One of President Joe Biden’s priorities for controlling the spread of COVID-19 is the increase of nation-wide testing, and the United States currently lags behind several developed countries on contact tracing and available rapid-testing. The adult film industry’s testing standards and methods could help with that deficit.
Vaccines are currently circulating the country, though at a rate that isn’t fast enough to control the spread or induce herd immunity. New and more virulent mutations are appearing, which may further hinder the vaccine’s effectiveness or availability.
According to Our World Data Organization, the U.S. significantly increased testing during late 2020. As of January 26, over 850 people per 1,000 have been tested on average.
However, due to variables such as reporting lag times—which render a test irrelevant, according to some experts—and many in America’s refusal to follow safety protocols such as social distancing and mask-wearing, testing has been rendered not nearly as effective as it could be, according to health experts.
Testing for the virus and contact tracing those infected is currently one of the only vehicles to reduce community spread, according to the NIH. One of the most effective models for this type of response comes from the pornography industry.
According to Perry Halkitis, dean of the School of Public Health at Rutgers University in New Jersey, “We can actually learn a lot about safety guidelines by listening to producers of porn. Thinking back to the HIV/AIDS crisis, the adult-film industry had to learn how to keep its workers safe.”
Since the late 1990s, when an epidemic of HIV infections endangered the multibillion-dollar industry, the mainstream adult film community has applied procedures that “require all performers to be tested for HIV and a host of other sexually transmitted infections every 14 days before they can be cleared to work,” according to the Performer Availability Screening Service (PASS).
PASS is a program governed by the Free Speech Coalition (FSC) in order to “provide the adult industry with a safe, reliable, and standardized STI testing protocol and a centralized database for checking the clearance to work status of tested talent and crew members,” according to its website.
Any HIV-positive test results in an immediate shutdown of all film sets nationwide, followed by exhaustive contact tracing prior to sets reopening.
While not a perfect system for a respiratory infection like COVID-19, those in the industry say “the nationwide PASS program works to protect thousands of performers, ensures safer workplaces, and curtails the spread of disease,” according to The Lancet.
According to Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, “We have to get over that this information is coming from the porn industry. If we’re trying to get our economy back, a major component of that is building confidence for when we engage in regular activities such as going to a restaurant, getting on a plane, or going back to work.”
In the 20-plus years since its existence, PASS has exceeded many of the same challenges that any large-scale testing program may face, like matters of retaining privacy for medical databases, averting the forging of test results, dealing with false positive results and educating workers about the need for repeated testing to keep workplaces safe.
There are problems with the adult film industry to be certain, but those issues aren’t related to spreading a dangerous virus in a pandemic. According to Biden, “We [America] have to crush this virus.” And according to health experts, a proper trace and test plan must be in place for this to occur.
This is particularly due to the fact that, as of late January, there are several new strains of COVID-19—some of which are far more virulent than the original strain dominant throughout the U.S. for much of 2020: one new strain coming from South Africa, and another coming from the U.K.
According to experts, both of these new strains are now present in multiple states in the U.S. and in those first cases, the person infected had not traveled recently to either of those respective countries, which indicates that community spread has already begun, and that the strain has already been spreading locally for weeks or even months.
Moreover, reliable epidemiological models indicate that the “true or actual” infection rate in the U.S is closer to four times or more the amount that is being reported as “official” as of January 2021; a drastic increase, considering that more than 20 million Americans have been infected officially.
The adult film industry’s practices and standards may be one of the last things which the American people can depend upon to help them survive the COVID-19 pandemic.
