While one may not think of science fiction fans as an especially stodgy, risk-averse cohort, SF conventions tend to conflate Covid-19 with bubonic plague. This year’s World Science Fiction Convention (Chicon 8), held in Chicago from September 1st through 5th, required all attendees to present proof of full vaccination and to wear masks “in all convention spaces, during move-in, the convention, and move-out, except when actively eating or drinking in designated areas”. I’m told that compliance with the masking policy was extremely high. Certainly, I saw plenty of masked convention goers from my vantage point on the outskirts of the event.
Did these precautions achieve their objective? The current rate of new Covid cases in Illinois is 164 per week per 100,000 inhabitants. Chicon has been sending its members (of whom I am one, though I never picked up my badge or entered any “convention spaces”) regular e-mails reporting the number of Covid cases among those in attendance. Today’s update says that there have been 42 confirmed cases among the 3,574 attending members.
The infection rate thus was just under 1.18 percent, 1,175 per 100,000. If it had matched the Illinois average, there would have been (taking into account the fact that Chicon lasted five days rather than a full week) about four cases rather than 42.
No matter what adjustments one makes for the differences between Illinois as a whole and the corner of it that Chicon occupied for a few days, it’s absurd to argue that the vaccination and mask mandates had any beneficial impact. Of course, the convention venue was more crowded than downtown Springfield, and one would expect an airborne virus to spread more widely there than the state average, but can one truly believe that a tenfold increase is evidence that masks were effective?
This is a micro-datum among the many that disprove the superstition that wearing a mask will ward off Covid-19 any better than a pocket full of posies protected against the Black Death.
Comments