Well, that was a bad idea
Aug. 15th, 2024 10:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livWe (jack and I) got Covid at Worldcon, or possibly travelling back from it.
So yes,purplecthulhu and others, you were right, it was a bad risk. There's no point second guessing what points I could have chosen a different balance between masking and eating. Lots of people I know who are as scrupulous or more so about masking also caught plague. It's pretty clear anecdotally and from what little data we have that population levels are really high right now, and mixing over 7000 people from all over the world in a mostly enclosed space for 5 days was never going to give good odds.
On the whole it was a good con. Very well organized, I'm sure there's going to be some scandal coming out but it looked to me like they did most things right and avoided many of the pitfalls of other cons. The programming was generally really good; I didn't go to a single bad panel or talk. The worst experience I had, and this was a bit of a theme, was three really interesting and knowledgeable experts being talked over by one white male blowhard who wrote a book on a vaguely related subject. Generally the moderators were pretty good at keeping a lid on this sort of thing, but almost every good panel I went to would have been even better if that one white guy hadn't been there. (To be clear, different white guys in every case.) That is still a massive improvement on previous experiences where three random mediocre white men completely drowning out the one interesting panellist is more typical.
Events were well matched to room sizes. Not perfectly, but perfection is impossible. And the whole venue had a very very strict policy that you don't overfill rooms; I was impressed that the whole volunteer team backed up the employees in enforcing this, no 'just this once' exceptions for famous or pushy people, so they completely avoided any kind of asshole filter issues. Queues were not excessively long, and there seemed to be at least some provision for people who can't stand in queues. The con also successfully enforced bans against people who have been jerks at past cons, even the kind of jerks who booked into a nearby hotel and tried to turn up anyway. They didn't allow extremely famous authors to be divas, but insisted that everybody follow policy, which has the pleasing result that the con wasn't at all dominated by a few big names but instead there was a really good range of interesting people from all backgrounds.
The main hall and dealers' room were just great, really spacious with a whole range of interesting exhibits. There were plenty of food options even within the actual con space, and a street of very nice small local eateries half a mile away. The ceremonies were well organized and entertaining and didn't drag on. They fixed the Hugo awards (yes, technically a separate organization from the con itself but very much part of the experience) and came up with something transparent and fair. My only real complaint was that most of the dances and ceilidhs took place in rooms too small for dancing, so I ended up not really joining in any of those.
In terms of content and organization that was the best con I've been to. In terms of social, it wasn't perfect but I did get to meet or meet up with several of the people I was most excited to see,rosefox and partner, sfred and djm4, khalinche, and even briefly met kiya though we didn't get to talk much. And I hung out with lots of my Cambridge friends but not like at some cons where I've accidentally ended up travelling hundreds of miles to spend time with my local neighbours exclusively. Lobbycon kind of didn't work for me; between trying to stay masked, and the organization of programme being ironically too good (in that people spent the time between items purposefully travelling to the next thing, not stuck in queues or clustering in pinch points), I didn't get to just hang out in random spots and have chance conversations with random cool people.
And yet, I regretted going basically from the moment I arrived. I spent a lot of time fretting about how expensive it was in money, but mostly worrying about catching Covid, which in fact turned out to be founded. Even though it was good it wasn't worth the risk. I thought the Covid policy was sound (caring about ventilation, masks 'strongly recommended', everybody tests before arrival and then daily). But in fact the only part of it enforced was the 'don't hassle other people for their different approach to infection risk', and that was interpreted to mean, don't mention the plague at all. I understand that the con don't have the power to literally force people to mask and test, and some people actively can't. But they didn't communicate the policy in any way, just expected people to read the small print of the Ts&Cs, and in fact they prohibited participants from referring to the policy under the 'don't hassle other people' clause. Even ventilation was good in the main site, but terrible in the attached hotel where some of the programming took place.
Following the policy (which nobody else seemed to even know about, even people who are generally covid cautious), I tested every day and did not show positive until this morning.jack was symptomatic on Tuesday and positive yesterday. I had very mild symptoms which could be anything yesterday, (scratchy throat, a bit sniffly) and a very faint line on the test today. So given the timing it's possible that jack caught it right at the end of the con, and I caught it from him travelling home together on the sleeper train, when we didn't mask. And it's possible that even if I hadn't gone I would have caught plague from jack anyway; we tried isolating from each other when he was positive and I wasn't yet, but I think it was too late by then.
The only thing that makes this slightly less bad is that I very unusually have no commitments at all for the next two weeks, so my life isn't going to be very disrupted by needing to quarantine. (Yes, I know it's not legally required, I'm doing it because it's ethical.) So if I just get an acute case with no medium- or long-term consequences, I'll be fine to go back to college for the start of term.
