Dear RFR community,
Thank you for all of the feedback you’ve given the Board of Trustees this summer about our covid policy. We truly appreciate all of the thoughtful and honest feedback that everyone has given over the course of our surveys. Our “covid specifics survey” had 57 responses, 53 of which were received in the first 24 hours. Based on those survey responses, the Board has decided to raise the wastewater threshold at which masking is required indoors to 867 copies/ML, and otherwise keep the policy the same. That number represents a 1% chance of catching covid for someone who attends all eight RFR weekend events each year unmasked.
I’m going to answer some questions that we received on the surveys and anticipate receiving about this decision below, but please reach out to me or another Board member if you have further questions or concerns.
Why wasn’t this option listed on the survey you just did?
Discussion within the Board about the policy language was ongoing while we drafted the survey, and we wanted to get the survey out to the community before Entanglement ran. We didn’t have the chance to do the calculations that led to this threshold before the survey was published. We also considered listing each policy option on the survey with multiple possible thresholds, but decided that would be too confusing on an already-wordy survey.
What did the responses to the survey look like?
The two most popular policy options were “keep the current policy” and “testing twice always lets you unmask, with no wastewater threshold.” The survey showed that opinions are pretty divided across our community about what an ideal policy would look like. The comments expressed a wide range of views, including disappointment that all changes listed on the survey involved loosening the policy, statements that the wastewater levels are a confusing metric, frustration at not knowing what the masking policy will be until a week before an event due to wastewater levels, gratitude for taking covid safety seriously, and more.
Why did you decide to make this change and not [my preferred covid policy approach]?
We chose this threshold to attempt to find middle ground in a polarized community. Many people expressed support for eliminating the threshold due to physical discomfort of masks or concerns about immersion or gameplay experience, but many other members of our community expressed support for the policy as it stood in the spring and concern that loosening the policy would exclude the most vulnerable members of our community. It is important to the Board to prioritize consideration for the very immunocompromised, without entirely disregarding the concerns of people who want a higher threshold. At the end of the day, there is NO good policy that makes everyone happy due to an extremely polarized set of opinions, so this is an attempt to make people “halfway happy” (to use a term from Stranger Things). We realize that this will also probably make a lot of people “halfway unhappy.” We are doing our best to find a compromise solution that is still safe.
This policy is still complex, and we heard that some people wanted a simple solution like “always mask” or “2 tests = always unmask.” However, it seemed to the Board like this was the best compromise solution for the community right now.
Why are you still using Boston wastewater data when many members of our community aren’t from Boston?
We felt it was important to tie the policy to some form of outside metric for covid prevalence, in order to keep the policy responsive to covid spikes. Wastewater data are imperfect and don’t represent the risk levels of every place people are coming from, but we wanted some way of judging spikes beyond news articles. We know that wastewater data also varies from day to day, which is why we use the 7 day average number rather than the reading for a single day.
Why are you treating covid so differently from the flu?
We are treating covid and the flu differently, but at present we don’t have at-home flu tests, so we can’t control for the flu in the same way. The current policy does include a statement that if you are sick and may still be contagious, you should stay home from an event, regardless of what you’re sick with.
As stated above, this policy probably won’t make anyone perfectly happy, but hopefully it is an acceptable compromise. Our organization has the strictest LARP covid policy of any others we are aware of, and I know we’ve been used as a model for other organizations who are trying to be covid conscious. I’m proud of the work we’ve done within the Board and across the community to find compromise and keep our games accessible to everyone.
I look forward to larping with you again this fall!
Sincerely,
Sarah
On behalf of the RFR Board of Trustees