Hi Julian, You wrote "Hospitalizations and deaths for covid are still well above what they were a year ago" but this looks wrong to me, both for MA and nationwide? Nationally <https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html>, hospitalizations are at 1.9/100k compared to 2/100k this time in 2022, and in MA <https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/massachusetts-covid-cases.html> it's 2/100k vs 1.5/100k. For deaths, nationally <https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_weeklydeaths_select_00> we're averaging 1,773/wk vs 3,709/wk a year ago, and MA <https://www.mass.gov/info-details/covid-19-response-reporting> is averaging 3.6/d compared to 5.4/d a year ago. Jeff On Fri, Apr 7, 2023 at 9:57 AM Julian Blechner via Organizers < organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net&gt; wrote:

Hello all, Thought I'd chime in. We are doing well in Los Angeles area (see attached). We just announced that a vaccine will no longer be required for our “public” dances however, for the moment, masks still are required. They will need to be KN94/95 masks equivalent (somehow I feel my compatriots will chime in with more specifics about it all). Since it was not a unanimous vote we opted to do the public classes and events (open to all) with this new rule however we are keeping the long running “challenging” class and “Dance Kitchen” (think “Woodshed”) a while longer with the rules that have been in place for the last several months. This will allow a place for all to dance, except those who won't dance wearing a mask. I do feel that as things open up more and more and the official state of emergency ends it will become increasingly difficult for organizations to stick with the strict rules we have had in place the last 2+ years. We feel making masks optional is something that is going to happen in the not too distant future. Additionally there have been three major events with no covid policies (November-200 dancers, January-250 dancers, March-160 dancers) with no known outbreaks (though the different groups did not do contact tracing many of us know the dancers and believe we would have heard if there had been a major outbreak). We are very thankful that the health numbers for our local situation are so good and appreciate how lucky we are to be able to open windows and let that air flow! I seldom chime in on things, though I lurk in the background, due to people going on the defense or sometimes attacking. I am only posting so you have some information on what we are doing here in our part of the world. Cal Dance Co-op, another local group where there is a lot of crossover dancers with our group, has its own rules you can find here: https://www.caldancecoop.org/resources/covid-19-policies/. Hope this helps. FYI, We run an Organizers Meet-up on 2nd Mondays every month on zoom where we discuss many different issues that attendees bring up including current covid policies. We welcome you to join in. It was started with ECD organizers however we welcome all who are dealing with running similar style dance groups. ORGANIZERS MEET-UP 2ND MONDAYS 1:30–2:30pm pacific/4:30–5:30pm eastern ZOOM LINK: https://tinyurl.com/ECD-Organizers Thank you, Darlene ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Darlene Hamilton *Caller, Dancer, Founder of* *The Historical Tea & Dance Society* *Historical Balls, Tea Dances, and Historical Dance classes* *For more information about events and classes go to**www.historicalteaanddance.org <http://www.historicalteaanddance.org/>* *Like us on facebook!*

Becoming infected by Covid today is a lower risk to the individual than at the start of the pandemic. However, becoming infected by Covid is also an opportunity for the Covid virus to be transmitted to others, and to mutate. R0 is the number of people that an infected individual is likely to infect. R0 was 5.4 in Dec 2022. XBB.1.5 is estimated to be 82% of all Covid cases today. 5.4 and 82% are not numbers influenced by communities or individuals attitudes towards risk. Only by community and individual behavior. People who assume increased risk for themselves are also assuming increased risk for 5.4 other people. Masks, vaxes, and emails mitigate risks. These data are from an article published by a reputable university hospital last month on Mar 17 2023. Scroll to the last page for R0. https://www.ohsu.edu/sites/default/files/2023-03/Oregon-Hospital-Forecast-T… Mac Sloan

