Venture-Agent, Colorado—Denver
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Are others canceling or planning on canceling their PFS games due to CoronaVirus? I talked with my VC tonight and since attendance at our game stores has been very low, we decided to possibly cancel games until this has blown over. I haven't sent out the notice to my players yet. Wondering what others think.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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It could take a long time for this to blow over. We'll probably be hearing about it for most of the year.
It should be doable to drastically reduce the risk of transmission with some common-sense steps:
- Bring your own snacks, don't all stick your hands in the same bag of crisps.
- Use a clean cup. Rinse things with soap.
- Use your own dice.
- Maybe also only touch your own mini. Not sure how feasible that is.
- Wash your hands after every bathroom break.
- Don't shake hands, don't hug or kiss etc.
- Cough in your elbow instead of open air.
- If you're actually feeling under the weather, don't come to the game.
- Get enough sleep (maybe don't plan unhealthy many slots in a day).
- Eat enough fruit for vitamin C.
- Get some daylight for vitamin D.
- Stay hydrated (use your own bottle).
Do the things you do to avoid con crud but be serious about them. Chances are we're all going to get exposed this year, so just aim to have your immune system firing on all cylinders when it happens.
Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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As Lau said.
I understand cancelling major events where are lots of attendees and the risk of one or more carriers taking the risk even though they feel ill, "because the tickets were so expensive/I already bought the hotel/flight/ride/I've promised to run thing X in there" is the probable cause for spreading the virus. In smaller setting (such as a local game with maybe six participants) it's easier to control the attendees. Just tell everyone not to come if they feel ill and take the proper precautions lined above.
I mean, if you are feeling ill, you should obviously self-isolate. However, if you are fine and your friend is also fine, do you suddenly stop seeing each other for half a year because of the virus? Probably not.
Gotta give you credit for the "own dice/own figure" thing, though, I hadn't thought about that myself!
Developer
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It depends on your circumstances, for sure.
I've taken a break for a few weeks since we are in King County/Seattle at card shops with dozens of players in the same room at once. A couple other players have as well, and we have started playing on roll20 in the interim. I feel bad for the game shop owners, but I'm encouraging players who can't make it to save up for some big purchases when this calms down.
Mind you, I live in a condo building with dozens of >65-70 year old neighbors, so I feel responsible for their health as well as my own.
Since I work from home right now, I'm fortunate enough to quarantine myself. Were I already exposed to dozens of coworkers and customers every day, I wouldn't really fear exposing myself to 24-48 more people at a game shop.
It's also important to limit the spread of the virus so we don't over-crowd hospitals and supplies. Our local institutions are running dangerously low on masks and gloves, and we still don't have enough testing kits. It's really important during this first couple of months that we let the most vulnerable properly provision and the institutions that can keep us all well properly prepare.
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This subject was just raised this week by a VA for my FLGS. Our attendance has been on the lower side for a while now, but we have a fairly stable core of players among those who still attend. We may move to an online platform of some kind if enough people have health concerns, but it's very much an ongoing conversation that's just starting.
We'll definitely be urging people to keep supporting the store, because the next couple of months are going to be hell on small businesses of all kinds.
I'm personally more worried about a local con at the end of next month that my family is planning to attend. It traditionally has very robust PFS/SFS programming, but concerns over the coronavirus are likely to have a big impact on the con as a whole.
Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Omaha
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Have not talked to my other VOs or the stores themselves.
My current plan to keep playing. If the store makes the decision to stop being open or to not allow gaming, than the tables will be cancelled.
Online is not really an option in area.
We are small groups. I will encourage everyone who plays to not show up if they are not feeling well.
In general, continue as normal.
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I'm currently planning to run my game as scheduled this weekend. Due to scheduling issues, I have nothing planned for the following week, which I feel will give me a good chance to see what's responsible going forward.
