crew to agree to all sorts of practices and behavioral restrictions far beyond the simple and unburdensome restrictions much of the general public has refused to do. Half of the country refuses to wear a mask when they go outdoors; Hollywood cast and crew have agreed to give up dating, socializing, traveling, and pretty much every thing outside of work just so that they can work this year.)
I'm asking if that's how "essential" is defined.
But that is also why Hollywood studios implemented such draconion covid procedures: they were necessary to get exemptions from the lockdown orders. They were the first industry to get these exemptions because of their outsized economic impact, and especially because of their importance to the LA area's finances.
16 million people work for restaurants. Many more are part of their supply chains.
And it's hard to argue that entertainment is more essential than food production.
16 million people work for restaurants. Many more are part of their supply chains.
True, in the entire United States, 16 million people work for restaurants, most of them in part-time positions. Hollywood employs more than 1 million people in California, and several hundred thousand in LA alone.
You may not consider Hollywood essential, but it absolutely is an essential industry in Los Angeles.
Hollywood studios likely already has the means to implement this on their own.
Maybe that's part of it, but I believe it's because they know these filmmakers have incredible power to influence.
Remember "Sideways"? A fictional character in a fictional movie said one negative line about merlot and wiped out the market for that varietal[1]. People who liked the wine suddenly didn't like it, because a character in a movie didn't like it.
Now consider all of the semi-fictional movies that are made, like Citizen Kane was about Hearst (which destroyed Marion Davies' reputation as collateral damage). Or all of the movies glamorizing war, soldiers, FBI/CIA/police or politicians. This is something our government has needed and continues to need people to embrace.
[1] - I asked some winemakers about this and they said merlot in Napa "was being ripped up like crazy" after the movie came out. And that merlot often ends up in red blends because selling it as a single varietal still doesn't fly. It's only coming back in the last few years.
As far as I know, there is nothing preventing them from doing that beyond cost and time.
What a lot of us are asking is why don't we do something analogous for small businesses? There does not seem to be political will to figure out how to get them through this as well. At the very least it shows a profound lack of imagination.
To achieve the same level of risk for restaurants or other businesses would cost billions, and that's assuming that the customers would go along with the safety procedures required, but half of this country won't even wear a $1 mask when they go into a store because they think that covid is a conspiracy and they'll be damned if they agree to a minor personal inconvenience.
That's leaving aside the question of what the actual health risks are from the businesses California is forcing to shut down. Newsom has been very evasive on that topic.
I think customers may be part of the problem, though. No business has an incentive to say "You're not following the COVID protocols, I'm going to have to ask you to leave", and businesses that have actually done that get all sorts of abuse from the general public. Movie sets have a lot more leverage over their employees: if they don't follow the rules, they lose their income.
1. The workers at the business only interact in person with other workers. Members of the general public are not present.
2. The business conducts frequent testing, which should include tests that give a rapid answer.
3. The workers agree to take steps outside of work to limit their risk, such as not going places where they can't maintain social distancing or where mask wearing is not near universal.
You could probably even open that up a little, relaxing #1 to:
1'. There are only a small number of members of the general public present throughout the day, only one or two at a time.
This relaxed rule would allow for things like dentists offices, barbers, salons, and similar as long as they kept the number of simultaneous customers down.
(While Newsom has issued a statewide order that would theoretically lockdown all of SoCal and moot the county order, he doesn't actually have the authority to enforce those restrictions; that is handled at the county or city level by local law enforcement, nearly all of which have said they will not...even in Sacramento. Notably, even in CA local law enforcement for the most part has refused to enforce the lockdowns imposed by their own local governments.)
This situation is incredibly unfair to her. She has to pay the rent but can't open. She has to pay no rent and gets customers.
This is in fact what a number of studios already do: they use local restaurants for catering or on-site meals. However, as a result of COVID procedures, in order for a local restaurant to be eligible for this, they would to adhere to the same restrictions as Hollywood crews do, meaning: daily/near-daily testing, quarantining outside of work, and importantly, no interaction with non-household members.
Hollywood has the guilds to help it enforce the covid procedures (and also pays very well). The same cannot be said of restaurants.
https://twitter.com/SpencerKlavan/status/1335007535070253057
You can see the tables. They're about the same distance apart. There's also like 10x more of them for the film set than for the restaurant.
Every single person eating on the film set has been tested regularly and continuously and is not permitted on set if they have an ambiguous or positive result. In the event of a positive result, they're not even permitted on set for at least a week until after the last positive result, even when followup tests suggest that the positive result may have been false positive. When on set, all crew and cast must wear masks at all times except when filming, in which case cast but not crew may remove their masks for the duration of the take.
How often are the restaurant employees being tested? How often of the customers being tested? (For both questions, the answer is "not regularly, if at all".)
For every 100 people who eat at a restaurant, how many get the virus? For every 100 people working on a film set how many get the virus? These are the numbers we should look at to compare one vs. the other.