Hi Mac, There are a few different issues with how you're interpreting those R0 numbers. The big one is that R0, the basic reproduction number <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number>, assumes an entirely "susceptible" population. That is, a population in which no one has any immunity, due to prior infection or vaccination. So your link is saying that if XBB.1.5 had suddenly appeared in 2019 each infected person would, on average, infect 5.4 other people. You're treating it as if it was Rt, the effective reproduction number <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number#Effective_reproduction_number>, but that's much lower, about 1 <https://covidestim.org/us/MA>. Even then, you can't interpret Rt as how many other people you getting infected is likely to cause, even ignoring ways in which you're not average: the number of counterfactual infections can be much higher or lower: * In the early days of an epidemic that still has a good chance of successful suppression, the expected number of infections caused by a marginal case can be *far* larger than Rt. Each additional case makes it harder to suppress, and increases the chance that it spreads globally. * In a case where suppression is unlikely, the expected number of infections caused by a marginal case is lower than Rt. Each person you infect had some chance of otherwise being infected by someone else instead. Jeff On Sat, Apr 8, 2023 at 5:26 PM Walker Sloan via Organizers < organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net&gt; wrote:

Wearing a mask allows us to titrate that risk better. I’m sure that dancing has saved lives in our communities and that not dancing has negatively affected our mental and physical health. Will gladly wear a mask for that benefit. On Sun, Apr 9, 2023 at 10:26 AM Jon Greene via Organizers < organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net&gt; wrote:

Paul, thanks for speaking up about this. Agreed. We don't all know each other and/or where they are (or are talking about). Neither could I. My understanding is wearing a mask protects other people from us, more than it protects us from them. Masks are most effective protecting everyone, only if everyone wears one. In other words, if I'm willing to endure additional risk I should continue to wear a mask to protect others, but not object if others don't wear one. Michael Pavan Falmouth MA

Hi Jon, Your sarcasm to Mac reads to me as rude. Mac is trying to speak up for his own health and others. There's no need to use hyperbolic sarcasm like thus. The fact is that - as conversations on this list have relayed - dances with high quality masks mandated have had zero traceable transmissions. Zero. And dances without them have had plenty of outbreaks (including the one in England that happened recently, so I hear). And dances with mask mandates are, on average, more likely to proactively ask dancers to test and report test results and symptoms, while unmasked dances range from doing the same down to barely giving lip-service to "if you're sick, stay home". Masking. Works. In dance, Julian Blechner He/Him Western Massachusetts On Sun, Apr 9, 2023, 10:25 AM Jon Greene via Organizers < organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net&gt; wrote:

I have a reply pending - I embedded an image I took from CovidActNow, but the short answer is: While it varies from area to area, I'm using CovidActNow for the basis of saying that deaths and hospitalizations are well above what they were a year ago. Yes, we're on a downwards trend, but we were also on a downwards trend at this time last year, and then things went way back up. This is why I continue to advocate for organizers to set policies that are based on hospitalizations and deaths, so that it's unambiguous when masking is safer to lighten up on, and when it may need to be reinstated (such as with a Winter surge or a new strain, etc) Best regards, Julian On Fri, Apr 7, 2023 at 10:16 AM Jeff Kaufman &lt;jeff(a)alum.swarthmore.edu&gt; wrote:

