I think others who have criticized contact-tracing for individual dance events as ineffective have a valid point. As Joe said, people are going about their daily lives without masking, for the most part, in most parts of the country. Like Perry, I've seen commuters on the DC Metro wearing masks (like 80% before 7am, lowering to maybe 25% at night), but that's by far the highest proportion of folks who wear masks I've seen out in public where they're not required.

But I think experiences from camps and other longer sessions can provide a more accurate picture of transmission at dances. At Pinewoods this summer, we had a lot of COVID transmission at a couple of our sessions that did not require masks, and given the length of the sessions in question plus who had close contact with whom, etc, it is pretty easy to trace those infections to camp. When I say a lot, I mean closer to 100 infections than to 0, with as many as 40% of folks in one session who got COVID. We had no such outbreaks at any sessions that required masking for the first few days, which was most of the sessions this past summer. Not every session that did not require masks had a COVID outbreak, so there's definitely some element of luck there (which, I suspect, is what has spared other weeklong camps that have looser or no restrictions).

We also took CO2 readings to see if we could improve ventilation to reduce transmission risk. But almost every area at camp was consistently well-ventilated, to the point where aerosol transmission was not particularly likely. I'm bringing that up because some folks have mentioned that perhaps masks do not help stop the spread of COVID to others if you create gaps in the mask when exhaling. A mask with gaps in it may not stop transmission via aerosols, but my understanding (limited as it is) is that it will at least help stop droplet transmission. That said, I also agree with others who have pointed out that a well-fitted N95 should not have such gaps even on exhalation, and mine don't (I wear glasses, and they do not fog when I wear an N95).

My takeaway is that, unfortunately, there will be COVID transmission at dances that do not require high-filtration masks, even if you have folks testing before, even if you require vaccination, etc. I don't think it's unreasonable to take Joe's position that any such risk is basically ok because dancers are unlikely to die from COVID these days, but that's not my perspective. And while that perspective may work ok for a weekly or monthly series, it's much more difficult in a closed environment where people are spending all of their time together for several days.

-Dave

On Thu, Jan 5, 2023 at 3:51 AM Winston, Alan P. via Organizers <organizers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:

I think the argument about whether masks protect only the wearer or other people is kind of a red herring (although my opinion is that a well-fitting N95 or better protects other people and I know my Airgami has enough of a seal that if I breath out I can see the mask puff up). I don't really think a surgical mask does much. If I could only have one intervention (out of the suite of vax, test, mask, temperature check) I would definitely pick N95-equivalent mask wearing, rigourously enforced.

And I'm generally in full agreement with Perry.

Why I'm bothering to write is that there's meat to Joe's initial question about whether protective measures discourage dancers (and especially young dancers) from showing up and whether there's an impact both in short term attendance and long term viability of the dance form as a result of requiring protective measures.

In my organization our COVID policy is informed by epidemiological advice, and we know that no protections are 100%, but our goal is to have no preventable transmission of COVID at our dances, so we require vaccination and booster (and will require a bivalent booster as of February 1), AND mask wearing (KF94, KN95, N95, or equivalent tech mask at CDC yellow and red levels, down to well-fitting cloth masks at green levels), AND a little questionnaire that you have to fill out about whether you have symptoms, have tested positive, had anyone else in your household test positive AND at higher levels you have to step outside to take a drink of water or eat a snack AND at CDC Red level you have to get a negative test within six hours of the start of the dance (and show us a photo on your phone). It's a lot, it's a burden on the volunteers who run the different dance series, attendance at our contra dances is notably down since before the pandemic shutdown. More of our English dances tha
n our contras have come back and they're mostly doing just about as well as they did before - they were always smaller, but attendance hasn't dropped as much. We do get some new dancers at each series.

There's staff we'd love to hire because they're unvaccinated (and because this is for the safety of all it doesn't matter whether they have a doctor's note about why they're unvaccinated; we're not punishing anti-vaxxers), we have at least one formerly very reliable volunteer who can't come because unvaccinated.

We think we have the right goal - no preventable transmission at our events - and a set of actions that seem to be achieving it, so we're staying the course with that.

We think the close contact and heavy breathing of contra dancing (especially) makes it a higher risk activity than most and merits more precautions, so we have continued with our requirements as our counties have dropped mask mandates.

But it really does come at a cost. There are people who can't dance in masks and they don't dance with us any more. The Bay Area contra community has fragmented more and a couple of dance series have started that operate on different rules - negative test, mask if you wanna, don't come if you feel sick. (And at least one of those something like a third of the attendees tested positive in the following week, I'm told..). But I'm glad these other series exist, so that people can choose their personal risk levels, and so that people who can't dance under our rules have an outlet to dance with people who are willing to accept that risk.

So: Whatever set of precautions you choose (including the empty set) you will exclude someone. There are people who won't dance if they have to mask; there are people who won't dance if unmasked people are dancing. Etc. This is not an issue where people can really meet in the middle. In the pandemic-still-going-on-but-everybody's-tired-of-it era, you'll alienate *somebody* no matter what you choose.

None of us *like* to make people unhappy or exclude them, so this is difficult. And I'm afraid it's going to stay difficult for a long time. Further, the "right answer" depend on your goals - and I don't actually think "no preventable transmission" is the only valid goal; I wouldn't think that somebody who was working on "nobody dies because of a transmission at one of our events" was a monster - so there's no right answer and everything will be unsatisfactory in some way.

So, to Joe's questions: Yes, they do discourage some people who were showing up from showing up. And they put a fliter on which people are willing to try it if they have to wear a mask, and because attendance is smaller and most recruitment is word of mouth, there are fewer people recruiting, and in some environments insisting on a full suite of precautions could, in the short or long term, kill your dance. It absolutely could.

And you have to decide whether that risk is more or less acceptable to you than having as little chance as possible of someone getting COVID at your dance. That's it. Your call. There will be a spectrum of responses.

(I was being, I think, pretty good at being nonjudgmental up to this point, but I'm going to blow that now by pointing out that young people are famously not very good at risk assessment - there's a reason car insurance rates go down when you're over 25 - so if you're running dances for college students you might have a little extra responsibility to take more care of them than they would.)

-- Alan

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