So, all in all, good, but not worth risking my life and livelihood :-( I won't do that again, even if my entire family are going and I want to be with them.
jack and I) got Covid at Worldcon, or possibly travelling back from it. So yes,
purplecthulhu and others, you were right, it was a bad risk. There's no point second guessing what points I could have chosen a different balance between masking and eating. Lots of people I know who are as scrupulous or more so about masking also caught plague. It's pretty clear anecdotally and from what little data we have that population levels are really high right now, and mixing over 7000 people from all over the world in a mostly enclosed space for 5 days was never going to give good odds.On the whole it was a good con. Very well organized, I'm sure there's going to be some scandal coming out but it looked to me like they did most things right and avoided many of the pitfalls of other cons. The programming was generally really good; I didn't go to a single bad panel or talk. The worst experience I had, and this was a bit of a theme, was three really interesting and knowledgeable experts being talked over by one white male blowhard who wrote a book on a vaguely related subject. Generally the moderators were pretty good at keeping a lid on this sort of thing, but almost every good panel I went to would have been even better if that one white guy hadn't been there. (To be clear, different white guys in every case.) That is still a massive improvement on previous experiences where three random mediocre white men completely drowning out the one interesting panellist is more typical.
Events were well matched to room sizes. Not perfectly, but perfection is impossible. And the whole venue had a very very strict policy that you don't overfill rooms; I was impressed that the whole volunteer team backed up the employees in enforcing this, no 'just this once' exceptions for famous or pushy people, so they completely avoided any kind of asshole filter issues. Queues were not excessively long, and there seemed to be at least some provision for people who can't stand in queues. The con also successfully enforced bans against people who have been jerks at past cons, even the kind of jerks who booked into a nearby hotel and tried to turn up anyway. They didn't allow extremely famous authors to be divas, but insisted that everybody follow policy, which has the pleasing result that the con wasn't at all dominated by a few big names but instead there was a really good range of interesting people from all backgrounds.
The main hall and dealers' room were just great, really spacious with a whole range of interesting exhibits. There were plenty of food options even within the actual con space, and a street of very nice small local eateries half a mile away. The ceremonies were well organized and entertaining and didn't drag on. They fixed the Hugo awards (yes, technically a separate organization from the con itself but very much part of the experience) and came up with something transparent and fair. My only real complaint was that most of the dances and ceilidhs took place in rooms too small for dancing, so I ended up not really joining in any of those.
In terms of content and organization that was the best con I've been to. In terms of social, it wasn't perfect but I did get to meet or meet up with several of the people I was most excited to see,
rosefox and partner, sfred and djm4, khalinche, and even briefly met kiya though we didn't get to talk much. And I hung out with lots of my Cambridge friends but not like at some cons where I've accidentally ended up travelling hundreds of miles to spend time with my local neighbours exclusively. Lobbycon kind of didn't work for me; between trying to stay masked, and the organization of programme being ironically too good (in that people spent the time between items purposefully travelling to the next thing, not stuck in queues or clustering in pinch points), I didn't get to just hang out in random spots and have chance conversations with random cool people. And yet, I regretted going basically from the moment I arrived. I spent a lot of time fretting about how expensive it was in money, but mostly worrying about catching Covid, which in fact turned out to be founded. Even though it was good it wasn't worth the risk. I thought the Covid policy was sound (caring about ventilation, masks 'strongly recommended', everybody tests before arrival and then daily). But in fact the only part of it enforced was the 'don't hassle other people for their different approach to infection risk', and that was interpreted to mean, don't mention the plague at all. I understand that the con don't have the power to literally force people to mask and test, and some people actively can't. But they didn't communicate the policy in any way, just expected people to read the small print of the Ts&Cs, and in fact they prohibited participants from referring to the policy under the 'don't hassle other people' clause. Even ventilation was good in the main site, but terrible in the attached hotel where some of the programming took place.
Following the policy (which nobody else seemed to even know about, even people who are generally covid cautious), I tested every day and did not show positive until this morning.
jack was symptomatic on Tuesday and positive yesterday. I had very mild symptoms which could be anything yesterday, (scratchy throat, a bit sniffly) and a very faint line on the test today. So given the timing it's possible that jack caught it right at the end of the con, and I caught it from him travelling home together on the sleeper train, when we didn't mask. And it's possible that even if I hadn't gone I would have caught plague from jack anyway; we tried isolating from each other when he was positive and I wasn't yet, but I think it was too late by then.The only thing that makes this slightly less bad is that I very unusually have no commitments at all for the next two weeks, so my life isn't going to be very disrupted by needing to quarantine. (Yes, I know it's not legally required, I'm doing it because it's ethical.) So if I just get an acute case with no medium- or long-term consequences, I'll be fine to go back to college for the start of term.
So, all in all, good, but not worth risking my life and livelihood :-( I won't do that again, even if my entire family are going and I want to be with them.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-08-15 12:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-08-15 12:26 pm (UTC)I did manage to find the Eicha reading though, thanks for pointing me in the right direction.