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China Movies

China Shuts Down All Cinemas, Again (hollywoodreporter.com) 69

Posted by msmash from the stranger-things dept.
China's film regulators have slammed the breaks on their plans to gradually reopen the country's cinemas. From a report: Over 600 movie theaters across China were given the green light to reopen their doors over the past week, but Beijing's Film Bureau put out a notice late Friday ordering all theaters to go back into shutdown. No official explanation for the sudden reversal was provided. Industry insiders instantly began speculating that the government was worried about a potential second wave of coronavirus infections. The decision comes as a shock given the signals authorities had been sending as recently as a day ago. On Thursday, Shanghai's municipal government announced that 205 of the city's movie theaters had received permission to resume business on Saturday.
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China Shuts Down All Cinemas, Again More

China Shuts Down All Cinemas, Again

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  • slammed the what? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    slammed the what?
  • china only has 600 cinemas? impossible. either the title is wrong or ...

    • Re:what? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Nidi62 ( 1525137 ) on Friday March 27, 2020 @12:14PM (#59878150)

      china only has 600 cinemas? impossible. either the title is wrong or ...

      Or China was allowing a small subset of cinemas in the country to open (or only allowing ones in certain areas to open), perhaps as part of a phased reopening, but decided to keep all of them closed.

      • china only has 600 cinemas? impossible. either the title is wrong or ...

        Or China was allowing a small subset of cinemas in the country to open (or only allowing ones in certain areas to open), perhaps as part of a phased reopening,...

        Exactly. From the article referenced (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/china-shuts-down-all-cinemas-again-1287040):
        "The phased reopening of China's vast network of 70,000 movie screens had promised..."

    • that are directly controlled by the government

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by laird ( 2705 )

        It's China, _everything_ is directly controlled by the government. The 600 were a small number planned to re-open, out of the 70,000 theatres in China. They cancelled the re-opening. That's smart - releasing controls before there's a vaccine would just re-ignite the pandemic. That's why there's so often a "second wave" - e.g. in 1918 the cities that locked down and prevented a huge first wave of illness/death relaxed their controls after typically six weeks, triggering a second wave that was worse than thei

        • I thought the second wave was a more lethal variant actually. Those who survived the first wave would be less vulnerable and would be much more likely to survive but they still would get ill and take part in spreading the virus.
          There weren't many controls to be released at the time.

    • ... or you can't read a basic sentence.

      "Over 600 movie theaters across China were given the green light to reopen their doors over the past week, "

      "but Beijing's Film Bureau put out a notice late Friday ordering all theaters to go back into shutdown. "

      Where all at this point, probably the 600 movie theaters that were re-opened. Maybe even more than that. But maybe not.

    • That was just the number that was given the ok to reopen, not all of them.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by bblb ( 5508872 )

      Only about 600'ish had been given permission to reopen, and all those that were reopened are again being closed. Title isn't wrong exactly, just a bit confusing.

    • What they are saying is that all theatres were shut down; then they gave permission for 600 theatres (probably in the 'safest' areas) to open, but a few days later slammed those 600 shut and back to all theatres are shut down. China is showing us what happens when you ease up on the quarantine too soon (which is depressing for the rest of us, knowing that we really could be 3, 4 or more months under this new reality).

  • China's film regulators have slammed the breaks on...

    breaks =/= brakes

  • Somebody in China... (Score:3)

    by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Friday March 27, 2020 @12:26PM (#59878208)
    Somebody in China isn't telling the rest of the world the truth here.. *No* new cases of the virus for days eh?
    • Is anyone surprised? China has a history on fibbing on just about any statistic. To be fair, that's probably true about a lot of nations/parties.
    • My take on it is China's expecting at least one more wave of COVID-19.
    • I've been following this source [worldometers.info] which is still reporting 40 or 50 new cases and 5 to 10 deaths in China every other day or so, including yesterday.

    • Somebody in China isn't telling the rest of the world the truth here.. *No* new cases of the virus for days eh?

      Apparently 14 of their provinces haven't had new cases in the past 4 weeks. Cinemas still closed though. hmmmm.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by khchung ( 462899 )

      Nobody in China has been saying no new cases in China, they have been getting around 40 new cases every day and have been open about it. Whatever source told you “no new case in China” was lying to you.

      The only thing that remotely resembles “no new cases” were that, for a few consecutive days, there were no more locally infected cases in Hubei and Wuhan. The details are publicly available at https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]

      A lot of those recent daily cases were imported, that

  • Maybe Disney can now make a gay character in a movie that actually isn't a blink-and-you-miss-it they can take out for the plague king's slaves.

