Watching the stream of the championship is disheartening. Every pan to the audience shows more people wearing chin diapers than masks. HQ has posted–on official channels–photos on social media if people improperly wearing their masks. The vast majority of the WFA winners weren’t wearing masks when they were down on the floor*.
We’re so close to this thing being behind us, but we’re not there yet. Wear your mask over your nose and mouth when asked. It’s quite literally the least you could do.
To be clear, I’m upset with both the participants who are doing this and the staff who is not enforcing it. Every regional I was at this year had great mask enforcement. It’s possible, and there are no excuses.
Even if you don’t personally believe in the value of wearing the mask, it’s a matter of complying with rules. I think it’s dumb that I can’t bring outside food into venues, but I listen to the rule.
*
To clarify, I think that speakers don’t need masks while they are speaking, but the many people around them waiting to speak should absolutely be masked…at an indoor venue…when masks are required…And these are the people representing the best of leaders in our community. I don’t know what guidance they were given by FIRST and who is to blame, but the optics are insane.
I’m in the same boat of being extremely dissapointed. The worst for me is the “head” MC for the FTC stream who, as far as I’m aware, I haven’t seen wear a mask at all, all weekend. There’s been seemingly no enforcement at all for either FRC or FTC all weekend, and while I’m still glad they required masks, this seems very poor at best. Especially for a MC or GA, I get that having a mask on isn’t exactly ideal, but I’ve seen so many events (including ones I’ve helped organize and host) that seem to do it just fine.
EDIT: He seemed to just put on a mask? Maybe complaining on Chief Delphi actually does something after all.
Blair made started making a safety announcement about 3 minutes after this thread went up. I was sad to hear it was that they wanted people to squish together more and stay out of the aisles.
I don’t care if peoole wear a mask or not (I don’t believe they make much difference unless you get expensive ones), but if you wear one, please wear it properly.
Because your hot take completely ignored all the scientific data and is likely to result in some very contentious posts asking you to prove your assertions with actual data. This is a stem competition after all.
Do you cover your mouth with your arm when you sneeze? It won’t do a perfect job of keeping particles out of the air, but it will be better than sneezing wide open. Even if the risk is lowered, it is a step in the right direction for keeping everybody safe. An important detail to consider in situations like champs is that it is NOT the same as going to the local supermarket. There, you might interact with a handful of people who are all relatively local to you. At champs, there are thousands of people in attendance from all over the country/the world. This brings the “sphere of influence” from a few dozen people to a few million. Masks, even basic cloth/surgical masks, are a good way to lower this risk. Nobody claims it has to be perfect.
The requirement to have masks at Champs was hardly a decision based on science.
The CDC website has clear guidelines on their website for communities in the “low” category. FIRSTs mask mandate went directly against cdc recommendations.
It’s their event so they can require basically any rule they want. Asking people to follow the rules is reasonable. Telling us wearing masks is consistent with the current science is just plain incorrect.
I don’t believe they make the smallest difference unless you get expensive ones
This is misaligned with current best understanding of the impact on the transmission of the SARS COV2 virus. Masks, even the cheap 4 layer cloth ones are > 90% effective at reducing the transmission of the virus.
Whether masks should have been required at the event under current CDC guidelines, different issue.
Fair enough Paul, but that’s not what I was responding to. He made the statement that only expensive masks do anything: that’s what I was specifically responding to.
You are correct that Houston is currently in a “low” risk category for COVID(according to Covid Act Now). That being said, every community present at champs is not in the “low” category. There are students, mentors, volunteers, parents, and spectators from just about every state and multiple countries, all with their own covid protocols, case numbers, and risk levels. The amount of people from Houston is miniscule compared to the amount of people who traveled to this event. The atmosphere inside GRB is wildly different to that of the rest of Houston, and it needs to be treated as such, to mitigate the chances of champs being a “super spreader” event, sending cases to other states and countries.
I’ve found the red highlighted section to be really useful. Not only does it tell you who they are replying to but if you click it you’ll get an inline version of the post they are replying to.
It’s somewhat off-topic (nothing to do with COVID), but I thought this recent Atlantic article had some interesting perspectives on social media debates – and on what these kinds of things, at scale, have changed in recent years.
As COVID (hopefully) recedes, it is my sincere hope that we collectively learn from the experiences we have been through. However, some things are disheartening, at least to me. At the same time, this thread (and some other recent ones) seem to be markedly better than others of not so long ago.
At any rate, things will likely be considerably different, but only in some ways, when the 2023 season (for FRC) comes around. I am very much looking forward to this.
I don’t mind masks as a sign of wanting to do something about covid, and I don’t mind masks as encouraged to make others feel safe. However, I don’t like them being forced.
For FIRST, I imagine that they did it to make travel easy for teams outside of the country, because of other countries political decisions. I understand that. I am sure that there was a lot of thought put into the requirement.
I noticed that the required was not enforced to my knowledge, but I don’t think that means anything. I am sure that FIRST volunteers have better things to do then to tell people to wear a mask.
