Celebrity Poker Home Game Buddies Launch #GetTheMasksBack Campaign
Table Of Contents
To say the COVID-19 pandemic has been a disruption to daily life would be an understatement. In New York City, a virus hot spot, routines have been upended for millions. Among the masses are a slew of NYC-based celebrities, including screenwriter Andy Bellin, who recently wrote a column for the LA Times about how his poker home game has been impacted by recent events.
Now, Bellin and his home-game buddies – which includes actors Hank Azaria, Billy Crudup, and Aaron Tveit – are joining forces to help fight against COVID-19 by launching the #GetTheMasksBack campaign.
The premise is simple, to get desperately needed protective gear to frontline medical workers and researchers in the COVID-19 fight.
“I have a close pal named Ben tenOever who runs a virus research lab at Mount Sinai in NYC,” Bellin told PokerNews. “They are doing incredibly important work on COVID-19 — working on cures and vaccines. But because of an N95 mask shortage, they were going to have to shut down.”
He continued: “The general idea is that we’re asking people with spare N95 masks to call their local hospitals and find out how to donate them back. And if they won’t donate them we’ll buy them back and get them to the healthcare workers and researchers who are in desperate need.”
The #GetTheMasksBack GoFundMe elaborates:
“We're trying to recoup the masks lost to price gougers and black-market profiteers, to #getthemasksback to the healthcare workers for whom they are absolutely essential … The N-95 masks were amongst the supplies hoarded the most. And right now that means there are a lot of N-95 masks on the black market, being sold at exorbitant prices. A $3 mask being sold for $35. It’s classic price gouging.”
Because of the price gouging, the campaign is seeking to raise $35,000, which would be enough to buy back at least 1,000 masks for Mount Sinai.
Spurred to Action
The idea came after Tveit tested positive for COVID-19.
“Aaron is really good friend and one of the most talented people I know,” Bellin explained. “When I heard he tested positive it was obviously alarming as hell. It was my first intimate interaction with the disease, and while we’ve learned that it doesn’t have a particularly high mortality rate for young healthy guys like him, it still was deeply disconcerting. But watching him rebound was really uplifting. Made us all feel better about the situation in both micro and macro ways.”
Another regular in the game, poker pro Andy Frankenberger, also tested positive last week.
Getting Out of NYC
Bellin is currently in the process of writing the script for the Phil Ivey/Kelly Sun inspired film The Baccarat Machine, which will see Nora Lum, AKA Awkwafina, play the latter role. While he’s based in New York, Bellin and his family got out of the city a couple of weeks ago.
“We stayed in NYC until March 18. It was surreal. We stopped taking the elevator in our apartment,” said Bellin. “The day we left for our summer place in Maine was just one of those perfect NYC days. I was in the park with my kids and everything was so amazing — but underneath you knew there was something wrong — it really reminded me of being in the city on 9-11. That most perfect fall day.”
Image courtesy of Andy Bellin.
