> To bypass travel restrictions, nominees and their guests have been designated “essential workers”.

I don't even know what to say to this. Designated by whom? The whole expansion of essential work from medicine and food and literal essentials all the way to, well, the oscars has been a joke. We're in this awful middle ground of half-assed extreme measures. They're watered down enough to not stamp things out, but still followed enough to make us all miserable. It's the perfect anti-sweet-spot that maximizes the combination of virus spread and misery. Instead, we get this never-ending bucket of misery because everyone thinks they're an exception or just an insignificant single drop in the ocean.