For the second one: 0. There have been 0 known instances of cast or crew getting COVID while on set, because upon reporting a single instance of a positive result, they require the cast/crew member to quarantine. In some cases, they have even shut down production for the quarantine period to prevent spread, see, e.g., The Batman.
People are saying they get tested every 3-4 days. If you get a positive test, that means there were up to 4 days the person was on set, potentially positive. 0, like absolutely no instances of anyone every contracting the virus on a set does not make sense with those circumstances.
I have several dozen friends in Hollywood working in broadcast, cable, streaming, and film. They are all being tested at least every other day using the rapid test (results within minutes), with a second rapid test within minutes if the first test is positive for covid. The last time any of them was tested as infrequently as every 3-4 days was back in September before cases started surging again. Right now, almost all of them are being tested daily. Compared to the costs of shutting down production for 2 weeks or more, daily testing is cheap.
So, for someone to have caught COVID on set, someone else on set would have had to have (a) been infected, (b) been asymptomatic, (c) received multiple false negatives from the rapid-result test without any positives,(d) and received a negative on their most recent slow test.
Can that happen? Sure. Has it happened? No. There are no reported incidents yet of multiple cast or crew members developing covid once they started working on set. While there have been incidents of multiple cast/crew members testing positive for covid, in all situations to date this involved cast or crew traveling to non-local filming locations, with symptoms showing up during the mandatory quarantine period for traveling cast/crew.
Contrast this with my friends outside the business...they're going out semi-regularly, have only been tested when they want to see their family or get out of quarantining for 2 weeks after travel, think nothing of eating in the outdoor huts that are slowly getting more and more enclosed as the NYC weather gets colder. I'm very sympathetic to this woman and all restaurant owners in general, but the situations are not the same.
Here’s an interesting report where two people were infected with just five min of overlap by an unmasked person. Extremely detailed contact tracing by the south koreans.
TV, by contrast, gets other people to stay at home in front of the TV and not be bored. A super vital service right now!
But your comment seemed about dining generally. If you only mean outdoor dining I agree that’s fairly low risk if spaced out.
I love older stuff but that’s not what most people watch. You have to deal with the world as it is, not how you want it to be.
Restaurants were some of the earliest known sources of mass spreading locations.
Figure it out and you too can enjoy that "privilege"
https://zeenews.india.com/world/relief-for-indian-it-profess...
Into the arena for the glory of Rome, I guess. (“Competition”)
1) California is the way it is because a whole shitload of people won't take even simple precautions. The Bay Area shows what California could be. If everybody took the precautions seriously, things would be opening instead of closing. In particular, the restaurants are suffering precisely because of the kind of people who want to go to restaurants but won't obey restrictions.
2) The governors cannot print money and are looking at a budget Armageddon coming up--no matter WHAT they do it's going to suck. The Federal government CAN print money--and is shoveling it at the rich.
Go harass the Senate Republicans. History suggests tar and feathers are effective.
The point still stands that it’s unfair. If the film industry is able to get a pass to operate by meeting some standard then that should be formalized and extended to these small businesses. Let them decide if it’s viable.
Back room deals and private special exceptions are no way to operate.
We can't forget that outdoor dining was just shutdown again and Hollywood has been taking these precautions for months now.
Telling restaurants they need to start testing every individual walking into their place of business really just does not seem feasible in immediate short-term given the current situation, unfortunately.
If office restaurants are opened that seems logical.
It’s not logical at all.
These restrictions amount to a wealth transfer to the rich and unmitigated suffering to anyone struggling.
The list of politicians who have been caught vacationing, going to grooming appointments, etc. is appalling. (These are politicians who have made strong statements condemning everyone else to stay home.)
But the pols are small potatoes in comparison to the business edicts like this article is about. People's entire livelihoods are at stake.
(Worth noting I was trying to find this link with Google and had a hard time. I had to switch to a foreign search engine)
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03141-3
"Although there is a lower risk of transmission from asymptomatic people, they might still present a significant public-health risk because they are more likely to be out in the community than isolated at home, says Andrew Azman"
Did you read my study? It's based on direct evidence. "There were no positive tests amongst 1,174 close contacts of asymptomatic cases."
Turns out the Swedish declared they didn't know how to deal with Covid, and by not knowing they decided the best course of action was to do nothing as far as lockdowns and other authoritarian measures were concerned.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/swedens-pandemic-experiment-end...
Or more directly, a chart that says more than most articles: https://si-wsj-net.cdn.ampproject.org/i/s/si.wsj.net/public/...
A large subset of the population in the US is (rightly IMO) not okay with their state or local government dictating what businesses are forced to close or imposing restrictions that effectively put them out of business.
By approaching the situation in this way it’s only further politicized the issue. I worry what will happen when something worse than COVID-19 comes in the future.