Since January, we’ve been covering the endless stream of gaming and geek conventions that have closed their doors and gone online in an effort to avoid exacerbating the spread of the deadly COVID pandemic that’s killed over 200,000 people in the US and over a million around the world.
But not the LA Comic Con! This week, organizers told LA Daily News that the event will go on as planned in December, with up to 50,000 people spread out over roughly twice as much space in the convention center as it normally offers, along with other social distancing measures.
“We’re doing everything we can to help nerds unite this December,” general manager Chris DeMoulin says.
LA County’s testing positivity rate is around 3% as I type this, which only looks relatively good because so much of the country and other pockets of the world are so much worse. By way of comparison, the mayor of New York City, which was slammed by the pandemic early on but recovered due to strict health measures, recently said a 2% rate would make him nervous and that hitting 3% would cause him “heart palpitations” and “alarm bells.” Under these circumstances, it’s a hard sell that a ComicCon is such an important event that it’s worth entering a haunted plague box right now, especially one drawing guests from all over the country.
Kotaku commenters speculated that the governor of California will just force the event to close, and in fact the organizers may be anticipating (and hoping for) just that for some sort of insurance reasons.
Be safe out there, folks, and look out for yourselves and your neighbors.
