Hi Olly, Holger,
Are either/both of you willing to sit down with me for a few minutes to help plan and then deliver some COVID meals (I intend to too)?
The volunteer rota capacity levels have been updated to allow for more signups (thank you, whoever did that).
Regards,
James
I didn't write an email about this yesterday because I'd have struggled
to not write a very long and angry rant and I don't think that would
have been helpful.
I have a perspective I'd like to share. I'm very sorry how long this
email is - tl;dr is COVID (still) sucks and the policy says "shall
self-isolate" so please do that.
On Tue, Jul 15, 2025 at 02:39:06PM +0200, Nicolas Dandrimont wrote:
> === COVID-19 policy ===
>
> We would like to remind attendees of our COVID-19 policy[1], as well as our
> conference code of conduct[2].
>
> [1] https://debconf25.debconf.org/about/covid19/
> [2] https://www.debconf.org/codeofconduct.shtml
>
> We recommend that people who have tested positive self-isolate while they
> exhibit symptoms, [...]
The published policy is significantly stronger that what is written here
as it says "shall" rather than just "recommend":
Any attendee having symptoms of COVID-19 shall self-isolate as per
standard protocol i.e. wear a mask, isolate themselves from other
attendees and seek medical care.
I looked at the published COVID policy as part of my decision to attend
DebConf and I trusted that the policy would be generally followed by
other attendees with gentle but firm encouragement/enforcement if
required.
I realise there's a risk that anyone could be wandering around
infectious and be asymptomatic or just not have developed symptoms
yet. However it's quite a different matter for people to be active in
public areas knowingly being infectious. Masks help but aren't perfect.
If the de-facto policy is not actually the published one I think that
needs to be made clear so people can make decisions about how much to
take part in the conference based on the actual policy in force.
I do appreciate for many that the pandemic is "over" and they view COVID
as "just the flu" (you know, just a disease that kills a lot of older
and/or medically vulnerable people each year...) but please understand
that not everyone feels the same way, and that your behaviour and
decisions impact others. Debian has a lot of older people and I'm
guessing a fair number with medical conditions (I know there's at least
one diabetic here for example).
People's experiences of the pandemic were and are different. Mine was
pretty nice to start with. I live in New Zealand and we had a very
early lock-down in March 2020 which managed to eradicate COVID and then
life returned to something not that far from normal for a long time
unless you wanted to travel overseas.
However my partner Jenny caught COVID at a conference about 2.5 years
ago and still hasn't fully recovered. She's not been as bad as many
cases I've heard about and has managed to keep doing her job, but has
really struggled with fatigue. Most weekends are just recovering from
the week. Social situations are draining, as is driving a car. She's
gradually improving but had a set back when we both managed to catch
COVID again returning from a holiday last November.
You really don't want to get long COVID (or post-viral fatigue from flu
for that matter), or watch a loved one suffer from it. I can't even
imagine how we'd cope if I now caught COVID (or flu) and had a similar
multi-year long recovery experience to her.
We're also staying with my father and then Jenny's parents in the week
after debconf, all in their 80s and with various medical conditions. I
don't want my lasting memory of Debconf25 to be that it resulted in the
death of a close family member.
Holger (quite reasonably) asked me this morning if I was just wearing a
mask for caution or because I had COVID. I'll repeat what I said then:
as far as I know I don't and I would be isolating if I did. I'd ask you
all please to follow the conference policy and do the same. Most
sessions are streamed live and each talk room has an IRC channel/matrix
room so you can still take part from isolation.
Please, please let's not let this turn into a monster thread though.
I'm totally happy to have respectful discussions about this, but
probably better in person.
FUCK COVID!
With love, Olly