Knock LA

This week California’s mask mandate loosens for vaccinated residents, but there is still no end in sight to the pandemic. Throughout the response effort, public health agencies have neglected to seek guidance from sex workers, particularly in the porn industry, who have always been at the forefront of maintaining worker health. Talent testing centers regularly provide rapid turnarounds for STI results during pre-production, and since the pandemic, mainstream porn productions have pivoted quickly to provide rapid COVID testing. 

“This entire time they’ve been offering fairly consistently same-day PCR tests, or 24 hours or less than 24 hours,” said Isabelle (whose name has been changed to protect her safety), a talent coordinator for LA-based porn productions. “Our crew is on 72-hour testing, but our talent is on 24-hour testing. We have to, with no exception, get talent tested the day before they shoot.” 

She thinks that the LA public school system should provide free COVID testing with a 12-hour turnaround. 

“The sex industry has had an infrastructure built in that optimized rapid testing,” Isabelle says. “Four days at a time, that’s so much delay.”

Isabelle’s porn production company spends several thousand dollars each week on COVID testing. This is all out of the company’s pocket, with no government funding. A PCR test starts at $35. Rapid tests cost anywhere from $100 to $200. The company does an average of 25 to 30 shoots a month to release three to five episodes in a single week — that’s $7,000 a month just to test. “I mean, it’s a lot of money, but at the same time, it’s everybody’s fucking health. We [need] to keep a peak pace with that demand because we have a lot of subscribers. It’s insurance.”

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In fact, the federal government opted to exclude the adult industry from small business loans meant to save businesses in the early days of the pandemic. Production companies like Isabelle’s are taking on a slew of new costs associated with safety, with no help.  

“We also need to not be fucking paying this much. Nothing is this important for us to be doing this fucking crazy shit. I have to fucking remind myself this is just fucking porn.” 

Isabelle’s company was able to secure a deal with a testing provider to purchase personal protective equipment in bulk at a discount. It’s provided to everyone on set for free. Most job sites in LA County do not have PPE readily available, nor is it widely accessible to working folks at a discounted price. Tests also don’t come free at work. 

“We have an EMT that we try to use as often as we can who will come to our set, or meet at the office and collect people’s samples,” Isabelle says. “People running and operating a cafe or restaurant — if their employees test positive, there’s no mandatory testing with that type of labor.” 

A new study out of the UC San Francisco’s Epidemiology and Biostatistics department indicates restaurant cooks are at the highest risk of COVID infection. At least 39 LA County restaurants had reported outbreaks of coronavirus as of February 10, 2022. 

People like Isabelle have a lot to teach the municipal public health agencies. She says that in order to create a healthy community, the response must include lessons from sex workers — and that means free rapid testing for all. “This needs to be a mandatory priority, for us to be testing, just so that we can be productive.”