Movie theater safety during COVID, the sequel: This time it's personal
LOS ANGELES — Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, and a year after the Los Angeles Times asked public health experts and film exhibition industry leaders about its effect on attending movies safely, what has changed? We have seen new, more contagious variants. We have seen more incidents of resistance to protocols, keeping the behavior of strangers the most troubling of wild cards. But we also have seen a massive accumulation of knowledge about the disease and how it spreads — and the introduction of a key element making cinema attendance safer: the vaccines.
"As opposed to the last time we talked, there are a lot more tools in the toolkit that make gatherings such as going to a movie theater much more possible" to do safely, says Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at UC San Francisco who also spoke with the L.A. Times in November 2020. "In the past, we didn't have vaccines. We didn't have any chance of treating people early. Now we have oral pills for COVID, monoclonal antibodies — and vaccines, which is the most important difference."
Checking in again with the health experts and industry leader interviewed for that November 2020 story
