Businesses, events, regions, however micro or macro you want to get with this.
Inspired in part by a post I was reminded of recently that claimed that Chicagoans would have no complaints with lockdowns lasting into next calendar year and beyond. I’m skeptical, and that got me thinking about politicians asserting similar for borders, and wondering what would really last that long.
Movie theaters. They can’t make money at half capacity and more people have been forced into using streaming services now.
Over here in Arizona and other places the AMC theater chain just opened a recently completed new complex of ritzy cinemas with dining included.
Two strikes and already out…
Anything indoors with large crowds. As already mentioned, movie theaters, but also other theaters and stages. Our local concert venue at the community college, which hosts concerts and other events, has cancelled all events thru next summer, essentially shutting down until the uncertainty has lessened. IMHO it is prudent to close all indoor concert, orchestra, stage venues for now.
I cannot imagine how airports will manage large indoor crowds if travel begins to recover to even half as much as it was pre-pandemic. Those massive lines of people streaming back into the country as the world shut down had to have been super-spreader events. The TSA line would not be a good place to be without a vaccine.
Even outdoor events that attract large crowds in close proximity should also stay shut down.
No parades, either.
I know, I am the party-pooper.
I can’t imagine indoor live music or comedy shows will be back any time soon. Can’t run the venue and pay the artist what they want w/o selling way more than 50% capacity. Even if they could have a higher capacity than 50%, are people going to buy tickets? Is it worth booking the show if the sales are that unsure?
I have tickets from a sold out show from the end of March. I’m going to be super pissed if they reschedule the show before it’s safe. I won’t go. I’m sure they’ll refund (man I hope so!) but that just means it’ll be so much longer before the artist comes back again.
Also, do the artists even want to be exposed to anything??
It just occurred to me that I should’ve indicated a time frame. Let’s say the vaccine takes at least a year. Or that at the end of one year, it’s still not clear whether there’ll be a vaccine at all (a related, but admittedly not identical scenario).
This, I think, would put at least somewhat of a different blush on answers already given, if only for the extraordinary pressure it would put governments under.
If America could get its shit together, all of this could reopen before a vaccine is found. NY reported zero COVID deaths for the first time since March. If all of America shut down as hard as NY and NJ did, this thing would be mostly behind us. Everything, except the borders, is reopened in New Zealand and (I think) Australia.
As it stands, if Florida, Texas, and California continue apace, then I agree that public venues will remain closed indefinitely.
Australia just had to re-lockdown Melbourne because of several outbreaks.
Until about a month ago, Cinemark was going to open its theaters in my area, with a slate of recent and older movies starting Independence Day weekend. Later in July, the Disney film Mulan was supposed to get a big release, with Christopher Nolan’s Tenet coming a few weeks later. The theaters would have been configured with some of the auditorium not available for seating, and additional time between showtimes, to allow for more extensive cleaning. Now the website simply says the theaters will be back on some indeterminate date.
So in theory, they were thinking of reopening even without a vaccine.
Jeez.
Even if there’s a vaccine, it’s going to take some time to make a few billion doses and get them administered. Years, I imagine.
We may never even have a vaccine, though we might not necessarily need one as badly as we believe, either.
a few miles from me there is a vaccine factory designed to ramp up and produce a lot of vaccines in a short time . The feds partially funded the factory for a pandemic like we have now. I think there are similar places all over the world. It may not take years to produce the vaccines for everybody…
Public swimming pools.
A few pools at private clubs might reopen with temperature checks, and limits to the number of people who can be in at once-- maybe even just for swimming laps, not for playing, the way kids do, but I can’t see truly public pools, which aren’t moneymakers anyway, opening anytime soon.
Not sure cinemas will stay shut. They are expensive to run, but they can be kept in 'storage" so to speak for years. Shut down all the screening rooms, sack most of the staff (except a small cadre) and the running costs plummet. Just run the equipment a couple of times a month to check its functionality.
Ditto swimming pools. Drain the pools. Keep a small staff to basically keep an eye on it and make sure the equipment remains in some sort of working order.
Outdoor public swimming pools are already reopened here in NJ, and NJ is being extra cautious. I’ve never heard of an indoor public swimming pool, but maybe they exist somewhere?
I thought all you guys in Arizona were dead or dying.
Schools. My undergraduate college in Arkansas has a huge indoor pool.
Ah, I see. I wouldn’t consider that a public pool, but it’s a good point. I think those should be allowed to reopen, since the whole thing is constantly being treated with chlorine, but I’m not an epidemiologist.
Wet markets? One might hope.
A guy who was a patron of the library where I worked was in his sixties, and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock allows people over 65 to take courses with free tuition. He was in a swimming class with me. He took the course repeatedly as arthritis therapy.