I would say that in general, Referees would probably end up with 5 contacts meeting the CDC definition for “Close”, those 5 being the other referees. There’s certainly a risk that they end up with more (Official Scorers being the primary use case, if they’re used, with the gate-operating Field Reset crew members being the secondary). I think with some mitigation you can lock that at 5 close contacts. There’s just one problem with that micro-bubble: The Head Referee.
See, the Head Referee starts the day with the VC, LRI, JA, FTA (and possibly FTAAs), FS, RD(s), Event Manager, and a few other people in a meeting. Assume that each and every person in that meeting is a close contact of everybody else in the meeting, because it happens every day and often goes over 15 minutes, in a private area off to the side of the event. So there’s a bubble of at LEAST 8 people, all of whom are critical to the event, all of whom often do multiple events, any one of whom could get the disease.
Referee: 4 contacts that are probably clean, 1 at high risk.
Head Referee: 4 probably clean contacts, 8 contacts at varying risks from low (VC) to high (LRI and FTA). And that’s JUST the volunteers: Assume 8 more contacts at unknown risk (Alliance Captains), and probably about 5-10 close contacts that may or may not overlap with the AC group due to use of the Question Box.
Incidentally… I’ll bet some of you saw that meeting note I made earlier, and are now thinking “uh-oh”.
For those that aren't...
Hypothetical scenario: Little Johnny on FRC666 catches an asymptomatic case from an unknown source, and it isn’t detected before he attends the Magnolia Regional. Johnny helps get the robot through inspection, and due to a particularly annoying rules issue Inspector Jim brings in LRI Bob to help out, both being close contacts of Johnny due to the time working on the issue. Note that LRI Bob and most of the KVs are scheduled for events for the next two weeks.
LRI Bob goes to the KV meeting the next morning. At this point, nobody knows that Johnny had our contagious little friend. LRI Bob also goes the morning after that. Nothing’s showed up yet. The KVs interact with their teams of volunteers.
A couple days after the event, Johnny gets tested for some reason and it comes back positive. A contact trace is activated. Jim and Bob get tested. Positive. The KVs are alerted. They go to get tested. At least half show positive. Let’s say it’s the FTAA, the CSA, the LRI, the Head Ref, and the Field Supervisor.
This, my friends, is the nightmare scenario. If you haven’t nearly freaked out, you should be. Remember I said that most of the KVs are probably doing another event shortly? Not any more! And a smart KV who didn’t test positive will still hole up for a couple weeks (in case the test timing was off). At this point, your best assumption is that every single team had an interaction with someone who is somewhere in the chain of positives, and probably about half the volunteers did too.
Unless you’re in Texas or Florida, that’s it for events for at least the next two weeks and probably the rest of the season. Nobody’s going to be silly enough to allow one. Even if enough people and teams are functional to play one. Even Texas might take note and do a shutdown. All because one person’s contact chain led right through the KV meeting.
That meeting has Nate’s 1, 3, 4, 7, and 8, possibly 6, 11, and 10. Maybe a few others (15 comes to mind). That’s 8 close contacts immediately for everybody at the meeting.
Of course, there’s a few easy mitigations: Meeting gets held outdoors (outside the venue) or on the field, or not at all (HAH!), or via a Zoom. That should take the contacts from it to near-zero, allowing the KVs to worry about their normal interactions. Ditto for the AC meeting (held on the field), the spread-out-and-holler situation should work for that just fine.
Final score for the Head Ref: 5 low-risk, and with proper mitigation in the required meetings, and some creativity around the Question Box(es), I think you could get down to another 5 medium-to-high risk.