  • They did an early re-opening of places to gather and quickly figured out that it was going to overload their medical resources with new corona cases.

    Fearless Leader has publicly said that he wants the churches reopened to full capacity for Easter. I haven't heard whether this is actually going to take place, but if it does, I'm aiming at having a month's food and medicine in my house just in case the surge in cases breaks supply chains.

  • movie theaters need better cut of the tickets!

    Home ppv at $20 A POP will KILL THEM.

    • $20 / pop would kill me.

      Currently have unlimited access at Regal, makes for $25 / month all you can watch and 10% off the candy / drinks. I go to a movie for $11.70 a pop, and I get the pop and and M&M's with that too. And I see almost everything that isn't "too stupid for words" which means only about 2/3rds of the movies lately.

  • They've peaked for the most part. They have capacity to treat more patients. Long-term, you need to get as many people infected as possible. The best way to do this is in waves of contact-then-quarantine.

    • No. If you get R 1 the disease drops out. There is no need to get herd immunity. You need to eliminate the virus, then carefully track and kill occasional outbreaks.
      You have to play that game until there is a vaccine, but its possible. China is doing the right thing - careful control.

      We do not need to sacrifice millions to the virus. That is a deadly misconception.

      • What is R1? Google isn't super helpful with that search term....

        • What is R1? Google isn't super helpful with that search term....

          From context, it has to be the number of people that each infected person transmits the disease to. If that number drops below 1, the number of infected people decrease exponentially.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by olau ( 314197 )

          Slashdot apparently eats <, you have to write it as &lt;.

          R = the number of individuals each person transmits the virus to on average.

          With R > 1, things are growing exponentially, with R < 1 they are decaying.

          (YMMV depending on how in particular you define R)

          • In this case it's not really Slashdot exactly, it's HTML.

            But yeah, Slashdot should be converting those two characters to &lt; and &gt;

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by bluelip ( 123578 )

              It's Slashdot and they are eating less-than and greater-than symbols.

              While effective, it's the lazy way of protecting against HTML and Javascript injections.

        • I think the proper nomenclature for what he's saying is R0 = 1. The value is the R0, usually said "R not" value. An R0 of 1 means each person infects exactly 1 other person. Thus an R0 < 1 means the disease is diminishing, and a value greater than 1 means it is increasing. The common flu has an R0 of around 1.3, thus it normally spreads. Coronovirus appears to have a whopping R0 of 3.1. Thus on average 1 person is infecting 3 others. Just google "r0" or "coronovirus r0" for more info.

      • We do not need to sacrifice millions to the virus. That is a deadly misconception.

        Indeed. Listening to some people, you'd think Zapp Brannigan was the U.S.A. president.

        COVID-19 does not have a kill counter, you idiots!

      • Who said anything about sacrificing people? This is why you need to have the capacity for treatment first, as noted.

    • ... Long-term, you need to get as many people infected as possible.

      Long-term, you need to get as many people vaccinated as possible. FTFY

      Does your original statement indicate a willingness on your part to go out and get infected 'for the good of us all'? If not, why not? Let me guess...

      Yes, infected = vaccinated - unless you're one of those who are sick for an extended period of time, or suffer permanent lung damage or death. Infection is neither the only, nor the desirable, way of creating herd immunity.

      • ... Long-term, you need to get as many people infected as possible.

        Long-term, you need to get as many people vaccinated as possible. FTFY

        Yes, vaccination is a better way of getting immunity than actually going through the course of the disease, assuming that the vaccine has been tested for safety.

        Does your original statement indicate a willingness on your part to go out and get infected 'for the good of us all'? If not, why not? Let me guess...

        If a vaccine isn't developed, and if we assumed that it will not die out before everybody gets it, so you are sure to get it sooner or later; then yes, it would make sense to expose yourself to the disease at a time and place of your own choosing, rather than randomly, and this would allow you to isolate yourself knowing you were exposed, instead of

        • ...then yes, it would make sense to expose yourself to the disease at a time and place of your own choosing, rather than randomly, and this would allow you to isolate yourself knowing you were exposed, instead of isolating based on not knowing who was exposed.

          Two points, 1) Why have you ignored the variables of co-morbidity, persistence, and mutation from a scenario of transmission, and 2) Why "who" was exposed instead of when one was exposed?

