Berkeley Morris:COVID

We are two years into the worldwide COVID pandemic as of the time of this writing (March 2022). We've spent a significant portion of that time in Zoomington, and while it is a lovely place, it is a silly place, and Morris is serious business. We'd like to get back to practicing the more traditional traditions to the extent that safety will allow. Rather than re-hash safety concerns every week, we have agreed on a set of guidelines to help ease our decision process.

The guidelines

• The top of the 2021 Delta curve in Alameda County is our cutoff for choosing between in-person and remote practice week-to-week.
  • That's 33 cases per 100k.
  • We're looking at all cases, not just vaccinated ones. This allows us to get a better sense of what's happening in general in our community.
  • This is not an automatic decision; this is a conversation starter. If we are over or approaching 33 cases per 100k, we will discuss via email.
• As long as Bay Area counties are in approximate agreement, we will use the Alameda County seven day average (cases per 100k) to inform our decision, and the state COVID dashboard as our source for this information (see next section). Other dashboards exist. We're using this dashboard because it seems to be the most consistent over time, both in terms of the way it presents information and in terms of when it updates.
• Since the seven-day average lags a wee bit, we should base our decisions on that AND the direction of the overall trend.
• If you are attending practice in person, you are expected to have received a negative result on a self-administered rapid test up to 24 hours before practice. If you don't have any tests, email the team! We'll make sure you get one.

How to read the state COVID dashboard

This is not about how to interpret results. This is about how to see the number we're using to make decisions.

1. Visit the state dashboard for Alameda County.
2. Scroll down to the "Cases and deaths" heading. You'll see two line graphs that look like this:
   
3. The graph on the left shows cases. To see the case count for a given day, hover over it with your mouse pointer. The top of the Delta surge occurred on August 14, 2021 (33.7 cases). This is where we got our cutoff.
   
4. The current seven day average, i.e., the number we're paying attention to every week, is right above that graph.