Closed again

[Bobby Henderson]

Omicron is going to be free to do whatever it wants here in Oklahoma. I don't think there is any danger of city or state ordered lock-downs being issued. It's possible some school districts could go to remote learning, but I think they're just pushing ahead to get everything back to normal.

Even with a lack of official lock downs there is a strong possibility many businesses will have to close temporarily or try operating with minimal staff and reduced hours due to so many people being infected at once. All the supply chain issues that have worn on all our patience could get a whole lot worse.

One of the biggest concerns is how the Omicron-fueled wave could possibly impact health and first responder staff. If a bunch of doctors and nurses are out sick with COVID-19 that could mean dangerous impacts on many patients.

A couple of my co-workers came down with COVID-19 this week, one of whom was previously infected. So they're sidelined. One of the guys got vaccinated in secret so he wouldn't catch a bunch of shit from several people in our fabrication shop and outside crews who are militantly anti-vax. If this disease wave lives up to its full potential our company may be unable to install and/or service signs for a couple weeks while the anti-vax people are out sick. Earlier in 2021 our company offered $100 bonuses to those who got fully vaccinated. The ones who did get vaccinated wouldn't have their sick leave impacted if they got infected with SARS-CoV-2 afterward. The ones who refused to get vaccinated will have to draw from their sick/vacation leave if they get COVID-19. They don't get a break or bonus. BTW, all our office staff (including me) are fully vaccinated and boosted. At least for me it's no big deal if I got a break-thru infection of Omicron; I can work from home. Our shop and outside guys all have to do work in person.

[Dennis Benjamin]

I spent last week working at one of our locations where the entire management staff was out sick.

We sold out every show of "Spider-man" on two screens and almost every show of "Sing 2" on two screens.

The people in that particular community didn't care about whatever current variant is out there.

I was glad too. It just goes to show that people are getting sick and tired of being told to stay home. If they were to mandate a second shutdown of movie theatres in the U.S., it could potentially be the coffin nails of our business.

I am not on here to argue about a virus. I've been in the movie theatre business for 32 years and I am in awe of how many people in this business are fine with losing their livelihood without a fight. In the last two years I have seen hundreds of my colleagues lose their jobs and others lose their businesses over all of this nonsense. What happened to us, did we all lose our backbones? I was extremely happy to see "Spider-man" do the numbers it did. It sure saved our 2021!

[Frank Cox]

For myself, I simply don't want to be responsible for anyone ending up sick or dead because they were at my theatre.

I shut down on the day before I was to start playing Spiderman, followed by Sing. I bought a bunch of candy and drinks the week before to prepare for this which isn't getting any fresher and some or all of that stuff will be expired before I re-open depending on when that will be. There's going to be a fair amount of money going into the garbage, on top of the movie tickets that I'm not selling.

But, again, I don't want anyone to end up sick or dead over a movie and that appears to be what it takes.

I don't think it has anything to do with "backbone". Common sense and protection of the community that you live in, yes. Backbone, though, I just don't see it.

[Mike Blakesley]

Let's see, just checking my notes. We have:

- People who won't get vaxed at all for legit reasons (medical)
- People who won't get vaxed because think they're going to get microchipped, turn magnetic, or have their DNA modified
- People who won't get vaxed because they don't want the gov-er-ment telling them what to do, even though they're law-abiding in other ways
- People who have had the initial dose(s), but won't get boosted
- People who have had one booster, but draw the line there
- People who will get whatever the government tells them they need to get

Combined with the various "information" we get from the internet and the TV, which is all 100% reliable:
- Omicron spreads easier than delta
- But it's not as deadly as delta
- You might still wind up in the hospital, but you probably won't
- Even if you do, you probably won't die
- You might die, though
- Apparently nobody ever gets plain old covid or delta anymore (but some people are getting the flu this year)
- Wait, most of the people in the hospital seem to have omicron, wtf?
- You're safe in a group of up to 50 people. Or maybe it's 10 people, or 30, who knows.
- Come to think of it, just don't go anywhere. Except for essentials, like food, hardware, doctor, banking, shopping, supporting the economy, etc.
- For the love of God, don't eat in public, unless you're in a restaurant then it's OK as long as you wear a mask as you walk to your table
- You're OK as long as you don't spend more than 5 minutes with somebody
- You're OK on a three hour flight, though because everyone's mostly wearing masks (just keep the air vent blowing on you for maximum discomfort)
- Be sure to cover your cough, because the virus only travels in a straight line and will get lodged in the crook of your elbow
- In a related note, how come nobody is telling us to scrub the inside of our elbows, hmmm?
- We could get more information but we'll need to spend a few more billion dollars
- Everyone's going to get covid eventually, but we must stop the spread!

