I note that the COVID thread was closed. (It was closed a few weeks ago, but I only just noticed it.)
That's fine, I don't think the discussion was relevant to the original post.
But I disagree with the reason, that nothing is to be gained from the discussion. That's not true, and any company that seeks to have some vaccination metric needs to answer what vaccination means.
Let's say someone from China attends PaizoCon. The convention has a vaccination requirement; the attendee has a single dose of the Sinopharma vaccine, which is not authorized in the US. It will fall to Paizo to decide whether that counts as vaccinated.
It's always possible the FDA, CDC, federal government, the state of Washington, or a hotel chain will have a policy that obviates the discussion. But from what I've seen, everyone is dealing with similar uncertainty.
It's not an easy decision, there are good arguments for both decisions, and there are bad arguments for both decisions. But it's a necessary discussion that people need to have, and it would benefit Paizo to have a space where reasonable people who share Paizo's interests can have a productive discussion - even if no consensus is reached, the discussion could be referenced by Paizo management in the future when complex decisions need to be made.
The worst case scenario is that the discussion gets put off and someone makes a unilateral, ill-informed decision at the spur of some future moment - like when the hypothetical attendee shows up at the PaizoCon registration desk and it falls to some random volunteer to make this decision.
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None of this makes any sense.
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None of that hypothetical will be public information anyway so I fail to see the need to have an ongoing thread where people can argue about the merits of the vaccines and sociopolitical impact it is having on the population. If Paizo hosts a PaizoCon they can release their expectations for attendance and if you cannot/will not comply with the expectation, they can provide a form of contact for you to discuss it with someone who can work with you to accommodate an exception. Beyond that, what is there to discuss?
Paizo doesn’t use volunteers at the registration desk so that will not be an issue and if necessary, the procedure can simply be to alert a member of management who has the authority to review that attendee’s situation and either approve their entry or turn them away.
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Uh, I don't know what the situation is down there. But up here in Canada the government decides what vaccines count toward being vaccinated and what restrictions there are on unvaccinated people (the provincial government for some things, the federal government for other things). The provincial government, in turn, relied largely on data from the Federal Government.
Private entities must follow the government regulations. I guess that in theory they could be MORE restrictive but I don't think that is likely to happen for anything in a public place.
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Also of some curiosity is why Sinopharma was used as the example and not say, Sputnik V (Russia), ZyCoV-D (India), or Covishield/Vaxzevria (Britain/Sweden).
I have to agree with TwilightKnight here -- there's no way we could know as attendees which vaccine a given fellow attendee has received, only that there was one that met the specific criteria for entry into the U.S. and for lodging at the hotel.
Nor should we really need or want to know, provided (if 100% vaccination is required which I would hope would be the case) someone doesn't try to 'sneak in' with 'immunization' a la Aaron Rodgers.
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I would not trust a gaming company to make those decisions. Hey, we have seen even most governments struggling with it, as it is not even as simple as just the vaccine efficacy, but also involves virus variants, differential efficacy based on dosing intervals, differential efficacy based on age (partially in combo with dosing intervals), etc.
It is also a topic determined by governments for international travel and (I expect) there will be requirements for large events with regards to testing and/or vaccination status (that is how it works for scientific /medical conferences), so if you just follow that, you comply with relevant law.
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Also of some curiosity is why Sinopharma was used as the example and not say, Sputnik V (Russia), ZyCoV-D (India), or Covishield/Vaxzevria (Britain/Sweden).
No specific reason. The closed thread involved discussion of inactivated virus vaccines.
I know some people who have gone out of their way to take it rather than the mRNA/adenoviral vaccines. So there's at least a few people around.
I would not trust a gaming company to make those decisions.
It would certainly be nice if someone in a better position were to step up.
But, just as with other things that are shockingly left to random people (how many Americans' health care plans are selected by their CFO?), there is likely going to be a vaccuum of responsibility.
It is also a topic determined by governments for international travel and (I expect) there will be requirements for large events with regards to testing and/or vaccination status (that is how it works for scientific /medical conferences), so if you just follow that, you comply with relevant law.
There are parts of the country right now that are struggling as the federal/state governments shrug, local governments pass vague guidance, and company management leaves employees to figure stuff out on their own.
Vaccination requirements and mask requirements vary wildly in practice due to wildly different interpretations.
Around here (SF Bay Area, which I suspect is culturally similar to Seattle), the primary responsibility for deciding vaccine card authenticity is ... Starbucks baristas. And the response has been a decided lack of interest. It doesn't matter what the official policy is (which differs county to county anyway), the unofficial policy is "if you hold up a smartphone with a picture of some scribbling, you count as vaccinated."
this doesn't make sense
As with other large, structural problems, it's complicated.
If you want it to make sense but it still doesn't, I'm offering to participate in a reasonable discussion.
If you don't really care or think Paizo management will have magically changed enough so that the burden of the status quo won't somehow land on the most vulnerable, I disagree.
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Whatever policy IS adopted, however, needs to have some STEEL to it.
My RL workplace has managers with spines of molten lead when it comes to enforcing the Company's mask rules .
Said workplace is also trying to cram as many customers in tight quarters as possible to make as many sales as possible and force workers to work in those same tight quarters when the guidance is still six feet and wear a mask in such situations.
The workplace has already said that workers can't ask customers their vaccination status nor to wear a mask .
We have to vacate the area when an unmasked customer comes in the aisle -- and they're already threatening retribution over workers that do take a personal interest in their own health.
tl;dr: Making a 'good-sounding' but unenforceable policy is in some ways worse than not making any policy at all, because it gives a false assurance to attendees.
This feels like a bridge that doesn't even make sense to look at--let alone cross--at the moment.Exactly. We don't even know what the covid situation or the vaccine situation will be like in 6 months.
While it's true nobody knows what things will be like 6 months from now, I bet PaizoCon will either need a thumbs up or thumbs down 2022Q1, meaning there's 1-3 months to put together the best prediction possible. Certainly, prospective attendees will want clarity before booking plane tickets, so it's not like an interim policy can be rolled out and then changed last minute.
And, if this is the "new normal" (that is, variants generate at approximately the rate new medicines/vaccines are generated), every company is going to have to learn how to plan major events with this level of uncertainty not just for 2022, but for the forseeable future.
It's not ideal, for sure, but I think expecting a better solution at this point is overly optimistic.
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My RL workplace has managers with spines of molten lead
I am using this in the future!
