July 8th 2020

By Walter Einenkel

Daily Kos

In early March, Disney theme parks and resorts in Asia and Europe announced closures due to the burgeoning COVID-19 pandemic. Disney’s American parks and resorts followed suit, but not until a lot of pressure was put on the company, and stories of COVID-19 transmission began coming out. As misguided Americans protested public health-driven stay-at-home orders, conservative areas of the country decided to begin reopening. States like Florida, under Gov. Ron DeSantis, not only pretended that the COVID-19 pandemic was an overblown public health crisis—they worked very hard to fudge the numbers to prove their point. In May, places like Disney World and Universal began to make moves to slowly reopen their parks—asking patrons to take full legal responsibility if they got sick.

Over the past couple of weeks, the loose restrictions and laissez-faire reopening has produced what most experts said it would produce: surging COVID-19 spread across the country. But while those experts told officials and business leaders what would happen, Disney continued to push forward with plans to reopen their parks and resorts in mid-July. Now, as reports that Florida ICUs are hitting capacity are released and a record number of new cases have been confirmed, Florida officials and businesses like Disney seem to have decided that there is no longer any public health crisis. The conglomerate that Mickey built will begin reopening large portions of their reports and parks starting this Saturday.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, a large portion of Walt Disney World Resort will reopen on Saturday, as well as The Magic Kingdom Park and Disney’s Animal Kingdom Park. Then on July 15, after I assume the COVID-19 pandemic disappears and our health crisis is over, Disney plans on reopening EPCOT and Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Firework shows will not be conducted, the resorts and parks will not be filled to capacity, and nobody is allowed to hug any of the park’s featured characters. So, they have that going for them, I guess.

To be clear, this is a business decision. Disney has already made moves to stop paying 100,000 workers in order to protect a $1.5 billion dividend payment to shareholders. They are doing everything in their power to maintain the fragile top-down business model that most wealthy companies enjoy with no regulations … until they ask for a socialist-style government bailout when their weak business is exposed as the top-down shakedown that they are.

Posted with permission