Let's check our mask information:
- They don't work at all
- They work, sorta
- They work if you wear two or three... sorta
- They are the best defense we have
- They're better than nothing
- They're basically a crapshoot
- They give false confidence

Going over the latest vaccine information:
- They work 95% of the time, or sometimes 80%, or 65%, depending on who you talk to
- They give you immunity! But only for a while
- They work great! But you need a booster and nobody knows how long that works
- They may not keep you out of the medical clinic, but they'll keep you out of the cemetery, probably, unless you were headed there already

In conclusion: I had a cold last week. or it may have been the flu, or covid, I don't know. I guess we can sum it all up in the immortal words of John McClane (played by Bruce Willis) in that famous Christmas movie "Die Hard," in which he said: "Add it all up and I don't know what the fuck it means, but you've got some bad-ass perpetrators and they're here to stay."

[Frank Cox]

Mike, let's try the common sense thing here for a moment.

1. Covid is bad and it can kill you. If it doesn't kill you it can give you a (permanent?) disability.
2. Vaccines prevent you from getting covid. However, they are not 100% effective so a few people who got the vaccine may still get infected.
3. Booster shots will improve the effectiveness of the vaccination, though the effectiveness is still short of 100%.
4. For any given crowd of people, the more people that are in the crowd the greater the chance is that one or more of them have covid and may or may not know it.

It seems to me that not going out into crowds is safer than being in a crowd even if you're vaccinated. Smaller groups of people will statistically be safer than larger groups, though there's still a greater than zero possibility that in a group of three people one or two of them may still have covid; that possibility increases as the number of people in the crowd gets larger.

And since the protection that you get from the vaccines is far greater than zero but still not 100%, exposing yourself to covid even if you are vaccinated doesn't seem like a wise thing to be doing.

[Mike Blakesley]

Well I was mostly summarizing the comedic amount of conflicting information we're getting. I never said anything about purposely going out and exposing yourself to it.

[Ed Gordon]

Covid is bad and it can kill you.

And then there is the fate worse than death:

COVID-19 and Erectile Dysfunction: What to Know

Researchers continue to learn more about COVID-19’s long-term impact on our bodies. Now they’re looking into the link between the virus and erectile dysfunction (ED)...

One study found that people infected with the virus were more than 5 times more likely to develop ED...

It’s still too early to know for sure what the long-term effects of the virus are on sexual and reproductive health...

From an article on WebMD.

[Bobby Henderson]

It has been a little over a year since I had a minor case of COVID-19. My senses of taste and smell returned a couple or so weeks after that infection. But to this day my sense of smell is still a bit off. Some things just don't smell the same anymore.

But my "junk" still works!

This new Omicron-flavored wave is affecting my workplace. A couple more people are stuck at home waiting on test results, including our company owner. I was supposed to go to a planning meeting this evening with civic club members and some other folks organizing a cornhole tournament in March. We had to cancel the meeting because certain key people got covid or suspect they might have it and were waiting on test results. If almost everyone in Lawton had already been vaccinated we would have went on with the meeting. But about half our city's population is not vaccinated at all.

As to all the "conflicting information" the public is getting, the situation is not hard at all to understand looking at the big picture view. The primary message that should have been coming across loud enough for all the people in the back to hear is help protect your family, friends and colleagues by getting vaccinated; do your part to help defeat COVID-19. That message of breaking the chain of transmission has been drowned out by a bunch of trivial shit.

I think many people are using the tactic of playing dumb just to be argumentative on any point and not follow any recommendations. The news media is divided into two camps on the topic. One camp wants the public to get vaccinated and follow other mitigation strategies, but gets too alarmist and too bogged down in details to get the main message across that getting vaccines is not just about you, it's about protecting others. The other media camp is exploiting the crowds who think the pandemic is a hoax, vaccines don't work, etc.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus is killing more people than any other contagious disease on the planet. That is an undeniable fact. COVID-19 is the #3 cause of death in the United States. Yet a bunch of people in this country think it's okay to spread it around. "It's not any worse than the flu."

If someone knew he was infected with some other kind of communicable disease, be it hepatitis, TB or any number of STD's and proceeded business-as-usual he could get prosecuted for passing the disease to others. With COVID-19, some are minimizing it as if it's just an ordinary cold.

[Frank Cox]

https://canoe.com/business/money-new...7-b13f839f8085

Cineplex Inc is temporarily laying off 6,000 part-time employees due to mandated closures of its venues amid surging COVID-19 cases caused by the Omicron variant, the Canadian cinema operator said on Thursday.

Globally, coronavirus cases have been rising rapidly due to the highly transmissible variant. In Canada, 36,110 new infections were reported on an average each day, according to a Reuters tally.

Due to mandated closures of Cineplex’s theatres and entertainment sites across Ontario and Quebec, the company had yet again decided to temporarily lay off its part-time workforce, Cineplex spokeswoman Sarah Van Lange said. Cineplex had taken similar actions for all provincial government mandated closures earlier since the pandemic began, she added.

Out of the 6,000 workers being laid off, 5,000 are in Ontario.

The cinema industry has been one of the worst affected sectors by the pandemic, with lockdowns shutting cinemas and delaying movie releases at a time when the industry has been trying to stave off increased competition from streaming services. In December, the 2019 planned acquisition of Cineplex by British cinema operator Cineworld was scrapped.

The lay-offs were first reported by the Hollywood Reporter. (Reporting by Chavi Mehta in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)

[Mike Blakesley]

Sony has already moved "Morbius" back by 3 months. Our summer may be about to evaporate again.

