Despite my issues with the Matrix Foundation as an organization, their on-site COVID/health guidelines for the conference are looking excellent: https://2024.matrix.org/attend/#health-and-safety
@joepie91 not exactly excellent. C plus. Covid doesn't magically become safe when people are eating and drinking. The indoor space will be full of Covid. It won't be safe.
@Geoffberner Ah, just noticed that a particular bit of information isn't on that page, that was on the page that linked *to* it:
"We’re going to have maximise ventilation, monitor air quality, require masks indoors, and the place will be wheelchair accessible."
(Which I presume is meant specifically to deal with that)
@joepie91 it won't. Masks should be required indoors. If the speaker is far apart from the audience, and the CO2 is like outside air, with filters going, the speaker might not be dangerous. The eating thing is a total denial of reality.
@Geoffberner Genuine question: how would you handle the eating and drinking?
For a brief event, "don't eat or drink" is an entirely reasonable policy (at least for most cases), but this is an entire conference, and so people will need to eat and drink at *some* point.
And during summer, you can often get away with eating outside (although then you still need wind, for safety!) but this is in September, where that is a much more difficult proposition.