Forum - View topicNEWS: Anime Central 2022 Reverses Mask Policy, No Longer Requires COVID-19 Vaccination or Negative T
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vampiyan
Posts: 64 |
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Most everywhere dropped the mask mandates back in March or February. Medical experts like the CDC have also said its safe to not wear masks anymore so I suppose people are just going off that. If this convention isn't breaking any mandates in their state or city then I'm not sure how much room there is for legitimate complaints since they're not doing anything wrong. All the businesses in my city dropped the mandate as well earlier in the year. |
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rankothefiremage
Posts: 522 Location: Michigan |
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Just in time for a covid spike
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Anne F
Posts: 128 |
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2 weeks ago they said they weren't changing their policy prior to the convention so people planned around that. Then they spring this upon everyone a few days before the con. That, to me, is the issue. They went back on their word. I'm disappointed, but honestly not surprised. ACen has been going downhill for a while. I've attended the con since 2003, but since covid hit, I really don't have any plans to go back mainly because it's just not that interesting to me and their poor guest list year after year after year (I'm mostly interested in JP guests). I basically went just for the AA and tradition because I had been going for so long, now this gives me another reason to stay away. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11525 |
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Who's ignoring numbers? The data you provided shows that on May 13 (last date with data for both) Quebec had half the case rate that Ontario did (0.010% vs 0.020% of the population). Seems like mask mandates help. No one's ever claimed masks eliminate all transmission. But they would work even better to reduce the spread if people wore effective masks and wore them correctly, i.e., a bandana over just your mouth doesn't cut it. At any rate, ianal, but it doesn't sound legal to me to pull this bait and switch unless they offer refunds, which they say they won't. Especially after they confirmed their policy wouldn't change. That's not just a bad look, it's wrong. |
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BasketBalljones
Posts: 58 |
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It's not like the US is having around 90-100K new cases a day recently
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ElenorCamuel
Posts: 6 |
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Fellow resident of Québec, and this was not my experience. I would say I experienced the inverse situation when I went out yesterday. I think this speaks to the fact that it’s fair to say that people plenty of people are still making their own risk assessments. It seems capricious then to wait to this close to the event to make a change when people can no longer really alter their plans without incurring some sort of financial loss. Definitely has me wary of purchasing tickets for Otakuthon. |
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Aresef
Posts: 914 Location: MD |
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Wearing a mask doesn’t just protect you. It protects others. The only safe way to hold a con during Covid (and we are not post-Covid yet) is with all attendees masked, vaxxed and boosted. I’m staffing Anime Boston. Everybody there has to show proof of vaccination and stay masked during their time at the con. As staff, I have to stay masked even when out and about in the hotel, which may not otherwise require it. I can take it off if I venture into the mall for some Wagamama but that’s it. And they got the venue staff to wear masks too. It’s not that hard. (Though I’m not privy to any discussions between NEAS and Hynes and speak only for myself here.) |
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Megiddo
Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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I'm in Illinois and caught it last week. It's spreading wildly here.
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omoikane
Posts: 494 |
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Just to repeat, the problem with what Acen did is flipping a key policy a few days before the con, and provides no refund for people who no longer can "safely" attend. Even if it's
purely psychological for the sake of the argument, people go to anime cons to have fun, and if this makes having fun hard, that's literally the convention working against its purpose. It doesn't matter at all if you agree or disagree with the policy. Nobody cares. But they can't be making this change on a Monday when the con begins Thursday, and have no recourse for folks affected. The people harmed are folks who can no longer attend Acen and probably can't get any compensation short of manually calling up their hotels and doing a credit card chargeback. Travel insurance won't cover this kind of thing. It's an incredibly scum move by Acen board/chair people. |
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Dynamo-
Posts: 80 |
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I agree the masks don’t just protect you and actually in origin they were so the sick could wear them on not infect others; before Covid almost no one cared. I wasn’t implying otherwise. As for the rest you do you, going to Boston Red Sox games on that other hand has no requirements so it’s a subjective/personal stance. |
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Cutiebunny
Posts: 1767 |
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My same opinion about this convention too and I attend only for Japanese guests. Been attending for years pre-Covid. When the highlight of your con is more the local restaurants and less the actual con, that says things. And when the convention announced that the Japanese guests were going to be virtual only, I figured my attendance was best virtual only too. It's really unfortunate that they're changing their stance this late in the game, particularly if you planned on attending and have compromised immunity. The convention not allowing attendees to obtain a refund or roll their fee over to 2023 leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. |
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FactualSteve
Posts: 4 |
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If those people are actually worried, maybe its a good wake up call. An anime convention of 30k people rubbing shoulders to have "fun" with cool hobby stuff is not covid safe (masks or not). If you actually cared about daily cases the argument should be "shut the convention down" not "reduce the impact of the clearly harmful event" Commit to taking it seriously, or stop ignoring the risk you signed up for. |
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blooperboy
Posts: 136 |
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Hear Hear!! I'm really only 5% annoyed at the fact that they're not enforcing safety precautions and 95% pissed that they're doing this after 1 - Explicitly saying that they wouldn't do this 2 - AND PROMS TOMORROW (I mean, cons this weekend, but the point still stands) There are a multitude of reasons why someone might still not feel safe going to an indoor event right now, and its frankly really shitty that the people who already had a hard time making decisions because of health factors now have that completely torn up in front of their faces. On a side note - Oh man I'm really feeling it for the staffers right now. I've heard from a few people that they're not staffing anymore because of this, and staffing cons tend to already be short staffed. This whole situation is going to mean that low staffing levels become dangerously low staffing levels; leaving those who remain to probably be burning the candle at both ends to try to even pretend that things will go smoothly. |
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Sketchor
Posts: 74 |
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I haven't had cold or a virus or even more than one bad allergy attack in 3 years because I've constantly been wearing a mask. I fully intend to keep wearing one whenever I feel like doing so. I used to get a nasty cold at least a couple times a year because I work with the public 5 days a week. I know that masks can't avoid a virus 100% but I'm pretty confident that I would have gotten COVID some time in the past 3 years if I didn't wear one as often as I did. Now that it's not mandated, I do like being able to choose when to wear it but I'm frankly distressed by how few people choose to even occasionally wear a mask in public. There's no way I'm going to a convention any time soon. I almost always got sick from attending a convention. I rather wish that wearing a mask was considered normal behavior but even after a few years of mandates people still seem to think it's weird to wear one by choice. I fully expected conventions to drop mask mandates eventually and since most business aren't even asking people to keep wearing masks at this point it's reasonable that conventions would follow suit but changing the policy days before the event and doing so after stating they would not change it, should not be tolerated. They made a promise and that promise was related to the health and safety of people going to the event. That should not be considered an okay thing to do. |
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Gem-Bug
Posts: 1282 |
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I agree, it will likely continue to exist alongside other common viruses for a long time.
No, you make personal choices that affect far fewer people than the leader of a Province does. My Premier is an idiot and is dropping the ball on this thing. No one wants mandatory masks and restrictions. You do it because it helps others. People not understanding this stuff at this point blows my mind.
So....your way of fighting this problem is to just resign yourself to "everyone is going to get it anyway", and that it's on each individual to just "git gud" at being healthy and not die? Cool.
I didn't call you anything, but I will continue to call people on acting like this is over, yeah. Sorry not sorry. Bottom line is that cons can do what they want, but this one in particular changing their policies the week of the convention is scumbag behavior. Last edited by Gem-Bug on Tue May 17, 2022 9:53 am; edited 1 time in total |
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