Re: [admin-discuss] Suggestion for COVID management at future meetings

[Alexandre Petrescu <[e-mail]>]

Le 01/10/2022 à 17:11, Keith Moore a écrit :
> On 8/30/22 13:46, John Levine wrote:
> 
>>> I’ve had an offlist suggestion for a different COVID management
>>> policy for future IETF meetings (i.e. 116 and possibly after
>>> that), which is that we ask all onsite participants to take a
>>> rapid antigen test each morning and confirm that is clear before
>>> participating and then masks are optional and there is no
>>> vaccination requirement. It would be useful to hear what people
>>> think of that.
>> That would be a poor idea. Rapid tests are useful tools but as we
>> all know, they are not infallible and it is quite possible to have
>> COVID for a while before testing positive.
>> 
>> Universal masking slows down transmission in both directions,
>> limiting the amount of virus that an infected person exhales, and
>> also limiting what uninfected people inhale. Masking at 114 seems
>> to have worked quite well. As I understand it the number of people
>> who got COVID at the meeting, as opposed to getting it on the way
>> to the meeting, was very low.
>> 
>> Wearing masks is not particularly pleasant, and it is a pain for
>> some of us to find masks that fit (the free ones at 114 were too
>> small for me) but we know how to do it, and it's cheap.
> 
> +1
> 
> At this point we have no idea how effective either rapid tests or 
> vaccination are at limiting the spread of current (or future)
> variants of COVID,

Yes, there are new variants heard this morning "BA.2.75.2, BA.2.3.20,
BQ.1.1 and XBB".

> but masks (if required universally) are likely to continue to be
> effective.

I agree.

> 
> (Though in a way it hardly matters what IETF does at its meetings, if
>  remains infeasible to travel safely to and from IETF meetings
> without significant risk of exposure.   As long as airlines and
> airports are no longer requiring masking, I'm unlikely to travel to
> any IETF meeting that I cannot drive to.

Here there might be a choice to be made between polluting with a gas
engine at 150grams CO2 per 100km or with a fraction of a jet engine in a
large airplane at 100grams C02 per about 1000 km.

The former is better protecting from covid spread, but the latter is
better protecting the atmosphere.  Assuming some of the pandemy causes
are in the ecology, these might be inter-related.

To simultaneously address the problems of virus spread and atmosphere
pollution there could be new ways to devise in-person meetings based on
representativeness, trust and alternative transport means.

> And IMO IETF should not be having face to face meetings under those
> conditions.)

Ah?  I already heard this oppinion from people at IETF.  I think it
deserves consideration.

Alex

> 
> Keith
> 
> 
>