Okay. So when is it okay to go again? Honest question.
Seriously? HOW THE FUCK SHOULD i KNOW!!! My name isn’t Dr. Fauci! Maybe ask him. But right now, is NOT the time to be going to conventions or conferences. We’re about to get hit with a 5th wave and we’re going to top 1 million dead in the US ALONE… Maybe that’s acceptable to you, but it’s not to me. We should not have gotten here in the first place and we should NOT be playing a game of chicken with the lives of vulnerable people in our society.
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Oh, good, it’s in Minneapolis. Just like the first ‘official’ US cases of the original virus - patient 0.1 didn’t travel internationally. Well, must be time to assume omicron is already everywhere.
Get vaxxed, get your booster, keep wearing those masks.
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WorldCon, the annual science fiction convention, is being held in DC in a couple of weeks, about an hour’s drive away. Yes, it’s a physical, held in a hotel convention, because the convention (the local organization, that is) would be obligated for nearly a million dollars in contracted services if they went entirely virtual, according to their website.
I used to enjoy conventions, but I just can’t bring myself to attend one until Covid stops being an issue. I just hope this doesn’t turn into a fannish superspreader event.
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Gee, don’t you think that maybe, just maybe, that’s the exact kind of thinking that may indeed stretch this clusterfuck out for another ten years? 
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Omicron is now the dominant strain in South Africa, which means it’s almost certainly the dominant strain in all of Southern Africa. To get to that level, it means it has been around for weeks, if not months.
There are not just two cases in the US and it’s not just in two states. It’s been nearly two years of us constantly forgetting the most basic shit about this disease and acting surprised at how aggressively it spreads. It’s here. It’s been here. Get used to it and act accordingly (which is the same damn way everyone should have been behaving all along).
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Apparently
Self fulfill that prophecy!
Not as healthy as long CoVid…
Care about other people and listen to qualified epidemiologists?
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I think this clusterfuck is going to be stretched out another ten years simply because we in the US are talking about second booster shots already when a huge part of the rest of the world doesn’t even have access to FIRST shots. We’re VERY privileged in the US to have gotten at the front of the line, and we’re still cutting in line as it stands. So yes, I’ll stop going to conventions, but even if we did everything PERFECT in the US, we’re still going to have this for ten years simply because we can’t keep up with variants when we’re not allowing the rest of the world to get FIRST shots.
Not with ignorant, careless and dangerous attitudes like that, it’s not.
Look, people have got to live their lives, but the baseline obligations are the same they’ve ever been; avoid crowds, especially indoors, keep your distance, get the shots and wear a fucking mask. If you have to do something like flying, take extra precautions.
And how many people have they been around? And those people? And those people?
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Yeah, no shit. Maybe people here have expressed concerns about it… doesn’t mean we should just shrug out shoulders and head out to the old con…
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A month or so ago, I was invited to a medium-sized conference in Vegas, and there was no way I was going to attend. As soon as the news of Omicron hit, they very quickly shifted it back to remote-only. Totally the right call, even if they lose a lot of money on hotel and conference reservation cancellations.
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If Omicron is a non-show, I’m sure that Delta will be happy to step in as GOH.
These were going to be spreader events either way.
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So far it seems like it might spread faster (omicron), but seems to have milder symptoms… But we just don’t know yet… that and we don’t know about efficacy around vaccines and apparently we won’t know for another 2 weeks.
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This is just insane to me. I remember back in April 2020, the first of several of our big industry conferences was hastily switched to virtual and I know the conference organizers were able to recoup all their deposits due to the state of the pandemic. And that was WAAAY before we’d gotten to the point of 1,000 people dying every day from this thing. Which is where we are now. Still.
Maybe at this point, they made all the arrangements when it was 3,000 per day dying, assuming we’d be through it by now, and the contracted services providers are claiming it’s better now than it was then?
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It’s a bit complex, go read the website discon3.org for details, but basically the original hotel/conference center went bankrupt, the attending membership voted for an in-person live event, and to pull it off the convention committee had to sign some contracts.
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hold an event for 53,000 people where theater capacity is 15,000. Complain about problems with crowding…smdh
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Where’s that headdesk gif? It should be getting a workout here.
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I don’t know about the rest of the world but there is more to it than not having access.
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I know this is off topic and one shouldn’t expect anything intelligent to ever pass Mel Gibson’s lips, but JFC, “They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom!” has got to be the stupidest goddamned thing I’ve ever heard.
If you’re dead and someone killed you… they took your freedom, bud.
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