I don't trust this vaccine mandate ending. This is going to get messy.

>Hollywood’s Covid protocols will expire on May 12, and the vaccination mandate — which gave producers the right to require Covid vaccinations as a condition of employment — will end for all productions except those that were implemented prior to May 12, which can continue to apply for the remainder of the production or the season.

The Return-to-Work Agreement had been set to expire on Saturday.

Most of the COVID theater made no sense. Letting actors can walk around everywhere without masks, but forcing crewmembers to wear them was dumb

COVID has been over in America for a solid year now, whether you want to admit it or not. The ending of the public health emergency just makes it "official"

Ya, actors should be given the boot when they put a production at risk after warnings.

Tilda Swinton can finally stop being oppressed.

The ones that can be are but its just basic math that it makes more sense to shut down than to reshoot with a replaced lead actor.

and Woody Harrelson and Tim Robbins

I’m pretty sure in most cases actors had to wear masks unless they were on camera.

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I mean…source?

Edit: lmfao you reported me for that?

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Stuntman here, actors absolutely wore masks unless it actively effected the makeup/wardrobe. They were also kept incredibly isolated from the rest of our production teams, at least on the larger productions.

So provide sources then. If it’s “all data”, this should be easy.

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Anyone who wants it has had the option of getting 4 shots at this point (some will even have had 5), you can’t keep it going forever

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As someone who worked in public health it very much was not over last year.

There’s a huge difference between it being culturally over, because people gave up and stopped caring. Vs it being actually over because scientists and health experts said it was over.

Yes. We did. There’s nothing left to be done. It’s no longer about if you’re going to get it, everyone is, quite nearly everyone has. You’re just going to get it regularly and when you do the effects will generally be small, but considerably larger than cooronaviruses have been in the past.

We have a new disease which over the long term is going to be about as bad as the flu. Being human got a little more dangerous, but unavoidably so. Spending your whole life trying to avoid all diseases has its own dangers too.

Kinda seems like it validates her and others viewpoints complaining about the continued restrictions.

I can’t imagine how many cases of disabilities we’re going to see in 5-10 years from this. We’ve already seen how bad Covid is in terms of increasing heart attack rates and dementia.

The dude below me really trying to keep pushing the whole “vaccines bad” narrative that’s been debunked like a million times already. Your risk of heart issues are significantly higher from Covid infection itself than they are from vaccines.

More or less the entire human population has had it now. It’s happened. People always got sick, people always got degenerative diseases, people always died. We have a significant new cause of death and some people are going to have those things happen sooner. The world will continue turning. There will be a bit of a shock while the new more dangerous rates catch up, then things will settle down.

Maybe we’ll get more research and understanding to the “long” versions of infections which have always been a thing for many different infections. They’re rare and often mild but still always have been present and poorly understood.

What is your expertise? I know for me that I worked in public health for two years so I had access to a lot of epidemiologists. Just curious what your qualifications are in regards to this topic?

To be fair, it did seem weird that most jobs stopped requiring us to wear masks a year ago, but when I see the BTS of a movie being made, everyone is forced to wear them.

Jeez, it’s 2023, you can go to a nightclub with a few hundred sweaty people, it’s time to end all COVID restrictions.

I read papers, I evaluate them based on my knowledge and experience. Do that yourself or go find a few people with credentials you value and compare their responses and decide for yourself.

Or just google “covid” and “endemic” and find plenty of papers and articles.

Or try (and fail) to find any serious scientist taking about eradication or just think what the game plan for avoiding infection long term actually could be. (Nothing but how often you get it seems even remotely reasonable)

EDIT: the pattern of people blocking somebody so they can get the final word is a bit sad.

Funny how everyone I know who takes bare minimum precautions like masking and boosting hasn’t gotten it once, but sure, go off

Loosing your actor, dp or so on a shooting day costs a lot of money.

Sure, and a year ago I’d have agreed.

We’re now at a point where there’s no requirement to isolate, and symptoms are often so small they’re barely noticeable. Most workplaces outside of healthcare have accepted that it’s ok to come to work if you have it.

