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

[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.

[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.

[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 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.

[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

[Mike Blakesley]

It was not until we had a mask mandate here in Davidson County that the COVID numbers went on the decrease... and once it was in place that decrease was rapid, like in two weeks.

Well that's great.... but here, when there was NOT a mask mandate we had zero cases, and now, a couple months into the mask mandate, we have over 300 active cases and it climbs every day.

I think my friend was referring to the fact that when people put a bandana or a shirt-tail or whatever over their mouths, they're doing very little to contain anything as opposed to a "real" mask.

The rumor around town here is that the vast majority of our county's cases are on the reservation, which is about 60 miles south of us but is still in the same county. And, the public health department on the reservation (which is separate from the county-at-large PH dept) is very slow to report the numbers of recoveries, and the culture on the reservation does not lend itself easily to practicing social distancing, which probably contributes to more/easier spread there. But our county's public health officer insists they have to lump all the numbers in together in the county. They can't separate out the reservation's numbers (even though the reservation is considered a sovereign nation) because, you know, it's racist to do that.

[Jim Cassedy]

One of the screening rooms I work at had contacted the company who handles the HVAC system in their building to see about putting in those 'high efficiency' (or whatever) filters that would help trap airborne virus particles, but they were advised that since those filters also cut down on the airflow, it would be impossible to install them without upgrading the entire system with higher power blowers, and the size of the ducting would need also to be increased to one zone, costing thousands of dollars. We were told that to just put in the filters, without the other upgrades, would actually make things WORSE, because it would cut down the CFM's in the auditorium to an unacceptable level.

I've noticed that The APPLE™ Store(s) and some other retail outlets here in San Francisco have installed these HEPA air cleaners which I think use a combination of filters & electrostatic technology to remove particulates from the air. This is one of at least a dozen or more I saw in use at the TARGET store near me in SF. While they'd probably be OK in a theater lobby, they make far too much noise and are too drafty to be used in an auditorium. They're also darn expensive - both to either buy or lease, and then there's the additional $$ they'll put on your electric bill. From stickers I saw on the machines at TARGET, it appears they are leasing them from some company. Although they had put these in several weeks ago due to COVID concerns, they're at least getting they're momeys-worth, since now they also helping to clear the air from all the soot & dust in the air from the big fires up here in Northern California. The air quality has been dreadful here in SF for almost 2 weeks now.
HEPA-AirMachine.jpg
>So, how bad was is the air here in San Francisco? I took these photos last Tues morning (9/8/20)

ShipsBadAir.jpg


ChurchBadAir.jpg GearyBadAir.jpg

The ships & the Russian Orthodox Cathedral were photographed between 8
and 9am. By 11am, it had actually gotten DARKER as you can see from the
photo I took on Geary Blvd, around 11am! These have not been photoshopped.

[Lyle Romer]

MIke, I think your friend is full of crap! It was not until we had a mask mandate here in Davidson County that the COVID numbers went on the decrease... and once it was in place that decrease was rapid, like in two weeks. This video says it all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNeYfUTA11s

That video doesn't "say it all" or close to "it all." From the video description:

"We do not know how this translates to infection risk, which will depend on how many asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic infected people are around. However, it shows a single layer is not as good a barrier as a double layer."

Whatever caused the decrease in cases in Davidson County, it likely had more to do with something other than a mask mandate. In Florida, Miami-Dade county was the first county to institute a mask mandate in April and never took it away. Not only did Miami-Dade county experience the summer "spike" along with the rest of the state, it had, by far, the worst infection rate of any county, still does and accounts for 24.6% of cases in the State while representing approximately 12.7% of the population.

California instituted a statewide mask mandate on 6/19. There was a drastic INCREASE in daily cases after that (I'm not suggesting the mandate led to more cases) which peaked over a month later and still hasn't returned to the pre-mandate level (three months later).

The random fabric on their faces that people are running around with are not "masks" and likely do very little to prevent transmission in most environments where social distancing measures are already in place. Psychologically, they make some people feel more comfortable which could lead to complacency and inattention to other measures that can make the spread worse. It also allows a segment of the population to feel good about themselves because they are "doing something."

Nowhere has a "mask mandate." They have "face covering" mandates and the two things are very different. I have no doubt that if everybody wore a properly fitted N95 mask and only used each one for the specified lifespan that it would significantly reduce spread. However, it isn't practical to produce hundreds of millions of N95's every week nor is it practical to think that the majority of people will wear them properly fitted or handle them properly.

[Leo Enticknap]

So maybe the same thing happens in HVAC systems. The air gets recirculated and when that happens, it's drawn through filters which might act like masks and tangle up those viruses.

I'm a bit surprised that HVAC filtration hasn't been the subject of more discussion in relation to C19; especially when everyone was being urged to stay at home as much as possible (i.e. they will have been spending most of their time breathing HVAC-filtered and circulated air). Back when this all started, I read advice from several sources that the use of MERV 13 filters could be helpful in impeding airborne pathological vectors, C19 included. At the time we were using washable, reusable filters in our home system, but at my wife's request, I got some one-time MERV 13 ones. Whether they are helpful in preventing bug spread I'm not sure, but they certainly are taking a lot more crap out of the air. I've noticed that less dust is landing on surfaces, and we're all sneezing less (even the cats!).

I had heard that masks reduce the emission of droplets that carry the virus thus protecting others. True, the virus is small, but the droplets are not, as I understand it.

