virus safety at conventions

At the Mythopoeic Society book discussion yesterday (it was held online), a number of members expressed their decision not to attend Mythcon, the Society's annual convention, next month, because it's not requiring attendees to be vaccinated.

This policy is the result of the influence of a strange type of person I've encountered elsewhere as well: people who, though themselves fully vaccinated, oppose requiring it at in-person gatherings. I think they have some soft-headed idea of 'choice', but the freedom of choice is limited to oneself: risking infectiousness is making choices for other people, not for yourself. Public health is like that, and for that reason is an area of life, possibly the only one, where arbitrary bureaucratic regulations must be obeyed.

Mythcon's policy is not exactly what the objectors are describing. It's full vaccination or verification of a negative PCR test within the last 72 hours.

My take on this is very different from that of the objectors, but I didn't go into this at the meeting because I didn't want to get into an argument, and I'm not trying to change their minds but persuade undecided people who might be influenced.

The present state of the virus is that it can infect the vaccinated as easily as the unvaccinated. This is currently being demonstrated by a married couple, friends of ours, who've both come down with the virus (and showing symptoms) from their adult daughter (now recovering) who picked it up at the preschool where she works. All three of them are thoroughly vaccinated, but it happened anyway, and this is not uncommon.

What vaccination does do is markedly reduce the risk, if you do acquire the virus, that the infection will become serious and require hospitalization. That's what vaccination does.* It doesn't change the likelihood of accidentally infecting other people, or affect how serious their infection will be if they catch it from you.

My take on this is, since the virus can infect vaccinated people, that a negative PCR test is not just an adequate, but possibly even a better, screening process than vaccination.

That assumes you can rely on negative tests being accurate, and you can't. So you fall back on the backup protection measure, masking, supplemented by social distancing and ventilation.

And Mythcon has a very strict masking policy. Masks to be worn at all times in public areas or group settings except while actively eating or drinking, or speakers while presenting. (I'm not sure I'll abide by the latter when speaking. If one person is speaking to a silent audience, the one person in the room who most needs to be masked is the speaker. The risk depends on distance and ventilation.)

How we'll handle group meals I don't know: the banquet will have outdoor seating and good ventilation, they say, but that leaves the hotel breakfast. Other meals are not being offered, and while the convention expects most attendees to go across the street to a food hall, its offerings aren't suitable for our meal needs, so B. and I will probably go out to eat and/or bring back, to our hotel room, takeout from the Whole Foods not far away.

I'm far more worried about traveling, where masks are no longer required, than I am about Mythcon. I aim to remain strictly masked during the air journey, which at least will offer one-way protection.

As I'm retired, I haven't had much experience of wearing a mask all day (I did while I was on jury duty), but such as I know and what I've read suggests this approach to the problem of masks becoming uncomfortable when worn for a long time: make sure you have a 95 mask that fits your individual face - there are different types of models. And replace it at least once, more likely twice, during the day.

And that's how I'm approaching Mythcon.


*I'm hesitant on relying on this because of medical conditions that render me more susceptible to an infection becoming serious than is the case for other vaccinated people. But the person at the meeting most objecting to Mythcon's policy is even more susceptible in this way than I, and she'd be accepting of a mandatory-vaccination policy.