Coronavirus is coming here to Germany. It seems important to be reasonably cautious, but also, as Canadian Dr Abdu Sharkawy recommends, it’s important not to panic and to go on living our lives. While some large scale events should reasonably be cancelled, categorically cancelling all social events is likely overkill.
As a dance organizer and dancer, I found this article by Dr Helen Han-Ning Hsu on social dance community and coronavirus a useful to read. ‘also, this article by Siouxie Wiles which lays out how to think during different phases of a disease’s movement through a population, this article for a comprehensive primer on the virus, and here is a great set of infographics about the coronavrius in perspective with other viruses and other diseases.
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Given this, I am thinking about when to cancel and what protocol to follow when not cancelling a workshop.
As one reference, in Denmark, there have been 18 documented cases of the coronavirus, and at this stage, health officials there are recommending that events over 1000 people be cancelled, but that people not worry about smaller gatherings.
- For the smaller, local workshops, I will go ahead with them until there is documented, significant local transmission in the area, at which point i would cancel the event. This is in line with health professionals’ recommendations… the balance of precaution, but not panicking. At the moment, I will be teaching in the next month in Aarhus, Wurzburg, and Leipzig, as there is no local transmission in any of the locations, yet. If there is NOT established local transmission, then i would go ahead, but communicate clearly with everyone about self-quarantining protocols. If I am still holding the workshop, my policy that i ask everyone to agree to is the following…
- If you have come in contact with someone who tested positive in the 2 weeks before the workshop, I ask you not to come unless you have been tested for the coronavirus and you are negative. The usual incubation time is 5 days but has been observed up to 14 days. Most transmission has been from people who are symptomatic, but some transmission has occurred when people are asymptomatic and still in the incubation time.
- I similarly ask people who have traveled in the 2 weeks before the workshop from places with widespread local transmission not to come, unless they have been tested and test negative.
- As we dance, to minimize spread from one place to another, please wash your hands before we begin and follow other reasonable protocols. We can pick up viruses (including others like the regular flu virus) from touching things in public spaces and can inadvertently bring them into a dance space. Besides, washing your hands in warm water is a nice pleasant feeling ritual that can be a nice calming moment before we begin to move together. Specifically, please read the following post on minimizing transmission risk while practicing social dance and agree to these measures.
- I offer full refunds for anyone who needs to cancel out of caution rather than keep a deposit, just so there is no penalty for being responsible.
- It might be that circumstances change and the workshop is cancelled on somewhat short notice. If that is the case, I offer a full refund, but can not, of course, reimburse train tickets or flights. I would ask people to be aware of this possibility and know that i will be tracking the local situation and will cancel if i hear that there is significant local transmission happening. And, of course, if i as the teacher have to be quarantined, similarly the workshop would be cancelled and all would get full refunds.
- I ask everyone signing up to agree to this protocol, both so that people coming can feel more comfortable and so that i as organizer have a sense of people’s comfort with this as a reasonable protocol.
- For the Long Jam, I am hitting the “pause” button on producing the event, rather than launching it. I expect that I will cancel/postpone unless there are some positive developments in the next month here in Europe. As this would involve people travelling greater distances in a community with a lot of international travel, it seems like the more prudent path is to wait until after the coronavirus passes.
I am still thinking about it and am keeping track of the developing situation here in Europe. This policy seems in line with recommendations of epidemiology specialists. I’ll post here as things change.
PS. It is very likely that by the end of the flu season this year and the end of the coronavirus wave, more people will have been killed by the common flu. Globally the mortality rate has been about 3.5 %, but there is a lot of variation based on local health practices and health. While precaution is warranted, it is good to keep things in perspective… and perhaps consider getting a vaccine for the flu. It saves lives … maybe not yours, but perhaps others by slowing down the spread of the flu.
And remember, wash your hands often.
We are less likely to spread viruses through social dance and contact-based practice spaces if we wash our hands before and after coming in to dance.