If that's the reason why even cheap, crude masks are effective, it would seem to suggest that higher grade HVAC filters likely wouldn't be. When we exhale or sneeze, the pathogen is suspended in liquid, but circulating around in the atmosphere, it's not (especially in warm, low humidity climates). I do know that high quality HVAC filter elements, regularly cleaned or replaced, are effective in preventing the spread of Legionnaire's Disease (most outbreaks are traced to poor maintenance of HVAC systems), but I'm guessing that the actual pathogen involved is much larger than C19.

[Steve Guttag]

At my wife's theatre, they prop the front door open...why? Not only does it let fresh air in...but...it is one less thing that people have to touch that other people have touched (same with the bathroom doors now. They are doing everything to minimize common contact areas and, of course, sanitizing between shows.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

MIke, I think your friend is full of crap! It was not until we had a mask mandate here in Davidson County that the COVID numbers went on the decrease... and once it was in place that decrease was rapid, like in two weeks. This video says it all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNeYfUTA11s

[Harold Hallikainen]

I had heard that masks reduce the emission of droplets that carry the virus thus protecting others. True, the virus is small, but the droplets are not, as I understand it.

[Mike Blakesley]

I was talking to a friend of mine (he is a paramedic and is the director of EMS for our county) about the mask thing. He said, your basic cloth face mask doesn't really do much, considering the virus is so small. He said the main hope is that the virus gets tangled up in the cloth. Therefore, the more layers it has to pass through, the better.

So maybe the same thing happens in HVAC systems. The air gets recirculated and when that happens, it's drawn through filters which might act like masks and tangle up those viruses.

The whole NATO "CinemaSafe" initiative is admirable, but it's out there claiming that all the theaters have "upgraded their ventilation systems." Really? 40,000 theaters have upgraded their ventilation system? I don't know what we would do with ours, outside of putting smaller-particle filters in the A/C, and that won't matter during the winter because we have radiators, not forced air.

The emphasis on cleaning surfaces and door handles and such has pretty much evaporated in the frenzy to get everyone to wear masks. That's what's so irritating about this.... there is this panicky OMG OMG OMG DO THIS, and then a couple weeks later that's forgotten for the next thing.

[Steve Guttag]

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). So there is increasing data every day that is indicating that cinemas are "safer" that other indoor businesses. While I can understand the initial prediction based on limited knowledge, but it is like predicting that, on average, you will flip a coin and get equal heads and tails. But if the data is coming in that after a 100 flips, they are ALL heads...you have to think that you haven't been given all of the information and need to investigate why the prediction was wrong (e.g. the coin was not equally distributed or even shaped...or they were both heads...something).

[Harold Hallikainen]

I still think the fact that Germany has had no theater outbreaks (as evidenced by no request for contact tracing data) is valuable information. I've been trying to find US data on outbreak sources and have not found anything yet. Colorado does make this data available at https://covid19.colorado.gov/covid19-outbreak-data .

For the table below, I added current and resolved outbreaks and counted each "Covid Setting".
.
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Healthcare - Skilled Nursing 101 Healthcare - Assisted Living 55 Office/Indoor Workspace 38 Restaurant - Sit Down 38 Other 27 Restaurant - Fast Food 26 Retailer 25 Healthcare - Combined Care 21 Non-Food Manufacturer/Warehouse 15 Healthcare - Outpatient 14 Religious Facility 11 Child Care Center 10 Healthcare - Independent Living Facility 10 Home Maintenance Services 8 Hotel/Lodge/Resort 8 Meat Processing/Packaging 8 Jail 7 State Prison 7 Construction Site 6 Healthcare - Group Home 6 Indoor Entertainment/Rec 6 Materials Supplier 6 School K-12 6 Homeless Shelter 5 Social Gathering 5 Healthcare - Rehab Facility 4 Specialty Food Retailer 4 College/University 3 Construction Company/Contractor 3 Fair/Festival/Temp. Mobile Event 3 Food Warehouse 3 Healthcare - Assisted Living 3 Healthcare - Facility for Developmentally Disabled (outpatient) 3 Law Enforcement - Other 3 Law Enforcement Administration 3 Personal Services 3 Bar/Tavern/Brewery 2 Food Manufacturing/Packaging 2 Grocery Store 2 Healthcare - Hospice 2 Healthcare - Psychiatric Hospital 2 Outdoor Entertainment/Rec 2 Overnight Camp 2 Restaurant - Other 2 Travel 2 Casino 1 Correctional, Other 1 Distribution Center/Business 1 Distribution Center/Business 1 Farm/Dairy 1 Healthcare - Alcohol/Drug Abuse Treatment (outpatient) 1 Healthcare - Long-term Acute Care 1 Youth Sports/Activities 1

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Theaters would probably be under "Indoor Entertainment/Rec". The facilities listed in this report are:
.
.

Recreation Facility and Restaurant

Night Club/Adult Entertainment

Recreation Facility and Restaurant

Members only club

Restaurant/Adult Entertainment

The Other category is rather large, so here's further descriptions of those outbreak locations.
.
.

Fire Station

Coal Mine

Repair Shop

Fire Response

Multifaceted Christian Ministry Organization

Auto Dealership

Transportation

Maintenance Services

Waste management

Animal Service Provider

Employee Housing

Garbage Collection

Personal Care Alternative (PCA) staffed apartment

Oil and Gas Company

Golf Course

Laundry Services

Environmental Laboratory

Steam Laundry

Auto Sales and Service

Fire & Security

THC Laboratory

Veterinary clinic

Drilling Business

Copper Mountain Employee Housing

Apartment Complex

Waste/Recycling Facility

.
.

It would be interesting to see national numbers on this. Of course, theaters have not been very long, so data may not have shown up yet.

Does anyone know of a national (or even international) outbreak database like this?

I'm continuing to update http://hallikainen.org/cv/ .

Harold