          What I read is an intention to present an outcome of an average CFR today applied to billions and an inductive reasoning which can only seek validation as actual deaths remain within that average-- and if they don't? What I'm reading is the fiction of simulation presented as prescriptive fact.

      • And what if there is no vaccine? How many lives are you willing to sacrifice to the economy while you reach for your dream of a vaccine?

        If we're 18 months in and it turns out that there's no vaccine, and getting infected doesn't make you immune, just less susceptible and contagious (you know, like MANY coronaviruses).

        How many people are going to die because they are missing some medicine imported from a hot zone? How many will die because they can't afford to eat healthy? How many will die from domestic vio

  • Unfortunately, the movie theater reversal is a data point in favor of those who say the rosy numbers coming out of China -- which make it look like China's battle against the virus has been a world-leading success -- are not legit.

    • Some say this was done as a face saving measure because the first theater openings failed hard. People are too afraid to go to the cinema because they don't trust that it's safe. For example this article [npr.org] anecdotally points out movies were playing for an audience of one or two people... It must have been a giant waste of money to open the theaters for that, and it's not good optics for either the govt or the cinema operator who want to project they're "back in business".

      We should assume there are biases in h

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gatkinso ( 15975 )

        I am reading that the numbers are fake. But who knows - they clamped down on foreign media... sound familiar?

      • I've heard they don't count asymptomatic people who test positive

        If so, that's huge... because a big majority of the people who have the virus are asymptomatic.

        Can you give the URL where you read this information?

        but that wouldn't change the overall shape of the curve, just the magnitude of it.

        Most people are paying attention to the magnitude of it; it's an international pissing contest. Which is why every news organization made a big deal when the U.S. number of cases surpassed China's, and countless Americans sarcastically tweeted something like "We're #1!"

    • We'll see.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GPS Pilot ( 3683 )

        It's possible that we will never see; i.e., it's likely that China will never release accurate numbers on the number of COVID cases.

        And it may not even be possible to infer accurate numbers (if, for example, the number of bodies that were cremated forever remains a state secret).

  • ... but they are still hideously vulnerable.

    In 5 months they are going to be surrounded by nations with herd immunity.

    Unless they do something extremely Chinese like just start immunizations with no human trails and manage to get it right (pay no mind to the fucked up side effects).

    • ... but they are still hideously vulnerable.

      In 5 months they are going to be surrounded by nations with herd immunity.

      Unless they do something extremely Chinese like just start immunizations with no human trails and manage to get it right (pay no mind to the fucked up side effects).

      I doubt you know much about it outside framed reportage. A prioritized work stoppage has yet to be interrupted and an incremental return of workers has economic value to China's future-- steps accorded by criteria that opinion as yours is too blinded by asserted outcomes to stop and consider.

      A packed theater cannot be mitigated by distancing procedures. For a /. poster, a failure to recognize the reversal of a test indicates comprehension and scrutiny of it should be mortifying.

      A live virus is a dynamic s

    • In 5 months they are going to be surrounded by nations with herd immunity.

      That definitely will be a danger to them.
      They have just banned foreigners from entering China. [cnn.com] Even those with visas or residency permits. Only those issued after March 28 will be valid. [fmprc.gov.cn]

      And all arrivals are to be placed under 14 day quarantine.
      Maybe they think they can just keep everyone out until a vaccine is available sometime in the future.
      It would also make a good excuse to keep all the extra tracking and surveillance in place for a while longer (permanently).

      • They have just banned foreigners from entering China. Even those with visas or residency permits. Only those issued after March 28 will be valid. And all arrivals are to be placed under 14 day quarantine. Maybe they think they can just keep everyone out until a vaccine is available sometime in the future. It would also make a good excuse to keep all the extra tracking and surveillance in place for a while longer (permanently).

        ~ Adm. Kurnch

        If there is an exception of quarantine for arrivals, that is not keeping "everyone out" is it? China has never had to proffer an excuse for its permanent surveillance. These ENDLESS biases of which some westerners are capable are propped on crutches of convenience and expectation, political science hackery and political philosophy deceit. The mechanisms, and their audit, of scrutiny have anthropological foundation and expression, but it is inconvenient to most because money makes the world go around, but it

        • Where did I say there was an exception of quarantines?
          I literally said

          And all arrivals are to be placed under 14 day quarantine.

          You really don't think the surveillance is even stronger now?
          Maybe you aren't paying as much attention as you think...

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