But, I'm in a city that I feel is taking things seriously (w/o panic, aside from the run on TP). Companies are encouraging WFH, people seem to be doing a good job giving increased personal space most places. (Public transit still appears to be a high risk vector). People seem to be respecting the 'flatten the curve' philosophy.
I'd be willing to switch games to my house, if that makes players feel better. However I'd prefer to keep supporting the local businesses that I know are going to be hard hit by the loss of customers. And my place isn't public transit friendly so that would hurt some of the player base -- though its possible that public transit riding players are choosing to limit their trips anyways.
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Venture-Captain, Missouri—Columbia
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Our PFS Smackdown at Valhalla's Gate in Columbia, Missouri has been cancelled by the store along with all of their events for the month of March. College campuses around me are shutting down left and right along with public libraries. Health departments are issuing warnings about public gatherings and this is going to cause my other lodge to cancel its Conclave for next Saturday in Quincy, Illinois. I'm hearing via social media that some of the stores in St. Louis are cancelling games too.
Good thing I love playing and running in the Online Region. I've already got a full table for tonight's 1-15!
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I'm definitely taking a wait and see attitude, watching the government's advice (which I mostly trust).
One player in the AP that I'm running has said that when local community transmission is occurring he's not going to show up. Hard to argue with that.
I'm hoping to move to online if things shut down.
The weather is getting nice do I'm going to start cycling more to avoid public transit :-)
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It could take a long time for this to blow over. We'll probably be hearing about it for most of the year.
I'd like to riff on this.
I think there's not an epidemiological consensus, but it's quite possible that this coronavirus will end up being endemic - it may be here to stay forever, moving from northern hemisphere to southern hemisphere as the seasons change, and causing a small number of infections all year-round, much like influenza.
It's appropriate for some more drastic, short-term measures to be enacted right now, to avoid overloading the health care system. But that shouldn't be conflated with less drastic, long-term measures that also need to be taken. That is, in the discussion of what to do right now, there should be an additional discussion of what to do later this year.
If games get cancelled right now, criteria for restarting games should be discussed. If the criteria are too harsh - e.g., "we'll play again when coronavirus is gone" - it's quite possibly not useful because coronavirus may never be gone. If the criteria are too lenient - e.g., "just wash your hands, everyone will be fine" - it jeapordizes the high-risk (age 60+, immunocompromised, heart disease, etc) players among us and exacerbates the bandwidth problem.
Likewise, people should pre-discuss how to handle mini-outbreaks when games are restarted but coronavirus is still around (but not well-publicized), which is probably the most likely scenario for later this year ... and possibly forever.
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I think there's not an epidemiological consensus, but it's quite possible that this coronavirus will end up being endemic -
It seems very, very unlikely that this will end up (long term) being a greater risk/issue than Flu. There WILL be a vaccine in ~18 months or so (there are quite a few groups working on it right now), there will likely be significant amounts of Herd Immunity in even less time than that.
Of course, by then it is possible that habits will have changed. In our little world, maybe everything will have moved to online games and face to face games amongst semi-strangers will be a thing of the past.
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Venture-Captain, Colorado—Denver
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we decided to possibly cancel games until this has blown over
I was thinking more for just the end of this month and see how things are looking early April. From the various news sources I've been reading and watching over the past few days, I think we're going to see the numbers jump over the next 2-4 weeks before it begins to decline. But here's hoping that never happens and the worst has already occurred...
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Venture-Captain, Missouri—Columbia
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If we look at examples in history such as the Spanish Influenza, we see that viruses tend to mutate over a short period of time. In the case of the Spanish Influenza, what we know of it seems to suggest that it mutated into a less deadly form after its second wave. However, the problem with using the Spanish Influenza as an example is that young adults were among the groups most affected by it. Also, it was extremely virulent during the summer when the normal flu is less active. Finally, there were a lot of other conditions during the time period of the Spanish Influenza that are not present now that historians think contributed to its deadliness.
