[FOSDEM] FOSDEM 2022

[Jasper Nuyens]

Dear,

I want to provide some suggestions to provide increased safety
barriers to organise FOSDEM in the current pandemic context.
Currently, in the Brussels region, the government asks for this kind
of events a 'covid safe ticket'; implying vaccination, recent PCR test
or covid infection less than 6 months ago. It is likely this
regulation will still be in place by FOSDEM-time.
As we all know, vaccination is no guarantee against getting, spreading
of covid, nor a full protection against hospitalisation or death.
Vaccination helps of course significantly, and it is also possible
that by Februari, covid is eliminated. But that is not very likely,
especially not in all regions where guests are coming from.

Additional safety barriers to prevent mass spreading events could be:
- saliva (spit) tests are 50-70% able to catch vaccinated infected
persons that day, especially if they are in the period during which
they exhale the most virus. These tests cost only 2,7 euro and are
non-intrusive; only a bit of spit is required, and 15 minutes later
the result is known. It does - however - require a lot of volunteers
to aid in taking and processing these tests. Performing 75 tests per
hour per volunteer is possible. Sponsors (such as our company) could
contribute to pay for these tests, and help in organising it (but it
would require a lot of helping hands each morning of the event).
- require (or stimulate wearing of) masks indoors. FFP2/N95 masks or
better protect the wearer against infection, less protective masks can
also decrease the amount of inhaled or exhaled virus particles. Less
viral load leads to less severe disease and less people infected.
- provide HEPA filter systems to clean the air in all indoor areas.
These systems cost about 500 euro per piece, but larger rooms would
require multiple units. Maybe the university already has or plans to
install units like these?
- provide CO2 meters to monitor the indoor air quality. A good one
costs at least 100 euro.
- limit the amount of people per room - this requires more volunteers
to perform crowd control (which is probably a good idea anyway)
- keep doors and windows open

I understand some of these suggestions are hard to implement at the
scale of Fosdem, yet I hope at least some suggestions will make it, if
FOSDEM is organised.

Grtz,
Jasper
--

On Wed, Oct 13, 2021 at 1:52 PM Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 12 Oct 2021 at 23:38, Dominik George <dominik.george at teckids.org> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > thanks for informing us!
>
> [...]
>
> > JM2C – if there is an option to make a vaccinated-only event (as
> > opposed to no in-person event at all), please
> > do. Please don't surrender to people who don't want to get vaccinated,
> > like 37c3 recently did, as rumour has it.
>
> 100% this. More so if I could.
>
>
> --
> Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
> Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lproven at gmail.com
> Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven
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-- 
Jasper Nuyens
Managing Director, Linux Belgium
http://www.linuxbe.com
Phone: +32 (0)2 747 47 01
Fax: +32 (0)2 747 47 10
GSM: +32 (0)478 978967