Garrett LeSage
#FOSDEM is basically admitting they're a super spreader event.
There are many science-based things conferences can do. The Public Health Pledge (@phpledge) has badging principles with suggestions on how to help prevent people getting sick (at different levels, in various ways): https://phpledge.com/badging — but FOSDEM isn't doing these things. They could.
(Many of us attending in-person got FOSDEM flu in years past. But now COVID is in the mix)
Hoping that everyone stays well despite this. 🍀
Garrett LeSage
@madewulf @erictopol It's being downplayed in news and by politicians, of course. We're all being gaslit.
It's still a considerable risk, especially when people from all over the world congregate in a packed building. (It's quite a different profile from people in your neighborhood all shopping together.)
Garrett LeSage
@madewulf Recent research from @erictopol @ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00846-2:
"At least 65 million individuals around the world have long COVID, based on a conservative estimated incidence of 10% of infected people and more than 651 million documented COVID-19 cases worldwide; the number is likely much higher due to many undocumented cases. The incidence is estimated at 10–30% of non-hospitalized cases, 50–70% of hospitalized cases, and 10–12% of vaccinated cases"
Martin De Wulf
@garrett my point is that on the contrary, covid is NOT a huge risk anymore, which makes understandable the FOSDEM's stance 🤷♂️.
Martin De Wulf
@garrett Opening your first paper, it mentions this: "Prospective observational cohort of hospitalized and high-risk outpatients"
So, it's 30% of long covid for really impacted people, not all people having had a positive test.
Actually, these days, the numbers of hospitalisations and acute cases is very low, and so, the risk is way lower than what your toots would let someone think, IMO.
Garrett LeSage
@madewulf OK, that's different from what I saw in other papers. I tried to quickly find the ones I saw during a quick & late lunch on my phone. 🤷
But anyway my point was not to be "alarmist", but to be concerned that COVID is still a huge risk & the conference is doing almost nothing about it, when they could be doing so much more. I'm concerned about people's health. I'm secondarily also wondering how it will further impact FOSS. (The huge rounds of layoffs in tech will also impact FOSS too.)
Martin De Wulf
@garrett I showed your toot to my partner who is an infectious disease specialist, very up to date with the literature, and she thinks that it's way too alarmist, for information for you and people who read you.
That 30% number in particular seems unreasonable.
Garrett LeSage
@madewulf It's consistently around 30% for some definition of "Long COVID"; usually defined as symptoms for 3 - 6 months or longer.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-022-07523-3
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35121209/
https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/healthplus-long-covid-report.pdf
(etc.)
For organ damage, ME/CFS, MCAS, and other more permanent results of COVID infections, studies estimate severe Long COVID as around 1/3 of that 30% (10% overall infections).
Garrett LeSage
Can we talk about the fact that according to *several* medical studies 30% of all #COVID infections that people survive turn into a form of #LongCOVID? And the more you're exposed, the higher the risk. But anyone can get any range of issues during any infection.
How will this impact #FreeSoftware / #OpenSource when a lot of people attend events like #FOSDEM that don't really do any mitigations?
(Many high-profile projects and developers are represented at FOSDEM.)
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