A sucky decision to make:

I’ve been struggling with this for the last week, but a call with my competitor (friend) over at Games of Berkeley finally settled it.  It really bugs the hell out of me, but we have to put doing in person kid events (12 and younger), on hold for a while.  (I mean it really bugs me..it isn’t fair at all. We are still doing the 13+ vax events. )

The big problem is that the kind of events we do are designed to get people face to face for a while.  It is why we are having an extremely strict policy of proof of vaccination to attend the events, and even than, making the events smaller so there is more space between folks.  The numbers are that the breakthrough cases that end up in hospitalization or worse for the vaccinated is less than .004% .  The number of cases for the 12 and younger is way higher, but still small.  The problem is that the Delta variant is both insanely more infectious and delivers way more bad stuff per punch. (Like those scientific terms?)

Not inviting Covid to play.

And then there is the Antibiotic factor.  So remember how your doc says it is super important to take all of your Antibiotics when you have an ear infection or whatever of a thousand things that is good for?  The reason that they say that ain’t for you…at least not today.  It’s because they need to make sure that none of the bad guys are still sticking around, because they reproduce at an enormous rate, and in among those that survive are some that learned to thumb their nose at that antibiotic.  So next time they show up in someone, the meds don’t work anymore.  You don’t wanna give them time and body to reproduce enough to learn.

In this case, the body is the whole country/world. The more people who let covid have a place to grow and transmit, the more chance for mutation occurs, and suddenly something shows up that can get past the vaccination protections.  That is why getting vaccinated if possible isn’t just about the person, but not helping the virus a breeding ground for more, scarier versions.  The delta variant is, unfortunately, a perfect example of that.

Blowed up plan:

I thought that by separating the kids from the adults, and making sure the kids wore masks, that we’d be able to make sure that D20 didn’t do anything to provide a way for the virus to get more hosts to party down and grow in.  But the Delta variant changed all that.  It all but guarantees that if we have a set of unvaccinated kids sitting close enough to play, that it will show up and it will spread.  So we are thrown back, at least for the unvaccinated kids. It is totally unfair and sucks, and is unfair.  I’m gonna cancel and refund all the kid friendly events for now.  But I will do this as what I can do to make up for it.  Any 12 year old or younger who wanted to play in any of the “prerelease” events can buy a kit to take home to play with their buds, and I will add an extra prize pack to the order, as well as a random promo card that they might have won if they were here.

You guys know how I feel about you, and this is making me equally sad and angry to have to do this.  I’ll get you guys back in as soon as we can do so safely…. (grr)