Conferences take note: the pandemic is not over

[diziet]

Many people seem to be pretending that the pandemic is over. It isn’t. People are still getting Covid, becoming sick, and even in some cases becoming disabled. People’s plans are still being disrupted. Vulnerable people are still hiding.

Conference organisers: please make robust Covid policies, publish them early, and enforce them. And, clearly set expectations for your attendees.

Attendees: please don’t be the superspreader.

Two conferences

This year I have attended a number of in-person events.

For Eastercon I chose to participate online, remotely. This turns out to have been a very good decision. At least a quarter of attendees got Covid.

At BiCon we had about 300 attendees. I’m not aware of any Covid cases.

Part of the difference between the two may have been in the policies. BiCon’s policy was rather more robust. Unlike Eastercon’s it had a much better refund policy for people who got Covid and therefore shouldn’t come; also BiCon asked attendees to actually show evidence of a negative test. Another part of the difference will have been the venue. The NTU buildings we used at BiCon were modern and well ventilated.

But, I think the biggest difference was attendees' attitudes. BiCon attendees are disproportionately likely (compared to society at large) to have long term medical conditions. And the cultural norms are to value and protect those people. Conversely, in my experience, a larger proportion of Eastercon attendees don’t always have the same level of consideration. I don’t want to give details, but I have reliable reports of quite reprehensible behaviour by some attendees - even members of the convention volunteer staff.

Policies

Your conference should IMO at the very least:

• Require everyone to show evidence of a negative test, on arrival.
• Have a good refund policy that allows an attendee who would be a risk to others, to cancel without penalty.
• Require everyone to provide proof of vaccination (or medical exemption).
• Clearly state that a negative LFT is not an “all clear”
• Instruct people not to attend, or to isolate if already on-site, if:
  • they have new symptoms of respiratory illness
  • they are a contact of known a positive case; or
  • they have any other reason to suspect they’ll be bringing Covid to the event.

The rules should be published very early, so that people can see them, and decide if they want to go, before they have to book anything.

Don’t “recommend” that people don’t spread disease

Most of the things that attendees can do to about Covid primarily protect others, rather than themselves.

Making those things “recommendations” or “advice” is grossly unfair. You’re setting up an arsehole filter: nice people will want to protect others, but less public spirited people will tell themselves it’s only a recommendation.

Make the rules mandatory.

But won’t we be driving people away ?

If you don’t have a robust Covid policy, you are already driving people away.

And the people who won’t come because of reasonable measures like I’ve asked for above, are dickheads. You don’t want them putting your other attendees at risk. And probably they’re annoying in other ways too.

Example of something that is not OK

Yesterday (2023-08-30 13:44 UTC), less than two weeks before the conference, Debconf 23’s Covid policy still looked like you see below.

Today there is a policy, but it is still weak.

Edited 2023-09-01 00:58 +01:00 to fix the link to the Debconf policy.

Comments

[crazyscot]

Well put. The way I've been thinking of this is in terms of incentives. My context is organising regional and national sports competitions, albeit in a niche sport in a small country.

As an organising committee, I have argued, we should be minimising (to the extent things are within our control) the incentive people have to do the wrong thing. This incentive is usually financial. Historically, entry fee refunds have always been at the committee's discretion but since covid, we've been very liberal in exercising that discretion. We haven't asked for proof of covid-in-the-household, taking it on trust; even a vague "I can't attend due to unforeseen circumstances" has been refunded. We don't think this has been abused, but of course different events will have different attendee attitudes.

Unfortunately, travel and accommodation are completely outside of our control, and tend to be an order of magnitude greater in cost to attendees than our meagre entry fees. Conferences do have the advantage of hotel block bookings with often quite liberal cancellation policies, but we're not big enough to bargain for those. I do wonder whether those industries' race to the bottom with cheap sticker prices, in exchange for non-cancellability, will have to evolve.

[(Anonymous)]

(Tom Womack) I'm having difficulty finding information about whether travel insurance policies, especially the kind that come as a perk with bank accounts which are the only kind many people will have, cover cancellation of non-refundable travel and accommodation simply because someone in your household has Covid. I would hope they would but assuming generosity on the part of the insurance industry is rarely the way to go.

[(Anonymous)]

I think 'proof of vaccination' is no longer a reasonable request for a conference to make: because it's no longer an entry requirement for countries, the result of a vaccination is at best a little bit of paper that you are likely immediately to lose, and I don't think I even got that for my fourth booster. You'll end up at best with stressed attendees showing a text from NHSDirect from twelve months ago, if they've kept that.

[diziet]

On the contrary, the NHS Covid Pass is still available and the QR code can be verified by 3rd-party software.

A conference that has largely EU or UK attendees could easily require an EUDCC.

A major advantage of requring vaccination is that you discourage antivaxxers and other pillocks.

EUDCC legalese expired

[(Anonymous)]

Most eu countries have shut down related infrastructure because legalese to keep it alive has expired. So there are no good ways of verifying anything.

[emperor]

KiwiPyCon has quite a comprehensive policy.