You Ask, I Answer: In-Person Conferences and the Pandemic?

In today's episode, Stephanie asks, what will in-person events need to think about, implement, and communicate for you to feel comfortable returning to some of your favorite conferences. Disclaimer, I am not a medical professional. I am a marketer. I do follow a lot of the medical journals very carefully, but I am still not a medical professional. So if you want professional advice, please seek someone who has an actual medical degree in virology or epidemiology.

Now, that said, for in-person conferences to be safe, it's an important word. A vaccine needs to be broadly available and attendees screened for it. That is the necessary level of safety period. End of story. If there's no vaccine available, a conference isn't safe.

That's it. From hundreds of medical professionals from papers and research, etc., that COVID-19 isn't air airborne disease. It is an aerosol-based airborne disease. As of the time of this recording, which is July 24th, 2020, there is some consensus that airborne may be the primary method of uh spread, that uh vectors like droplets and fomites may not be as important as the aerosol component. So you're breathing all the time.

You're going to an event where the primary method of communication is talking. Um conference spaces are not particularly well ventilated. Which means that you are being exposed. And there's no responsible way to have an event in that atmosphere. Literally in that atmosphere, in that air, right?

I have on my desk here a CO2 detector that is detecting the amount of CO2 in the air. Fresh air, about 450 parts per million. Indoors, poorly ventilated, it's going to be higher than that. And a meter like this will tell you very quickly how uh dense an airspace is. If it's not being ventilated, it will be above 450.

I am sitting here talking at my desk, and this is not a large room, right? This is a my basement. Um, but there's not a ton of airflow. It's very much like an indoor space. It is an indoor space.

My current uh CO2 from me talking just now is 852 parts per million, right? This is a really good proxy for measuring the level of infectivity of the air. Uh, this is a device was like 40 bucks on Amazon. This is not good, right? This fundamentally means if I was in an office space, this whole space would be unsafe because I'm talking and I'm spraying particles, micro microscopic particles into the air as I speak.

Now, if I'm on stage and I'm yelling and I'm you know talking loudly and there's attendees talking to each other, this meter is gonna go to a thousand or twelve hundred or fifteen hundred, right? CO2 itself is not harmful unless like there's no other oxygen, but it is a proxy for how much I am emitting into the atmosphere, and even with really good masks, you're still getting some spread, right? We know that cloth masks do cut the risk down from you know 80% down to you know 1.5% on a per person basis, right? Now you put 500, 1,000, 1,500, 4,000 people into an airspace, and you're still gonna get spread. There's no way around that.

There's just too many people, particularly when you have morons who can't put a mask on properly and they wear it as a chin strap, right? You know, or they have their nose exposed and they're still breathing out unfiltered air. At an event, you cannot control people's behaviors. You just can't. Now, if you were to have an event where it was just presentations only and people were spaced out and there were no parties, no meals, no anything, no social gatherings, yes, that would be safer, but also you may as well just have a virtual event at that point because you've taken all the things that people like to do at events and remove them for their safety.

So just stay home. There are no measures that an in-person event can take that's going to create an acceptable level of risk in person until a vaccine is available. More important, no insurance company that's sane is going to insurance an event without a vaccine, right? And no conference should ever be having any kind of event without insurance because having an event without insurance is crazy, right? You get your butt sued off, you'll lose everything.

When there are legal directives in place that from government officials or whatever that say no large gatherings and you host a large gathering, you can very easily be sued for willful negligence, right? Could you could someone prove that they caught the virus at your event? Maybe, maybe not. Can they prove that you had the event in direct opposition of orders from the government and health professionals? Absolutely.

And you will get sued. And even if you win, you start still getting sued, which is an expensive process. Right now, without a vaccine, having an in-person event is willful negligence. Insurance won't cover that. Right?

Uh, so there's really no easy way for events to to do this. Um when a vaccine is available, the number one thing that events will need to do is is to ask, have you been vaccinated? Um and you'll want to talk with your health professionals and your legal professionals about the legality of denying people entrance who are not vaccinated. Because again, it's creating risk. Now there is some precedent for you know not having to do that.

Obviously, you know, we have flu vaccines and people do and don't get it, and then if a vaccine is available to everyone and it's been in the population, and there is a likely probability that everyone has had the chance to get it, then that relieves your illegal obligation, right? Because like the flu vaccine, if you don't get it and it's broadly available, that's on you, the attendee. It's not on the event. Um, but for example, uh again, this is uh end of July. The United States just ordered a hundred million doses of uh experimental vaccine from Pfizer.

Some virologists believe that you're gonna need the initial and then a booster. So that's really only 50 million treatments available to a country of 330 million. That's still a very high level of risk for everybody involved. Can events mandate masks? Yes, and they should, even with a vaccine available, because again, not everyone's gonna get vaccinated.

Not everyone's going to um you know, have the opportunity to do so. But you can absolutely mandate masks still, and I think that's gonna be part of the culture for a while. And you can still recommend that people avoid close gatherings and things after parties, etc. Should you be having a party as an event? Not without a vaccine.

Nope. So this is what events need to think about. For the foreseeable near-term future, until a vaccine is available, you should be a virtual event. There's no other way to do it. That is safe, that is not willfully negligent, and that it does not pose an unnecessary risk to people and their health and to the people around them.

So that goes back to the previous episode we had on what can eventually what should businesses be doing in place. Maybe we'll tackle that in the next episode. What can events be doing instead? To still offer value. And then frankly, for event companies to still still stay in business.

Having in-person events is not one of them. If you have follow-up questions, leave them in the comments box below. Subscribe to the YouTube channel and the newsletter. I'll talk to you soon. Take care.

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