The scary part about the coronavirus is that it could mutate into a more deadly form before it mutates again into a less deadly form. Those vaccines are going to be very important next year and we're behind on this due to some political issues here in the US.
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Coronavirus and flu have several key differences that make comparing the risks difficult.
1. At least this coronavirus appears to be transmissible by people without symptoms. There are few asymptomatic carriers of influenza. This means that coronavirus (or at least this coronavirus) can move silently - the numbers you see reported will be an undercount, and future outbreaks may not be recognized until they are further along.
2. At least this coronavirus has a higher mortality rate than flu. Exactly how much higher is still in question (because asymptomatic carriers aren't counted right now), but it's something like 5-7x among diagnosed patients. This makes the upper end of the risk spectrum (old people with heart disease taking arthritis medication) really high.
3. I will bet against a widely available, effective vaccine in 18 months, and that's because I work in the pharmaceutical industry so I know how these sorts of corporate promises work. What pharmaceutical executives are likely promising is that there will be an experimental (unapproved) vaccine that gets tested (reasonable - many companies had a head start by working on SARS/MERS vaccines). Many of the vaccines will ultimately fail clinical trials - they'll find that the vaccines aren't widely effective (targeting an easily mutated part of the virus), or that the side effects they cause are too severe relative to the severity of coronavirus.
Note that, with all our experience in developing influenza vaccines, it's still something like 50% effective, and 6-9 months ahead of flu season, pharmaceutical companies need to guess what strains of flu will be relevant in the coming year. So "as good as the flu vaccine" isn't something to hang your hat on.
4. I'm not sure whether "herd immunity" is a thing with coronavirus. Several viruses - rhinovirus, for instance, which causes the common cold - mutate so frequently that people don't stop getting colds. Others - influenza, for instance - switch strains so they can keep infecting people.
The number of new infections will peak at some point, and eventually go down, for sure. It may end up being regional - warm/dry places will probably have it better than cold/wet places. And it's possible at some point it will be gone altogether. But it's also not certain.
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Venture-Agent, Georgia—Atlanta
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due to the corona virus, we decided to shut down 2 of our local games out of the same store. 7 of my regular players (including 3 GMs), indicated that they would not be available during the outbreak. So, I am suspending the games at that store until the outbreak is under control.
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There is a nice article in the Atlantic on Social Distancing.
The folks the author talks to are a bit divided about getting together in small groups for gaming.
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Here in Western Pennsylvania, the majority of our conventions have been canceled. We've got a couple of local conventions that are holding on, or even selling discounted tickets (!), while they wait to see whether the Governor's "request" to hard-cancel all events of 250 people or more is actually mandatory or not. (Seems ill-advised to continue, to me.) I've got a convention next weekend that we're hoping to move online, at least partially, but we don't really know how that's going to go at this point.
For our smaller events, we're canceling those for the time being as well. We have a number of people with compromised immune systems in our community including several of our most reliable GMs and players. Depending on the source, we're being requested to avoid getting together in groups of 25 or more people, or even 10 or more people.
Long-term, we'll see how things go--if we're lucky and this follows the same seasonal patterns as influenza, we might be able to restart our local games later in spring or early in summer. Hopefully that's not too optimistic!
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So in the Omaha area, many of the stores are closing their gaming space, and I keep getting these "wonderful" emails from Gary telling me the sessions are canceled.
In Lincoln, we are a smaller PFS community, only one store that we play at, and only have one scenario per week. The store has no plans to close their gaming space, but the local Venture Agent decided to switch our games to Discord for the time being, the first being this Saturday.
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Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Omaha
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So in the Omaha area, many of the stores are closing their gaming space, and I keep getting these "wonderful" emails from Gary telling me the sessions are canceled.
In Lincoln, we are a smaller PFS community, only one store that we play at, and only have one scenario per week. The store has no plans to close their gaming space, but the local Venture Agent decided to switch our games to Discord for the time being, the first being this Saturday.
Well, didn't want you to make the hour trip for a table that was cancelled!! :)