Safer Events Workshop

The Boston Anarchist Book Fair had a free, virtual workshop yesterday about holding COVID Safe(r) events, led by Fan Club. (Aside: I love their use of Neocities for the site)

It was a great workshop covering a lot of bases: ventilation; air purifiers, including the homemade Corsi-Rosenthal box; the Swiss cheese model of layered mitigations; Far UVC; and different types of masks. As a lover of live music, I appreciated that their background was in promoting punk and hardcore shows around Boston.

I learned of the precautionary principle:

“When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof.”

I had an idea of this general concept, though not necessarily by that name or stated so succinctly. Similarly, this quote resonated with me:

“People involved with organizing or hosting an event have more power to initiate and normalize good infection control practices.”

Check out the Fan Club zine linked in the sidebar of their site as well as their “we have the tools” site, which has a lot of resources.