We are in the UK. Measures here are minimal in most places. Masks are usually recommended but not required. Same for hand sanitizer, distancing, etc.
Haha! 
We are not that lucky! We have few enough members that we can poll them. Ultimately, I think this is the solution. Then we can tailor our measures to what our members actually want.
It is very distressing to see how easy it is for the leaders of a nation to trigger a Pavlovian response in the population. Dissenting opinions are labelled as malicious disinformation, so there may be no discussion.
Well, youāre claiming that coronavirus is now not more deadly than the flu, since viruses get weaker over time. That is misinformation: (1) viruses donāt magically get weaker over time, like you claimed and (2) Thereās currently more people dying daily of covid than back in April 2020; if anything, the virus got deadlier overall (more accurately, it got more contagious without losing much of its deadliness).
Feel free to explain to me how Iām wrong about either (1) or (2), and then we can have a discussion.
Also, just to be clear āthe virus is getting less deadlyā is not an opinion, itās either a fact or itās a false statement. Iām not attacking you for your opinion, like I said:
thatās me allowing you to keep your opinions.
Please also note, that your opinion of not really caring about the virus is an opinion I currently share:
So, in a way, the opinion part of your post is not even a dissenting one (or mine is as well)
Well, at least you have thought it through. I havenāt made the effort to verify any of this since I am a computer programmer, not a virologist. I donāt take it very seriously.
The most important thing when we are being subjected to a massive propaganda campaign is to keep thinking for yourself and donāt be coerced into doing anything that you donāt want to.
I can say that I fully agree.
but saying things like āvirus became less deadlyā is dangerous, it may lead to people stop vaccinating.
There is a lot of data available. I suppose that if the virus became less deadly, the Case Fatality Rate would be decreasing over time. But overall it seems to stay roughly 1-2%
not very useful thing unlike Infection Fatality Rate
but IFR may be hard to estimate
CFR depends on who get tested. Between waves and during wave testing may be very different. And after mass vaccination, only unvaccinated may start to get tested, so CFR will increase.
(or if both, it will decrease)
We also held all (weekly) meetings online on OGS from the beginning of the pandemic. We started to meet in person again, occasionally, in July this year. So far, we have had three face-to-face meetings and are hoping to settle down to meeting online and f2f alternate weeks, eventually.
We have published Covid Precautions which must be complied with by those attending. You can download a copy at:
https://directory.hertfordshire.gov.uk/Services/12766
I should also mention that the premises where we meet, a bar, have had an overhead ventilation system installed, which is also part of our precautions.
Btw, the AGA [corrected from āAJAā] published guidelines on this subject in July and Iām happy to say they agree broadly with ours, made independently:
https://www.usgo.org/news/2021/07/aga-releases-updated-covid-guidelines-for-local-play/
EDIT: I wrote this without seeing all the other replies!
True (although in my family we still get tested tests when we have a cold)
And indeed CFR/IFR is also affected by vaccination. Vaccinated people can still get infected, but are much less likely to get seriously ill and die (reducing CFR/IFR). Almost all covid patients in ICU in the Netherlands are not vaccinated.
So this graph is giving me hope that things will normalize in the near future:
You donāt say where āhereā is. This site is worldwide.
With the delta variant, the virus became more contagious and more deadly
The main thing mitigating this is the widespread vaccination deployment
Covid or no Covid, hygiene of the public spaces and ustensils is important in any public activity.
People bring their own dancing shoes, their own tennis towels etc because they feel more protected. Imagine wearing a pair of dancing shoes worn by ten other people today.
I feel the same about Go stones. If they are publicly used and not washed, Iāll imagine they are dirty and stinky.
Towels and shoes are moist so bacteria and fungi can develop. I know that virus particles can survive several days on various surfaces, but I suppose that micro-organisms wonāt proliferate easily on go stones. If you are afraid of touching go stones, that you cannot touch coins, door handles and public chairs either, and you canāt shake hands with anyone. Well, the last time I shook hands with someone was in March 2020 but before that, nobody considered shaking hands as dangerous.
Maybe I have bad memories of workplace equipment, used in common with other people: greasy keystrokes, reeking phone receivers. I always think that objects used by strangers should be cleaned, virus or no virus.
I admit I may be overthinking it, but if I see a greasy chair, a table full of ash, a phone with slippery buttons etc, I automatically think that the establishment never washes anything and they are lazy with regulations.
We did wash our hands afterwards, though.
There are many countries and several subcultures who donāt shake hands. Maybe there is some hygienic thinking into that?
I agree that greasy objets should be cleaned, however stones in my go club donāt āobviouslyā need to be cleaned, and in any case washing them every week would be too tedious. Better ask people to wash their hands before playing and provide a hand sanitizer to anyone who needs it.
This is self-evident, of course.
It depends of the environment (playing in dusty place or outside ) and the frequency of use. See the people who cleaned the stones at the end of the french summer camp. In a more conventional use i still think that cleaning the material is not a bad idea like let say once in a year.
Many clubs organize an annual tournament, so that could be the good time for that, after everyone left.
