SAG-AFTRA Members To Rally Against Industry’s Covid-19 Vaccination Mandate
deadline.comA group of SAG-AFTRA members opposed to the film and TV industry’s vaccination mandate say they will stage a protest Thursday outside the union’s headquarters in Los Angeles.
Oscar-nominated actress Sally Kirkland, a former Screen Actors Guild national board member, will be one of the speakers. As Covid restrictions are being lifted nationwide, the protesters say it’s time for Hollywood to scrap the mandate.The film and TV industry’s Covid-19 safety protocols, which include a narrowly defined “Mandatory Vaccination” provision, are set to expire Saturday but could be extended, as they have been several times since the protocols were first issued in September 2020, enabling jobs and productions to rebound during the darkest days of the pandemic.After vaccines became widely available, the protocols were amended last July to give producers “the option to implement mandatory vaccination policies for casts and crew in Zone A on a production-by-production basis.” Zone A, where unmasked actors work, is the most restrictive of the protocol’s safe work zones on sets.“I don’t think they should have a mandate requiring this vaccine,” Kirkland told Deadline. “I’m against the vaccination mandate because when I took the second shot last year, I became chronically ill for seven-and-a-half months.
I ended up in the hospital and thought I was dying three times.”Such reactions are rare, however, and the Center for Disease control says that the benefits of receiving the vaccine far outweigh the risks.
According to the CDC, those who receive the vaccine are much less likely to be hospitalized or to die if they contract the virus, although vaccination doesn’t prevent people from acquiring the coronavirus.
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