Re: COVID [was: Re: DebConf 25 Daily announcements - 2025.07.15 - Daytrip information && DebConf Day 2]

[Enrico Zini <enrico@enricozini.org>]

On Tue, Jul 22, 2025 at 09:06:11AM +0100, Matthew Vernon wrote:

> And better ventilation and more encouragement of everyone to wear a mask
> would reduce the risk of transmitting flu and colds also, so wins all round
> :)

Indeed.

I tried to get a commitment that smokers would avoid smoking outside
during mealtimes, so that that people could eat outside unmasked, and
I'm happy that it was generally upheld, with some exceptions.

I struggled to keep ventilation going in Centre Vie: the door was often
closed, and at some point after I complained about smoke coming in,
signs appeared (with a passive aggressive twist towards my complaint,
heh) inviting the smokers to keep doors closed to avoid smoke going in.
That didn't help and gave me a strong feeling of malicious compliance.
Things improved significantly a day later, after the signs got changed.

Ventilation, access to open air, and compromises with smoke areas is
certainly an aspect of DebConf where we can have lots of iterative
improvement, and I'd be happy to participate in such a discussion.

In the end, I also masked pretty much all the time without getting
negative repercussions. I also regretfully avoided eating in Centre Vie
in days of rain, when the doors were closed, everyone was inside, and
one cannot eat while masked.

A few days later, I both feel healthy and just tested negative from
COVID, which is great as it means I can catch up with loved ones and
work after having been away for a long time, and not have a frustrating
long tail of conference side effects as happened to me and several
other attendees, for example, after DebConf22.

I'd love it if we could track post-conference test results in private,
so we could get a feedback about the effectiveness (or not) of current
COVID policies, though I'm not sure we could ask enough people to test
so that results would be enough to provide a valid sample.


Enrico

-- 
GPG key: 4096R/634F4BD1E7AD5568 2009-05-08 Enrico Zini <enrico@enricozini.org>