Dancing in Florida has been complicated by politics. It is illegal in Florida for a business, even an unincorporated association or nonprofit, to require a vaccine, $5000 fine per occurrence, each denied attendee is an occurrence. Now: In Orlando, Florida, given our dancers’ behavior outside of the dance (barely a mask in view since sometime in late 2021), the number of anti-vaxxers who attend our public dances, and state law, we have encouraged, but not required, masks and vaxes since our founding dances in early 2022. We have two dance series, one on campus at UCF and one public. I'm told that the students are about 90% vaccinated, though we're not allowed to ask. The number comes from looking up samples of our students in FloridaShots, which isn't perfect, because the early FEMA vaccination centers did not register their shots. However, those shots are now long in the past. I also don't know how old the 90% number is. Typically, we get around 20 dancers for the public dance and similar for most of the campus dances, though the campus numbers have fallen as the semester winds down. Two students wear a mask at the on-campus dances. The same two attend the public dances and mask there. There's typically about one other mask at the public dance. We do get a fair number of senior citizens and they almost never mask. At both series, everyone signs the same short, plain-English, three-point waiver. The first point is assuming the risks, including explicitly death from disease. We have occasionally taken stronger measures, but they were not well received: We held two open contras in summer 2022. We strongly encouraged masking at the June 2022 dance (attendance of 35). Around 10 more attendees chose to sit out and not dance rather than mask. It was the first public dance in the region since the start of the pandemic, so they turned it into a social event to see their friends. It was also the first gender-free event in the region, so some may have chosen not to dance for that reason. We required masks and asked unvaccinated dancers not to come to our July 2022 dance, due to a spike starting. Attendance dropped to 21 and there were complaints, both from attendees and non-attendees. Since then, there have always been a few masks, but not many, see above. All of this is consistent with what I see at swing and salsa, both of which attract 50-100+ dancers in the same or similar spaces, are mask-optional, and have almost no masks. I know that when we insisted on masks and asked unvaccinated dancers to stay away, some just went to swing. It always strikes me just how different the different regions of the US are on masks and such, and that it carries over to dancing. A friend who lives in Ithaca, NY, said that she had just gone to the grocery store maskless for the first time, and was really nervous about it. She has no particular risks. I've barely seen a mask at a Florida grocery in like a year and a half. It's remarkable how deeply our perception of safety depends on what others around us are doing, and how much that depends on community willingness to sacrifice for others they don't know. That characteristic is one of the defining elements of the liberal-conservative spectrum, and political actors have exploited it mercilessly, on both sides. Given that the majority of dances are in the relatively liberal Northeast (check out https://www.trycontra.com/heatmap-points.html), and tend to be liberal even compared to those communities, it is perhaps not surprising that the majority sentiment on this list the last time the question was asked was to keep masking, even though that is not the majority approach in the dancing US today, considering all types of dances. I would set mask policy by 1) what the medical community recommends locally and 2) what the dance's target audience wants. As the Flurry organizers learned, every policy, including no policy, will cause some people to come and others to stay away. Deciding means knowing your goals and the feelings of those you're trying to please, which may vary by category. New dancers coming in on their own may look statistically like the population, while existing ones and maybe their friends may favor masks more, for reasons such as Julian states, for example. Any, yes, people say one thing but actually do another! In our case, we have so few regulars (maybe 10?) that it's more important to bring in new dancers than keep every single existing dancer. If you have 100 regular dancers who say they strongly favor masks, it may be more important to keep those than to get new ones, especially new ones with a different mask tolerance than your existing dancers. Also, each change will shake some dancers loose, so be consistent, or at least predictable. Some dances are experimenting with different rules in separate series, alternating rules on alternating nights, and masked/mask-optional lines. I'd be interested to hear how dancers are responding to those. Final thought, more an observation than a value judgment: At Flurry, the leftmost line or two in the main hall has historically had particularly high energy, and some people seek it out. This year, the Flurry organizers promised a masked line, so the caller declared the leftmost line to be a masked line. I don't think the intention was to blow up the super-high-energy line, and I was going to say something, but I decided to see what would happen. I was already dancing masked. I was surprised that most of the super-high-energy dancers just put on masks and kept dancing in the left lines. There were a few others who came over to dance masked, but not as many as I would have expected, given all the intense discussions over policy before the festival. There were plenty of masks elsewhere in the room, but also plenty not masked. Given the concerns people said they had, I'm surprised that more didn't dance masked on the left, or that there wasn't a call for another masked line that wasn't going quite as far with the extra spins and high-speed swings. When I asked people to dance and suggested the left lines, only one person in the whole weekend didn't pull out a mask and join that line. I suppose it's possible that the shortfall of attendees was people staying away due to safety concerns, leaving the attendees less mask-insistent as a group. There are other ways to interpret it, too, such as people insisting on one thing in surveys but then doing what the crowd did in the moment. --jh-- Joe Harrington Orlando, Florida contraknights.org —jh— On Fri, Apr 7, 2023 at 10:04 AM Julian Blechner via Organizers < organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net&gt; wrote:

