As a few regionals around the world have been shut down due to the coronavirus, many teams like my own are afraid that the same will happen to our upcoming competitions.
I am standing up on behalf of my team and many other teams to advocate for not cancelling our regionals. After months of dedication and hard work, we should not be willing to let First cancel our event so quickly, without considering alternative safer pathways that still allow the competitions to proceed.
Regarding the severity of the virus, us students should be willing to take extreme precaution if that is what it takes to have our competitions carry on. We could enforce “air high-fives”, hand sanitizer galore, and even wear masks if needed.
I am writing this to be proactive and to make First aware that teams are willing take extreme precaution for the coronavirus as long as they don’t cancel our events. If you feel the same way as I do about this dilemma, please post your support and suggestions below.
You’re barking up the wrong tree here. I do not know of any regional or district event that FIRST has pulled the plug on, but instead done by local groups at these events closer to the concerns.
I understand your, concern, but cancelling an event because of a genuine corona virus concern is in the best interest of everyone attending. I too would hate it if our one regional got canceled but its a lot better to do that than its still held, someone does get sick (coronavirus or not), and everyone attending now has to self quarantine.
My team’s regionals are week 5 and 6. I am certainly concerned about cancellations and feel it is probably an over-reaction. We are hoping things don’t get worse and activities here go on as scheduled as the outbreak gets contained.
However, even though the likelihood of something bad happening is probably slim, the danger in that slim chance would be extraordinarily high and I don’t blame FIRST or local schools for wanting no part in it.
Could you imagine if you attended a regional with 50 teams from several different states and a few students later tested positive for Coronavirus? Would they quarantine all the teams? Would all the schools those kids attended then also need to quarantine? Maybe all the students feel willing to accept the risk, but what about teachers or parents they come in contact with back home? I’m sure that thought is weighing heavily on many school administrators right now.
What the heck is FIRST supposed to do when entire areas are told to not hold large public gatherings? If it is bad enough for local government to call for no large public gatherings , should we really be having events only because of “months of dedication and hard work?” Do we really want to endanger the health of all attendants for a highschool robotics competition? Don’t get me wrong, I want events to go on, but FIRST is allowed to and will cancel events if necessary. Asking them not to is not going to do anything and isn’t in the interest of public health.
Echoing this, the Jay Ensley, Governor of Washington, is currently considering “Mandatory Measures,” including suspending all public events, among others. That would likely the last nail in the coffin for PNW.
I think for the most part, the only decision that is up to FIRST is how to continue the season in a fair way, if at all. I don’t think they will cancel any individual event unless required.
To my understanding, for many of these event cancelations/postponements, FIRST and the respective district/regional organizations have been at the mercy of the venue, local city government, etc. Most have not been solely FIRST’s decision.
What are you going to do to prevent droplets that contain the virus from spreading from one person to another?
A bunny suit and a respirator for everyone in attendance is an extreme precaution.
How many times do you touch your face? Do you even know? Do you even think about it as you scratch an itchy nose, wipe your forehead, push up your glasses?
Do you and everyone on your team bring individual tools and never share them? What surfaces do you touch that everyone else touches? Do you constantly wash your hands at a competition?
The decision to postpone or cancel an event is not taken lightly, and not made by HQ alone. Its driven from the local organizations hosting the events, working from public health directives issued by local authorities.
I hear that you’re scared of the unknown factors here. Don’t blame HQ for events outside their control. They don’t want to cancel events either. We are all on the same team.
My suggestion to first is to see if it’s possible to have a competitor only event if needed, the audience would have to watch (and scout) remotely, and of course enforcing strict hygiene measures on the people who actually participate in the event. This may be practical in some cases, in others probably not. Figure a drive team and a couple of mentors per team would be 6-8 persons per team, plus event support people, for a small event this might be ~280 to 320 people. I realize this is still a large gathering, but less than the 800 to perhaps several thousand that attend normally.
Naturally this will depend on the local situation and health authority directives, but it’d be heartbreaking for nearly all teams to lose most of all of their entire season, especially graduating students.
I’m a senior in high school, this is the last year I’ll get to do FRC. None of my elderly family members live in the country. Nobody in my immediate family has a weak immune system. Covid-19 therefore poses almost no threat to me or my family. But if regionals need to be cancelled for public health, I will stay home. I don’t want to see the USA turn into Iran, Italy, or South Korea.
In my view, the best compromise is limiting each team to 6-8 members, restricting the pits to 1 adult and 2 students, getting rid of in-person scouting, and reducing interactions between different teams as much as possible. But if events need to be cancelled for public health, let them be cancelled.
if you have competitors only - you got a drive team of 5 and at least 1 in the pits and at least 1 adult - for 40 teams that is 280 people in a confined space (the pits) Now that sounds about as safe as taking a cruise. I am very upset that we built a robot nonetheless a 3DP one with lots of effort and innovation and now we probably won’t be able to compete - but it’s not worth having someone potentially die over it. If what we know so far about the virus winds up to pan out then it got the potential to be bad and we got to nip it in the butt before it does some serious damage. So I was extremely sad when our 1st event got canceled but I had to agree with the decision. It was the sensible thing to do based on the information at hand at the time
Actually, if events do this, other team members could try to scout from live. Without outside spectators and the only problem is what volunteers would help with this?
hot take: if events need to restrict number of members allowed in for public health reasons, then the event shouldn’t be happening under any circumstances
Hosting the competition is to expose new people to it and provide a fun time for the currently involved. If the people are limited, the cost of hosting is not at all worth it. Live or not.
I agree. The people who would be attending the event as spectators (team members, mentors, parents, friends, etc.) are going to have close contact with the team members attending a restricted event anyways. I don’t see how this would cut down on transmission of the virus much at all. I don’t think we really know enough about the disease to determine whether shutting down all public events is really necessary but I can’t fault anyone for taking the side of caution.
It’s not so much the cost but the risk. My guess is that the expenses (both money and time) are mostly non-recoverable. I don’t know details of official event insurance policies, but that’s my uneducated guess. Now, on the question of risk, is it worth having an event with only drive team and pit crew, given that it will still place quite a few people in a confined space (see: large gathering)? I’d argue it’s not worth the risk.
I’d also argue that this is one COVID-19 thread too many.