It's sort of odd that nobody changed much of anything with Delta rearing its head, but Omicron has people scurrying like they did when Corona 1.0 first hit.

[Frank Cox]

I think the difference is that when you're fully vaccinated you're pretty much covered as far as Delta is concerned, but Omicron is more contagious and can make even the vaccinated at least a little bit sick.

The town where I live was down to about 3 or 4 reported cases a month ago and as of today we have 105; the next town down the road has 127. So it's more than an order of magnitude greater.

I have three doses of Moderna so if I get exposed to Omicron I most likely won't die, but there's a chance that I could end up sick for a few days and that's a chance that I choose not to take.

Much as I miss being "Mr. Movie Man" (kids in town call me that), I don't plan to re-open my theatre until I can once again be reasonably sure I won't be admitting any Typhoid Mary's to the shows. Unfortunately just showing your vaccination certificate at the door isn't enough to provide me with that assurance right now, though it was a month ago.

The Saskatchewan chief medical health officer made an announcement today:

“I’m saying don’t have any gatherings. We need to do everything to blunt the wave. This is not the time for any gatherings at all,” said Shahab. He recommends only essential activities like going to work for the next two to four weeks.
We really need to hunker down and only do what is essential and minimize other non-essential contacts for the next, I would say two to four weeks at least,” he said.
Over that period, Shahab said it’s up to the public to “do the right thing” saying that the government is relying on people to take it upon themselves to stem the spread. But, if enough people are throwing caution to the wind he said “unfortunately, you know, the government would have to consider stronger measures.”

I hope that things will be under reasonable control again in in another few weeks or a month; it seems like this virus situation can change almost overnight.

[Mike Blakesley]

I have three doses of Moderna so if I get exposed to Omicron I most likely won't die, but there's a chance that I could end up sick for a few days and that's a chance that I choose not to take.

Much as I miss being "Mr. Movie Man" (kids in town call me that), I don't plan to re-open my theatre until I can once again be reasonably sure I won't be admitting any Typhoid Mary's to the shows.

I'm not trying to talk you into anything here, but that strategy is like refusing to drive a car because there's a slim chance you might get into an accident, and an even slimmer chance that if you get into accident, you could die from it.

[Steve Guttag]

Mike, to be even more blunt about it. If everyone at an event is vaccinated (and by that, I'm saying boosted, when it comes to Omicron because the current vaccines are not an exact match like they were to Alpha and Delta), one's chance of ending up in the hospital with a bad case or dying is about 400 times more likely that the trip to/from the theatre will land the person in the hospital/dying than the actual gathering/cinema. It is probably even greater when one factors in that Omicron has not shown itself to be nearly as lethal/damaging as Alpha or Delta.

I find it a strange inconsistency to treat all C19 as if they are identical, they aren't in either the ability to spread or to cause harm.

I absolutely understand to not want to feel that a business has contributed to someone's ill health/death. Who would want that? But if the threshold is zero, then close now (forever) because you'll NEVER have that and in the reality-check department, you never were at zero. You serve food that, by and large contributes the same order of magnitude that any form of C19 has killed off each year, which is 10 times higher than being on the roads...which every business has contributed to since one has to get there somehow (and their supplies have to get there somehow as well as their trash removed).

The yearly flu and driving related deaths are on the same order of magnitude and seem to be a societal level of acceptance (not that we don't try to improve those numbers...and we have) but we don't shut down business and cease being out and about. It doesn't mean that people don't get sick (from the Flu or other contagious things). It doesn't mean that people don't get injured or die in motor vehicle related accidents or stupidity, but we don't shut down society over them. With vaccinated people (all within a setting), then you are down below the threshold of either of those when it comes to the severity of either. Depending on where someone's comorbidities are and how recent the vaccine/boost...you could be 1/40th that of either of them. If you have a compromised immune system, well, yeah, you shouldn't go out and if you live such a person, how you prepare to be out in the world has to be such that you plan for that...and that was the case before C19. Why the inconsistency?

Presuming that COVID and the SARS-CoV-2family is an endemic, then this is a forever thing and, like the flu, will, at least be something to deal with on the seasons. What is the forever strategy? Shut society down each time it flares up but doesn't show itself to be overly lethal? Again, you were never at a zero-level of health risks. This is just a new item to consider. If herd immunity is a thing, then why wouldn't you want a low-lethal form to spread fast an to as many healthy people as possible to try and achieve herd immunity to protect those less able to withstand it? With the current vaccinations, the lethal/damaging nature of it is yet further reduced. The current plan just seems illogical, inconsistent and without any sort of plan and a never ending stalemate that STILL will kill people...but with the added issue of pitting neighbor against neighbor for not responding in a like way or to the same degree.

[Carsten Kurz]

I think it is also important to keep locations open for the public. Winter usually is already depressing enough with Covid-19 on our back. Why not offer some entertainment in these days to those who are willing to take the risc? Let only people in that have been boostered, restrict the number of seats, etc.

- Carsten

[Steve Guttag]

Have there been ANY tracings to a cinema anywhere in the world to think that a cinema is particularly risky?