Monthly Archives: July 2021
COVID-19: The New Smoking
Only in a Trump America would curing a disease widen ts spread.
I call it a Trump America because his presidency, like herpes, was apparently a permanent infection that could return at any time. His slackwittery continues to echo in the halls of Congress and the backwaters of the nation’s collective intellect.
Need proof? Just look at the country’s COVID numbers. Despite a vaccine, conservatives treat the cure like the metric system: ‘Not in my school or home, smartass college boy.”
This is what that thinking looks like.
The reaction to four million dead worldwide (two-thirds to legit genocide!) has given news outlets the vapors. Fox News suggests wrapping yourself in a flag and punching a tree for symptoms of a pandemic. CNN and MSNBC recommend fucking a celebrity.
I propose something simpler: treating COVID for what it has become, America’s new smoking.
Need proof? That, too, is in the numbers. According to the CDC, 480,000 Americans still die from smoking every year. Another 42,000 die annually from second-hand smoke.
Yet, is there an American alive today who does not know that smoking is a deadly behavior? This despite the advent of vaping, which has led to a total of 60 deaths since its creation. It suggests that people are addicted to the ritual of smoking, not the nicotine.
We are choosing to die.
It’s what this country is great at. Suicides outpace homicides every year three-to-one (about 45,000 suicides a year compared to about 15,000 murders). Approximately 100,000 people die annually in drunk driving crashes. One in 10 Americans has adult-onset diabetes.
Welcome to the Actuarial Club, COVID. You join some heavy hitters.
So let’s start treating the pandemic like other American killers: as a matter of choice, a macabre decision exacerbated by political charlatans and medical hucksters who know the cash in conspiracy. Those who roundly reject the vaccine — and the science behind it — are telling us clearly they’d rather live in flavor country.
You got it. You have that right, just as you have the right to smoke in the car with your infant strapped down. And, like your smoking, you’ll have to practice breathing in your own space. Just as we bar smokers from theaters, hospitals and nursery schools, we’ll have to separate the unvaccinated from the vaccinated.
And that couldn’t be easier. It won’t require banning a soul, castigating a fool, or suffering a moron.
Simply treat vaccinations like organ donation. Just as you can indicate that you want to be an organ donor on your driver’s license, we need the option to indicate we’ve taken the vaccine. The government needs to formally recognize vaccinations beyond the record you received that somehow is not wallet sized. Corporate America would welcome and enforce it: Unless you’re a gun shop, lethal stupidity is bad for business.
To placate critics, you’d have an opt-out choice identical to organ donation: do nothing. That’s what you’re doing anyway.
More importantly, there is an opt-in clause, which is really the only option for clarity in a Trump America, where you have the god-given right to be wrong.
So don’t worry, Gov. Ron DeSantis. No one is going to Fauci your Florida.
We have a new medical expert for you. One even Dr. Fauci would admit is more qualified to speak on the pandemic.
Say hello Dr. Charles Darwin.
Hollywood’s Epic Custody Battle
Hollywood has always had a lucrative but loveless marriage to the nation’s movie theaters.
For decades, studios and exhibitors have maintained a tense but workable relationship. Sure there have been some knockdown-dragouts, and lamps have been thrown in arguments over things like the cost of a ticket and how long someone should wait before they can see a movie from home.
But things got serious over the weekend. And while mom and dad haven’t filed for divorce yet, it looks like they are getting separated. And the custody battle could change life as you knew it as a moviegoer.
Theater owners on Sunday blasted The Walt Disney Co. for making Marvel’s Black Widow available simultaneously in the home and on the big screen, saying the decision undercut the movie’s box office potential and promoted piracy. It marked rare public in-fighting for an industry that prides itself on private unity.
In a blistering press release from the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO), the trade organization accused Disney of handcuffing its own film by simultaneous streaming the film and releasing it in theaters, causing the movie to suffer a “stunning collapse in its second weekend in theatrical revenues.” NATO also noted that Widow dropped an unprecedented 41 percent from Friday to Saturday during its opening over the July 9-11 frame.
This is Hollywood eating its own. For years, studios and theater owners had a rough peace accord: a three-month delay between big-screen release and video availability.
But COVID destroyed that treaty. The pandemic forced industries to accomodate a populace sequestered at home, a disaster for companies in the spectating business like movies, theater and sports.
Disney and Warner Bros. have revamped their film slates to accommodate streaming releases, and studios such as Netflix and Amazon Video had already dampened box office revenue, which has remained relatively flat for 25 years.
In a sweeping indictment of all streaming studios, NATO accused Disney of using the virus as a ruse. “Despite assertions that this pandemic-era improvised release strategy was a success for Disney and the simultaneous release model, it demonstrates that an exclusive theatrical release means more revenue for all stakeholders in every cycle of the movie’s life,” NATO said.
This is one parent blaming the other for a child’s fatal disease, when in truth their union had been on the rocks for years.
Since 1995, Americans have bought 1.2 to 1.4 billion movie tickets a year. That’s roughly four movies a year, per American.
Whether that’s a healthy business model is up for debate. Whether it’s a stagnant one is not.
Widow‘s subdued ticket sales, coupled with steep second-weekend declines, suggest that moviegoing is far from returning to normal. And while Disney has not commented on NATO’s accusation, it did note that Widow’s box office has passed $324 million, including revenue from Disney+ Premier Access.
But even that is debatable, NATO claims. It argued that Widow‘s stand-alone box office debut was actually $92-$100 million, a rare swipe at studio veracity.
“One can assume the family-oriented Disney+ household is larger,” the release said. “How much? How much password sharing is there among Disney+ subscribers?”
Ouch.
The way back is unclear. The professional sports world seems to have brokered a rough balance between at-home and in-person spectating, though not without significant casualties (The 2021 Tokyo Olympics, for instance, will be fan-less.) There is money to be made.
So these are not necessarily irreconcilable differences. But, given the stark contrasts over what constitutes a true moviegoing experience, they are irrefutable.
