Keep in mind too that his comments were made on an earnings call. The target audience for that call is analysts, investors and anyone looking at financial statements not theme park fans. When he says end of 2021 that means 9/30/21 which is the end of Disney’s fiscal year not 12/31/21. When he says he expects masks to be gone by early in 2022 that starts 10/1/21. Not a big change, but 3 months sooner than someone thinking in terms of calendar years. He also left the door open for sooner when he said:
I think the key with herd immunity is the cases continue downward. There may be small short term moves up but the longer term trend is downward. We have had several periods of downturn in cases only to see them reverse out but if we reach real herd immunity it should be one directional. One of the epidemiologists from the CDC said their agency is estimating 60% immune to reach herd immunity. We shall see what the real number needs to be.
I thought the same...
Well that’s not technically true, the CDC is recommending that even vaccinated people avoid gathering in medium to large crowds. I’m pretty sure a theme park midway counts as a medium to large crowd. Also last time I checked, Disney isn’t blocking non Florida residents, and the cdc is recommending no leisure travel crossing state lines even for vaccinated people. They are all ready picking and choosing guidelines. They will drop restrictions so long as a majority of their customers still buy into the illusion that going to WDW is completely safe.
Not sure what part of what I said was implying that they would not follow CDC guidelines. Do we know when CDC guidelines will no longer recommend that masks are required everywhere? Is it not possible that it could be by 10/1 or sooner?
They are following the guideline right now on masks but even Fauci said recently that once the prelim studies on transmission from people who are vaccinated are confirmed and verified the CDC would likely also relax the mask requirements for those who are vaccinated since vaccinated people are not a high risk to spread Covid. How does a business like Disney enforce a mask rule only on the unvaccinated? Not possible. What they could do is once a large enough number of adults are vaccinated (60-70-80%) they could change the rule to masks are recommended for anyone who is not vaccinated and/or high risk as a purely legal CYA.
Did you think everyone has been blowing off the recommendations the way you have? Did you just think people were upset about restrictions for no reason, since everyone was actually just carrying on as though we weren’t in a pandemic?
My dad passed away in 1982, and my mother passed some 15 years ago.
Says who?
Ended up getting our first doses this morning.
Agreed. And now they’re dropping mask mandates all over the place at exactly the wrong time.
My mom and step-dad are both high risk, last summer we had a few visits outside, distanced, and while masked but the heat is an issue for my step-dad. They've been following whatever their doctor has been telling them, some I feel may be extreme now that we have more data. i.e. no contact with anyone, grocery delivery and wipe them down, mask while walking the dog. We've seen them maybe 4 times in person, but I have to respect what they want for themselves. Her paternal grandparents live next door to her dad, and she still sees them during her time with him. She does have to wear a mask in public with them, and they limited their holidays to just them, her dad, and her vs 40+ for every holiday. In-laws visit about once a month on the porch, hugs and stuff are okay. Only other person would be my brother I haven't seen in a year because he's locked up. No visitors, still no vaccines for the incarcerated. They've had 138 positive cases and 8 prisoners die, 104 staff cases.
Wonder what all these companies are going to do with all this office space thats value just came down like the hindenburg.
We're trying to talk them into a child care center here since a large portion is separate from the manufacturing floor and accessible from the main entrance. There aren't enough 0-4yo places in town, usually a wait list to get in one. Company already has one facility for their main factory just 20 miles north of here and they have less employees.