Everyone on a film set is still tested for Covid. People actually adjust their lifestyles inorder to work, so no most of the people are not going to the nightclub with hundreds of other people because it could cost them some work

nah just the 5 jabs, not covid 🙂

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Name any other profession other than healthcare where you have to be Covid tested regularly?

Because it’s weird that it’s only “nurses and actors”.

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And in 2021 that was a serious concern, but the disease has mutated to a point where it is basically “The Sniffles” for most people. And while it still could take an actor off work for a week, it’s now a lot lower risk than injury etc.

The pandemic is not over. People are still being crippled and dying.

It's just like the flu in 1917. They just 'believed' it was all over. They were done with it.

Then came 1918.

There's a LOT of PR involvement in all of this kind of stuff and images heavily edited or excluded if the PR guys think it might get a bad reaction. Not even masks, even down to the balance of individuals, or how the layout might appear - e.g. imagine a picture where you have an all-white crew standing around giving directions to a black actor who's on his knees.

Absolutely absurd dumb shit that only idiots would make a drama about. But in Hollywood they try to be meticulous about this stuff.

So likewise with maintaining the use of masks and vaccines well beyond the point of necessity. The concern is all about whether pictures and reports of people not wearing masks will reflect badly on the industry, not whether it's necessary.

No, you’re wrong, realistically they ALL got it, they just didn’t know it. The vast majority of Covid cases are asymptomatic and harmless. The whole country’s had Covid at this point, and we’ve fully achieved both vaccination immunity and general herd immunity, including people who never got vaccinated.

Pandemic’s over. It’s been over for quite a while.

The year is 2023. Influenza still exists. And in the year 2100, Covid will still exist. The thing is, we don’t care anymore; it’s not effecting 99.9% of us, and those that are threatened by it can take precautions, such as regular vaccinations and even wearing a mask. They’ve got that freedom.

Bro, right? Like anyone who cares about Covid is free to get vaccinated and free to wear a mask 24/7 and free to stay 6ft away from everyone else. It’s just nice that the rest of us are finally free to not do that shit.

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Imagine spending all that time in r/Conservative hating on trans people. You ought to take your own advice you fucking loser.

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Been boosted, my guy

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Everyone I know has gotten covid, regardless of their vaccination status and masking habits.

They absolutely have not. My workplace still makes you isolate if you have Covid and we’re food service. Not an industry known for sending someone home if they’re sick.

🤡

I’m up to date, baby girl.

🤡

That’s crazy! I’m in food production, and the official company stance as of May 22 is “If you feel well enough to work, you’re fine. If you’re COVID positive, wear a mask if you want to.”

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Being asked to come into work when you’re covid positive is insane to me

Literally just last night I was reading about how Bill Murray had to be replaced by Steve Carell for Asteroid City because he caught covid in 2022, it’s not a week of work it’s more like a month at minimum and that’s if the disease doesn’t fuck you up due to severity + age + comorbidities + post infection recovery. It’s a nice balm to think it’s just a few days of sneezing but it still is a clusterfuck of a thing to catch for most people

> Letting actors can walk around everywhere without masks, but forcing crewmembers to wear them was dumb

Masks on crew stop them from giving it to the leads. If the leads get it somewhere else, it's going to shut production down anyway. It doesn't matter if the key grip gets it from the lead actor. We're 3 years into this shit and you still don't understand masks.

The bubble on nextflix might be a pretty good example. I don’t work in that industry but I definitely got some good laughs about it. Plus Pedro pascal was amazing.

I forgot that something being an official company stance means that it is always a good idea, the right way to go about something and will always be based on what’s best for the safety and wellbeing of its employees rather than its profit margins…

There’s no cure for America Brain

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Most jobs don't also carry tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars in delays if someone goes out sick.

Your star is out sick, your DP, or even your director, and you're boned and burning money.

I'm thinking maybe sports?

Not sure if they are, but its the only other career that springs to mind where there's huge production resources dependent on one person being healthy to perform on a specific day.

Can't be done remotely, or rescheduled.

They're overcompensating because there were allowed to continue working while restaurants and schools were shutdown

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Well that makes me incredibly uncomfortable

It’s still happening but okay

Yes there is, education and cultural emersion.

You can still catch Covid at that nightclub. It’s just not as likely to kill you anymore.

Ha! I love how COVID has shown how many of these actors are dumb and how stupid people are for getting their information from them.

Also, film crews just have more leverage to demand protections than bartenders and waiters.

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No COVID protocols were required by insurance because production insurance never covered COVID related delays.

Thats why studio's started requiring COVID protocols in 2020. But COVID compliance costs are generally higher than delays--so the return to work agreement is actually a Union initiative to preserve those protections.

Generally, Vaccination mandate was wanted by the AMPTP (Studios) while testing and masking and a number of other burdens were exclusively by unions who have drawn out those requests for 2 years after vaccines were available to try and secure more long term gains. Because a 40% increase in labor was never sustainable, no long term agreement was ever reached. This is happening now because the studios are out of money (Some desperately so, WB/Disney) and unions are now above 50% unemployment.

Same here

I am literally sitting here with COVID induced pneumonia so F you! Covid is NOT over. I'm sick of this country where MONEY is more important than peoples LIVES.

Yes because every human being will have the same reaction to COVID, which is "symptom so small they're barely noticable".

Doesn't help that COVID, vaccine, and masks are so divisive in America that the workers can't even agree on their own protection.

Then you should know that even hospitals are getting rid of the requirement to mask. Hell, some hospitals don’t even have Covid patients anymore.

The vast majority, yes.

It’s like how when you go to buy gloves, each glove has 5 fingers. It’s not saying that people who don’t have 5 fingers don’t exist, just that for the majority, it works.

Funny how I know a ton of people who did mask and boosted but still got Covid. And I also know people who never mask and never vaccinated and never got it. They are all fine since it’s not a big deal though.

> Covid is NOT over

Covid will never be over. In the same way that the flu was never over.

As much as long covid is still fucking up people's lives, unless you want people masked up and socially distanced for the rest of human civilisation's time on this earth you do need to have a return to some version of normalcy on some level at some point.

This isn't a problem with some simple solution that people are too weak-willed to stick to. In a thousand years, people will still be getting some version of COVID-19. The only thing we can do is invest in ventillation in buildings and better attitude towards sickness and screening so that its harder for disease outbreaks to spread. Expecting people a decade from now to still avoid social gatherings is unrealistic.

That does mean people are gonna have their lives ruined by stuff like LC-induced CFS, pneumonia, neurological and heart issues, or even die as a result of the infection itself (not to mention the heartbreaking situation for immuno-suppressed people). To some degree that already happens with the flu. But short of shutting down civilisation permanently and returns to nomadic hunter-gathers, it's not a problem that can just be avoided if we went back in lockdown for another year.

Understanding that strict covid-protocols can't last forever does not have to mean indifference to the problem.

Well that was a gigantic waste of time and resources.

What do you want us to do? Vaccines don't work. Lockdowns don't work. It's just a part of our life now.

Society has to function. Not even China could do lockdowns forever and they just gave up.

It's the classic coastal elite mindset in a nutshell. Nancy Pelosi opened up a hair salon she ordered shut down so she could get her hair done.

The celebrities are the special people, those rules are for the peasants.

The 1918 flu no longer exists. You can tell by the fact that tens of millions of 20-30 year olds are not dying every year.

Covid still exists, you can tell because 200k are still dying every year, covid is still the third greatest cause of death in the US, just below heart disease and cancer, and because people are still being crippled by the hundreds of thousands due to long covid. Most of all of these young people.

Why so many? Because they are not being careful enough - not wearing masks, not keeping distance, not getting vaccinated, or even all three. Because government and industry has decided it is too expensive to deal with covid. Because they need the serfs and peons - that's you - back at your jobs and recreation so that profit is restored to the wealthy. Globally, this is happening - not just in the US.

And this is exactly what happened in 1917. And 1915, too.

And, like I said before, 1918 happened.

Because Nature doesn't give two shits about your precious, precious freedom. All Nature cares about is reproduction. Viral reproduction.

How would COVID compliance be more expensive? Its a mask and a cheap PCR test.

Well, I’m sorry but that’s just your opinion.