Oh, I forgot to add that for our annual Jane Austen Ball in May, we chose to require masks and proof of vaccination for the event because it attracts dancers from a larger geographic area. Covid incidence is expected to be uneven across the region. This was set in January and is unlikely to change because of the long lead time for making plans for both attendees and organizers. Rich On Fri, Apr 7, 2023 at 9:52 AM Rich Dempsey &lt;rcdsoup(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

Hi everyone, I'd like people to consider a few things when discussing covid... * People are asking what others are doing. Not asking for advice on what they should be doing. Please don't offer unsolicited advice. I think it is useful to hear what is happening at other dances. But if there is going to be negative/critical feedback, people will not share. * This is email. No one is going to change someone else's mind. If you don't agree with the guidelines that a dance is using, don't go to it. Please don't attack or criticize the poster. Often, the poster is only one person of a committee making the decisions. Don't shoot the messenger. * Please watch the tone of your email, or how others might perceive the tone of your email. It might feel rude or critical, even if you didn't intend it. Responders - instead of jumping on someone publicly, please write to them privately, saying "that felt rude. Did you intend it that way?" Maybe they will apologize. * We are all doing our best here. We are all coming from different geographic areas which each have their own particular local culture, especially regarding masking. Please be kind to each other if someone else's guidelines don't agree with yours. Bottom line: This list is NOT a place to discuss the effectiveness of masks, vaccines, etc. This is a thread asking what other people are doing. No one has asked if others think their policy is good. Thank you, Seth

I collected some data on what the different dance series (not just contra) around boston are doing for mask and vaccination requirements: https://www.jefftk.com/p/boston-social-dance-covid-requirements Jeff On Wed, Apr 12, 2023 at 11:20 AM Darlene Hamilton via Organizers < organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net&gt; wrote:

Similar to Lou, here is a quick glimpse at what my local dance at the John C. Campbell Folk School (Brasstown, North Carolina) is doing. First, here is the Health and Safety Statement from the School: "The Folk School is committed to providing everyone with a positive experience of learning and sharing in a safe environment. Since our reopening in May 2021, we have fulfilled our mission in a manner that makes the safety and well-being of students, instructors, guests, visitors, and staff our highest priority. In developing our safety protocols and procedures, we are considering the guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and local health authorities. We are also considering the Folk School’s unique environment of many people coming together to learn in our studios and live on campus." Here is a link to the guidelines: https://www.folkschool.org/wp-content/uploads/documents/covid-19-safety-gui… Based on the guidelines, you will find that as of November 20, 2022 vaccines are no longer mandatory. While there was an exception for the 2022 Winter Dance Week, the weekly dances no longer require proof of vaccination. Masks are optional, but recommended. In the instance a student at the Folk School experiences Covid-19 symptoms or tests positive, there are procedures in order including contact tracing; however, I do not believe we actively have contact tracing in place for our dances since they are open to students and community members alike (without any formal checking in process). We maintain excellent attendance, especially from the community members outside of those taking weekly and/or weekend classes. In some instances, our attendance has actually grown. For example, our monthly ECD numbers went from roughly 14-20 dancers to 45+ dancers. While I will not say this is directly related to our guidelines, I will say there is a strong desire to dance permeating throughout our community right now - people are very eager to get back on the dance floor. Please note, the Folk School indicates that the guidelines can be amended at any time. There are no further updates as of today. If you have any questions you would like to ask me off this thread, please do not hesitate to reach out! Happy dancing, Olivia On Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 2:50 PM Lou Echeandia via Organizers < organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net&gt; wrote: