The Undeniable Joy of Rapid Covid Testing

Feeling negative, feeling great.

If you write about movies like I do, the month of December is madness. Everyone has their end-of-year Top 10 list deadlines — mine is December 21 — so you spend the month cramming in every movie, either in person or by screener, you can in that time. (I watched three movies yesterday and still had a ton of other work to do. Please, cry for me.) This year has come with an unusual, and not entirely unpleasant, wrinkle, though. This year, Netflix, which has several big movies up for awards consideration, from Don’t Look Up! to Passing to The Power of the Dog, is requiring everyone attending one of their public screenings to take a Covid-19 at-home rapid test. This speaks to Netflix’s desire to keep their employees safe at screenings, and also speaks to how much freaking money that company has right now: Once you RSVP for a screening, they actually FedEx you your own private Covid-19 test, one of the good fancy ones, the Lucira ones. You take it, and if you’re negative, you send them proof of your negative test and then you go see your movie. (If you’re positive, you call a doctor.)

I am not worried that I have Covid-19. I am fully vaccinated, I’ve gotten my booster shot, I’m surrounded by people who have done the same, I mostly just sit at home and work all the time, I’m hardly a high-risk…