Hello our marvelous members and vivacious volunteers,
November marked our third month of hosting in-person events, and we couldn’t be more excited to see all of you coming out to play with us!
This was also the month during which we had our first member report a COVID-19 infection after attending one of our events. Our best information at this time indicates that the infection was likely contracted prior to our event. All attendees and volunteers have been notified, and we want to share this here in full transparency. The fact that we’ve gone this long with only one known infection is on one hand an indicator that the precautions we’re taking are effective. On the other hand, this is a reminder that no precautions are perfect, and we should all continue to be cautious.
Communicating symptoms and/or positive test results to people we’re in contact with is an important part of keeping one another safe. We encourage anybody who suspects they might have COVID after having recently attended an event to alert any play partners as soon as possible, to get tested, and to email info@thecspc.org to notify the CSPC Board of any positive tests so that we can help keep other attendees informed. Transparency is important not just for managing risks, but also helps us all practice fully informed consent.
Meeting in person has some risks, as we all know. We’re attempting to manage these risks using a multi-level defense strategy:
We currently limit event sizes to 100 tickets sold, plus up to 20 volunteers. In practice, all of our events so far have had fewer than 100 people total due to no-shows.
We require proof of full vaccination of all attendees and volunteers. Booster doses are not currently required, and we will continue to evaluate this policy and King County requirements around vaccination.
We require attendees and volunteers to keep masked at all times other than when mask removal is needed (for eating, drinking, or using your mouth in a scene).
We provide condoms and other safer sex materials, and encourage their use. These are primarily useful for prevention of unwanted pregnancy and STIs, but they could in some cases reduce risk of COVID transmission (e.g. the possibility of transmission through semen or fecal matter).
We encourage full communication surrounding risks and testing, both before and after scenes.
Some of these methods require work on the part of our members. The payoff from doing this work is helping to protect the health of the community as a whole, so that we are all able to continue to meet and play as safely as possible.
Here is current guidance from the CDC regarding self-isolation periods, which we ask all members to observe strictly if you should have or suspect a COVID infection. We encourage members to use tools like WA Notify, which exchanges codes with other users’ phones anonymously and can provide notifications of possible exposure much faster than we can share them.
We’d also like to mention that if you’re not feeling well as an event approaches, we will gladly help move your tickets to a later event or credit your account. We want to help everybody make choices based on informed consent, to better protect yourself and our shared community.
Stay safe, stay sexy,
--The CSPC Board of Directors