Hollywood (Finally) Follows the Science

Better cartoonishly late than never.

Hollywood will finally abandon its vaccine mandates, according to Deadline.com.


Hollywood's COVID-19 protocols will expire on May 12, and the vaccination mandate — which gave producers the right to require Covid vaccinations as a condition of employment — will end for all productions except those that were implemented prior to May 12, which can continue to apply for the remainder of the production or the season.

The move allows the industry to catch up with reality in more ways than one.

Similar mandates have been junked across the culture over the past year-plus. A few still remain, like the inexplicable one forcing international athletes to get the jab or not compete in stateside events.

Tennis great Novak Djokovic's saga is the most prominent example of just that. The superstar refuses to take an injection that appears unnecessary given his robust health, age, natural immunity and the jab's inability to prevent the recipient from catching or transmitting the virus.

That's despite what the media told us for month after month.

Anyone watching Netflix or going to the theater wouldn't realize the draconian measures going on behind-the-scenes in La La Land. This critic has access to publicity and production photos from various shows and films, and they routinely show directors and cast members masked up while working with unmasked actors.

That's after the definitive Cochrane study revealed that masks had little, if any, effect on stopping the virus' spread.

Hollywood alienated its audiences

Talk shows like "The View" and "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" forced live audience members to mask up while the maskless talent went about their business.

Worst of all?

Artists who refused the jab for any reason either faked vaccination cards or simply stopped working. The latter group lost money, health coverage and more as a result, even though we've known the vaccines didn't work as advertised for quite a while.

Hollywood behaved badly during the pandemic in more ways than one.

Stars lectured out-of-work Americans who protested against draconian lockdowns, all the while collecting fat checks from the comfort of their homes.

They celebrated every utterance by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the COVID-19 guru whose wisdom has been proven wrong at nearly every turn.

Some even tried to cheer up the nation with tone-deaf sing-a-longs from their spacious mansions.

The industry also tried, with some success, to navigate around rules that other businesses had to follow in the pandemic's early days.


The state has deemed the television and movie production industry as "critical infrastructure" and has allowed Hollywood studios to continue filming projects, including in Los Angeles, which is facing the most strict lockdown order.

A very small group of stars have fought back against Hollywood's virus overreach. Woody Harrelson touched on it during his February 25 appearance on "Saturday Night Live."

Tim Robbins shared how his thinking on the virus, and the mandates, evolved during a probing conversation with Russell Brand. Robbins, an old-school liberal, slammed the Orwellian thinking that led us to this place.


“We became aware of the idea that the vaccinated could spread and catch it like the unvaccinated … to continue the policy of lockdowns or mandates after that didn’t seem to be following the science. It was following a political agenda. That’s where I really started to have problems with it.”

Fran Drescher, head of the Screen Actors Guild/American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) demanded an end to the industry's vaccine mandates during last month's SAG Awards gala.

She called them "bull****."

Written by
Christian Toto is an award-winning film critic, journalist and founder of HollywoodInToto.com, the Right Take on Entertainment. He’s the author of “Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul” and a lifelong Yankees fan. Toto lives in Denver, Colorado with his wife, two sons and too many chickens. Follow Christian on Twitter at https://twitter.com/HollywoodInToto