I work on a Cargo Transportation Airline. We never had a shelter at home phase. We started working 6-7 days a week, several hours longer each day. It was also highly unrealistic to expect social distances within a given work group. The airplanes didn't get bigger magically while the containers got heavier unmagically as people shipped stuff in unprecedented numbers. That required going from 2-3 people pulling the containers over a ball mat to 3-4 people. These containers are only 88 inches wide or 96 inches wide so still shoulder to shoulder. Crew transports still were packed as we couldn't feasibly make 3-4 trips between each plane carrying 3 people on a transport designed to move ten people, shoulder to shoulder, back to back. 

Every day was Christmas peak volume numbers. People either got over the anxiety or abandoned the job for something else. Or since this all started at the same time they never suffered the anxiety to begin with. 

(None of this is to say there wasn't measures taken to try and prevent a covid outbreak, but you know airplanes, transports, and facilities didn't magically get bigger for people to space themselves out.)

I know I have limited desire to wear a mask, but I'll put up with it one more year.  If we are having this long discussion in 2023 (and nothing major has shifted with this), I know I'll be checking out and finding other entertainment avenues.

Work groups stayed together but separate from other work groups. It wasn't uncommon to come in and hear "team X was out on covid leave for two weeks, figure out how to get by without them". One positive test on a team took out the entire team as a precaution. 

You were limited to the floor you were working on if inside a building aside from bathroom and food runs. (Some of these "floors" are just catwalks.)

Thermal "scanners" set up in the security screening areas to check temperatures. Mostly seemed to be a camera. 

The cafeteria changed from the designed eating area to basically a "walk thru" version of a drive thru. 

The water fountains were turned off and bottle water was staged all over the place. Wasn't cold except in a couple of outdoor fridges. They started about 3 food trucks to alleviate traffic in the cafeteria. 

People went through the transport parking lot with a tank cart spraying something from hoses that was supposed to disinfect the transports but it was just hose work, not being wiped down. 

A good bit of this has stopped. Mostly the food trucks and bottled water at this point. Positive covid test just affects the one person tested not an entire team. 

I just returned to the USA from a week in London during the Platinum Jubilee. Tens of thousands of people lining the streets for parades, concerts, theater, restaurants, crowded subways and two plane flights. No mask mandates anywhere. The only place I could find in London that required a mask was the medical clinic/doctor's office. And yet, despite all that, their civilization has not collapsed. People mask up if they want to. COVID still exists, but it will be around forever. They have done what they thought was necessary and now they are moving on. It seems the US is still in a different mind set, panic and fear.

I just hope they make good on their statement that the official, final, announcement will be made this week. 

I noticed no confrontations nor even any comments last year.  I think the extremes on both sides sat it out last year and those there didn't care either way and were just there to enjoy Gencon.

I've said it earlier, if you aren't accepting of the fact that outside the ICC bubble there will be limited masks and people will be ripping them off a step outside the door, then you should sit it out.
 

There was one incident that circulated to me that a GM took a vote for the table.  Staff jumped on that.  Don't know the resolution but given the EO/GM guide, I can see why.

I can confirm that GM's were indeed unmasking last year. Especially those in the hotel conference rooms.

I can dispute this.

As one of the main people in charge of compliance and having roamed far and wide at the convention last year I can definitively say that compliance was very high. So much so that I probably only had to remind 3 or 4 people to slip their mask back up on their face.

I had zero issues with people objecting to the compliance and no incidents that would be taken further.

Mike

It's funny that GenCon has so many attendees that will min/max a character or play a game to the highest possible percent outcome with delight but when it comes to proper masks and safety basically go "Welp, vaccines and good mask don't 100% protect me so they're useless and shouldn't be worried about."