Game Conventions 2021

I see more pandemic cloud-cuckoo-land thinking respect to in-person game conventions in 2021.

Having a large group of people confined to an indoor space, even a ballroom, is a death trap. Your chances of being infected by Covid-19 are higher in such places, same as in a restaurant. Hotels are also one of the five places where you’re most likely to contract Covid-19, and most people going to conventions stay in hotels. So we have to ask ourselves, what needs to change to make a convention a relatively safe event?

Keep in mind that the vaccinations are not 100% effective, it’s a rare vaccine that is, and especially in the face of a mutating disease such as Covid-19. There’s always the possibility that it will mutate into something that the current vaccinations (or some of them) will not prevent or even ameliorate.

Second, ask yourself, in the ridiculous anti-science climate of the United States, how many people will refuse to be vaccinated even when vaccinations are available to all? The answer seems to be, a distressingly large proportion have forgotten the benefits of such great inventions as smallpox vaccine and polio vaccine and tuberculosis vaccine. They’re in their own little cloud-cuckoo-land. 

Third, consider how slowly the vaccines are being distributed, let alone manufacturing limitations, and ask yourself how soon we have the opportunity to have everyone be vaccinated. (Don’t forget that it takes three to four weeks to get the second shot.)

Fourth, consider how unlikely it is that people in vulnerable groups (such as myself, soon 70 years old and with diabetes and a strong tendency toward blood clots) are going to go to a convention unless they are sure everyone has been vaccinated. Yet I have not seen or heard a single word about proofs that someone has been vaccinated. I am not going to a convention unless I am sure everyone there has been vaccinated, I’m not taking a person’s word for it in the present chaotic climate. And if I have that attitude, probably a lot of other people will too.

Given all those things, conventions a month or two from now are impossible, no matter what the local polity may say about allowing people to get together in enclosed spaces for days. Late summer would appear to be the earliest when we can attain a desirable situation. Hence I have some hope that the WBC - World Boardgaming Championships (late July/early August) might be held this year. Or perhaps the regional Grogcon here in Florida in October. Though I think proof of vaccination will be a big stumbling block simply because people aren’t thinking about it, in the same way that people didn’t think about how vaccinations would be distributed, with the resulting current mess.

It is amazing to me how so many people don't take this danger seriously even as 4,000+ die in the USA on some days, and the number is always over 3,000. 

Without everyone certainly inoculated, a convention is a death trap.