I could give you a much longer-winded response about how dubious and unreliable resources about Covid are, and how unreliable the testing and reporting was, and about how the ‘experts’ kept conveniently changing their minds/policies on Covid, and about how profitable the lockdown and the vaccines were, but, I’d rather not waste my time.

You do you, I’ll do me; we’re both finally free to live that way, thank god.

(I can’t believe this guy mocked freedom like that’s a good thing)

COVID compliance was way more than testing and masks.

But first, PCR tests are not cheap. Antigen/Rapid tests are fairly cheap but were only approved by unions last summer--and only for a narrow set of low budget productions. Generally, a PCR test costs $150--$200 depending on the vendor/region and availability of labs. The mandated testing frequency of a normal sized union crew results in about 400 tests a week so that low end estimate is 60k a week for the swab & lab alone.

That's also just for the core crew. If you've got 50 extras working for one day, you've got another 50 tests, and 50 to 100 pre-employment tests (depending on your local situation) and paying them for their time to show up for the tests.

And that's just the cost of testing. You also need to hire staff to administer testing, enforce compliance, and sanitize. Add 1k each week for each production assistant. Then another 1500-2000 for each Admin, Supervisor, and Manager. It's easy to hit 100k a week for COVID department alone between testing, labor, and supplies. 5 Weeks of Prep with a 6 week shoot is a minimum of a million dollar COVID budget.

The first iteration of the RTW agreement also included a stipend for union members who tested. So add another $200 fee for every test, every crew member higher than a production assistant who tested. Subsequent deals reduced that to a fee for pre-employment testing only--which is more reasonable but still quite costly as you are adding another 200-300 days of labor across your production.

Then there's a dozen other issues and tangents that cost money. Like needing more hair and makeup artists, and more trailers for them to work in in order to maintain social distancing. Or, needing to budget more time for fewer workers to prepare cast in limited space. More drivers to transport fewer cast & crew members per van. Similar issue with locations, three days to prep, shoot, and wrap a location turned into 4 days to sanitize, prep, shoot, and wrap. There was also a practice of carrying more staff so that if one got quarantined or had inconclusive results you still had the minimum number for each department to operate.

To give you an idea of how complicated it all is: A big issue for awhile was catering. The longstanding Union agreements required lunch breaks to give all members equal access to catering facilities for the break period. Because social distancing requirements made "equal access" impossible, nearly every union member was also being paid penalties for not having a 'proper' break. Many productions converted to walking/rolling lunches. This mostly ended with the availability of vaccines (and union members needing a real break more than the penalty dollars).

Thanks for this super detailed answer. Really interesting stuff!

When you have a family member permanently crippled by long covid - as I do - then perhaps you will finally understand.

Everyone always feels immortal and invulnerable until reality finally hits them hard.

I grieve for the lesson you will one day, inevitably, learn.

About fucking time

I also want to add. Bigger productions were actually paying people to stay off other sets and isolate at home. One movie guaranteed me at least 6 days on set (I’m in the union), ended up offering me 11 but I worked 10, which is a lot for me, but they had also told casting to not book me on anything else. I knew of movies that were paying BG to isolate at home for 2 days, test, isolate again for 2 days, test, isolate for 2 days and then work. They were getting like 6 days of pay for that one day of work. And even low budget movies can be millions of dollars (I usually work low budget straight to tv movies). One movie I was booked on got cancelled and it got delayed for over a year because the facilities they were using had melted. That means all of these workers are SOL because it’s not like another movie can fit in during the cancelled time. There was also an entirely new set of workers now hired just to deal with the covid stuff (in addition to what the other poster said), we had a covid compliance officer who’s job it was to walk around with a 6’ stick and make sure everyone was keeping the proper distance. That’s it, that was their entire job.

I’m sorry to hear that, but that’s not my problem, either. I don’t change my life based on others’ experiences as opposed to my own.

Whoops you criticized a democrat politician. That only gets you downvotes around here.

I'm not going to say COVID restrictions are good. But getting COVID (even a mild Omicron case), still suck ass. 0/10 experience.

Generally though, if they can protect their main stars and other people in charge to keep delays down. Then I think it's a smart move.