Coronavirus

[Junior8]

It's highly likely a lot of pantos will not be happening this year almost entirely because in 3 hours today government went from confirming venues could open to insisting venues should close which has spooked some major producers

 

Is this surprising even allowing for the mixed massages continually coming from the, I suppose we must call it. government? I wouldn't be investing any money in anything in the live entertainment field at the moment. Planning is completely impossible surely?

[ImagineerTom]

exactly - two producers we work with had put together several different possible ways to operate this season and it is the chaos and contradiction of Friday's announcements that have made them throw in the towel.

 

Weird but true fact - the official announcement (published late on Friday) releasing some of Leicester's lock-down specifically says that Theatre's & Cinema's CAN re open.....

[Junior8]

It's been obvious to me for some time that the civil service have mentally deserted this particular sinking ship of an administration. In other circumstances it would be quite amusing to see this shower so out of their depth. Now it's merely tragic.

[kerry davies]

I am not surprised if the Civil Service has gone into shock. Hancock was asked to explain why bits of the north were in lockdown and families could not socialise in those areas yet they could all up sticks and go socialise to their heart's content elsewhere.

 

It isn't the £10Bn they have handed to the woman who insisted that racing at Cheltenham go ahead, it isn't the £108M for PPE they gave to a PR company that never traded and it isn't even the 20,000 needlessly dying in care homes. It is the unrelenting stupidity of those in power. Our best bet is to forget about it all until we get a working vaccine.

 

The "good" news? They intend to build a vaccine factory in Essex ..... by December 2021.

[themadhippy]

In these trying times please pass this on to your local mp to aid them with there decisions making.

 

[sandall]

The "good" news? They intend to build a vaccine factory in Essex ..... by December 2021.

Why bother? Us oldies will all be dead by then, the young are (apparently) immune & the rest of you will have already had it long before then .....

[Brian]

And it gets worse...

 

Qdos pantomimes begins consultations regarding postponement of Christmas shows...

 

Qdos pantomimes, the largest panto producers in the country and a major festive employer for those in the arts, has said it will "begin the consultation process with partner theatres about the viability of each show".

 

The company has, in the last few weeks, stated that unless it has seen a firm plan for reopening by 3 August, then it will have to postpone or cancel productions due to a lack of clarity.

 

Last week, Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said that it may be November before venues can know when performances without social distancing can go ahead. This, in turn, means that companies and venues will have no time to plan for a Christmas season given the limited time span.

 

With some venues earning up to 40 per cent of revenue from their annual festive show, the absence of a panto will have dire implications on the industry as a whole. A number of venues, including Norwich Theatre Royal and Tron Theatre, have already postponed their shows while the crisis continues.

 

Qdos has said that plans or postponements will be announced by individual venues rather than as a whole, and that this process may take a number of weeks.

[Ynot]

And it gets worse...

Qdos pantomimes begins consultations regarding postponement of Christmas shows...

Yup - their Aug 3rd deadline was posted some weeks ago.

I've mentioned it a couple of times, and am not at all surprised at this latest statement.

:(

 

 

 

[Junior8]

See here for another PLASA campaign Edited August 3, 2020 by Junior8

[Ynot]

See here for another PLASA campaign

We'll be going Red again...

 

 

 

 

[Andrew C]

It isn't the £10Bn they have handed to the woman who insisted that racing at Cheltenham go ahead

Do you happen to know what NASA's annual budget is? Hint - less that twice that figure.

[dbuckley]

Why bother? Us oldies will all be dead by then, the young are (apparently) immune & the rest of you will have already had it long before then .....

 

Well, it's not just us old arses dropping dead that are the problem: the young and middle aged that survive don't do to well either. The survivors of a run-in get to experience:

 

• 
  * Heart Damage
  * Lung scarring
  * Brain damage
  * Blood disorders including clotting and strokes
  * Kidney damage
  * Nervous system alterations (sensation changes, loss of control etc)
  * Long term conditions like Chronic fatigue syndrome (which is debilitating)
  

 

In summary, 87% of recovered patients reported at least one ongoing symptom.

 

Covid-19 is going to, and there is no other way to put this, fuck over an entire generation.

[Ynot]

Why bother? Us oldies will all be dead by then, the young are (apparently) immune & the rest of you will have already had it long before then .....

Well, it's not just us old arses dropping dead that are the problem: the young and middle aged that survive don't do to well either. ..................

 

Covid-19 is going to, and there is no other way to put this, ###### over an entire generation.

And therein lie the fruits of the deny-all hordes. Those who claim it to be a fraud, a hoax, the product of 5G, or Bill Gates or any other reason to make out that the hundreds of thousands who've died worldwide are just a political manoeuvre ...

 

 

E2A and David I was SO impressed that you remembered how to include that highly appropriate emotive without the language checker catching it :P

Edited August 4, 2020 by Ynot

[alistermorton]

I saw a good analogy recently, that it's going to hit us like HIV/AIDS did, but harder and more widespread, because it's not constrained to the sexually active. The learning curve is likely going to be similar, and we're now about 30-40 years down the line from when HIV first hit. That's how long it is possibly going to take to understand and control the infection, as we now can with HIV/AIDS (note, not eradicate, but control), and in the meantime, just like with HIV, everyone will have to use "protection" and practice safe living, and that might not be for the coming 12-24 months, it could be for the next two to three decades

[dbuckley]

It's a bit odd being in New Zealand. We're currently Covid-19 free, Most of the rest of the world isn't. Life here has returned, after a period of several months of complete lockdown, in many respects, to normal. There are no masks, no social distancing, no restrictions on pubs, clubs, dining, cinemas, theatre, travel inside the country. You just can't (in effective reality) get into New Zealand, and if you leave, you're out. If you had a job that relied on tourism, one of our most significant service industries, well, there is no foreign tourism, so you are probably out of a job. Our leadership recognised that public health and the economy are not opposites, they are the same thing, and that if you don't fix public health, you won't have an economy. Almost al the economists disagreed, made dire predictions, and there is now a lot of humble pie being eaten.

 

Just today, our public health mastermind, and, it has to be said, hero, and the subject of many memes, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, in an interview on the radio this morning, noted that it was a matter of when not if community transmission would occur in New Zealand, which of course, everyone knows, but we're all a bit complacent about it, so it's been a bit of a reality check, we're going to have to face up to ourbreaks of Covid-19 in the community sometime, we can't keep it out forever. What will happen when it lands? I guess we'll be back to lockdown :)

 

In the meantime, our theatre group is about to decide whether to pull the pin on a production that will hit the boards November. If New Zealand's Covid-19 free status holds, the consumer confidence should mean that people will be happy to be crammed into our tiny 50 seat theatre. Or it could all go wrong at any point along the way. The fun life of a non-profit theatre group.....