‘SILENCE=DEATH’: Long COVID-suffering performers protest outside BAFTAs

Long Covid-suffering performers sounded the alarm on this chronic illness emergency in the performing arts outside the BAFTAs. Members of Protect the Heart of the Arts, an action network of performers and allies, staged a protest, with one member rushing security, chanting “Silence=Death”, echoing the iconic AIDS crisis slogan:

The protest called for Covid protections on-set and onstage, drawing attention to Long Covid as an occupational injury:

BAFTAs: raising awareness of Long Covid

High-profile performers are increasingly speaking out about their long Covid struggles, including Matt McGorry, Alyssa Milano, Colin Farrell, and Dave Navarro.

Performing is an inherently high-risk profession for airborne pathogens like SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid. Actors, singers, and theatre workers spend hours in poorly ventilated indoor spaces, often without access to effective Covid protections such as HEPA air filtration, accurate molecular testing like PlusLife, and audience and crew mask wearing.

This has had dire consequences, particularly in live performance. High-profile productions in the West End and on Broadway, such as David Tennant’s Macbeth and Audra McDonald’s Gypsy, experienced unprecedented runs of cancellations due to illness within the company.

Long Covid is a multi-system condition with over 200 documented symptoms. It affects breath control, stamina, memory, and cognitive function – essential abilities for anyone working in the performing arts.

Long Covid: affecting performers

A 2022 study in the Journal of Voice found that 30% of Broadway performers suffered long-term vocal damage after Covid infection. In the UK, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates that two million people are living with Long Covid, but a population-wide study by Hastie et al. (2023) suggests the true number may be as high as one in ten in the UK.

According to the Economist (2024), an estimated 27 million deaths worldwide are attributable to Covid – far beyond official figures. These deaths are not just from the initial infection but also from long-term health effects such as heart attacks, strokes, aggressive cancers, and suicides.

Taking part in the BAFTAs protest were members of COVID Action, a grassroots campaign of individual activists and labour and trade union organisations. Hazards Campaign also supported the action, saying “We have been supporting a hierarchy of controls approach: proper ventilation, more space, masking if necessary”.

Co-founder Charles Waltz said:

In just four years, Covid has killed more people than AIDS did in forty—both have devastated the arts.

Governments, institutions, and workplaces once built the infrastructure to protect us, but now they’ve torn it all down, leaving us exposed. We’re staging this die-in because without urgent action, we’re not just losing individual careers, we’re losing lives. And with them, the very ability to create art at all. At a time when the world needs art more than ever to remind us of our shared humanity, we are being abandoned.

Glenda, a performer and founding member of the group that was at the BAFTAs, said:

I’ve endured my form of Long Covid since 2023, as a result of just one infection.

As a writer, I’m compromised by my symptoms; as an actor, I’m compromised, and thereby excluded, by the lack or absence of mitigations in industry settings. I strived to perhaps earn something approaching a living from my vocation. But earning a living and, indeed, ‘living my life’ since 2020 never meant compromising my instrument, be it body, voice or imagination…it never meant being sickened; avoidable or further disablement; dying with or from something that’s ultimately preventable.

We have to follow the science, not superstition – THIS is not ‘The Scottish Play’, THIS continues to be a tragic farce. Viruses are indifferent to the past-tense: their show will go on stopping ours, be it temporarily or permanently.

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