The NFL schd is being released at 8 PM on Thursday. If I were a betting kind of guy I bet we get a go,no go, or  delayed response sometime on Friday.

I'm sure you're asking WTF?! Well if you're gonna reschedule you need to know the Colts away  schd vs available times left at the ICC 

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https://www.coronavirus.in.gov/

As always, an interesting page to dig down into the data. Marion County is experiencing the most cases and deaths, as one would expect from what I have to assume is the most populated/densely populated part of the state, but if you click to see the rates per 10,000 people, suddenly Cass county is a hotbed of cases, and Decatur has nearly twice the fatalities (proportionally) of anywhere else.

As a hunch, I'm guessing there's a retirement community in the latter that has simply been pounded by this thing?

Canada has seen a similar effect, where one province has had most of its deaths in a single retirement community, last I read.

Back to Indiana, the cases and deaths per day numbers seem better than they were, but the latter is revised as information comes in (presumably tests done on those deceased that are added retroactively).

Given that (as far as I'm aware) testing is still struggling to keep up across the US, and the progression of the disease, both are lagging indicators and only provide a partial picture of the situation (but it's the best info we have). So seeing the numbers down for the last few days is nice. Whether or not they stay down in the weeks to come remains to be seen.

Edit: post provided purely to note where others might find up to date information as provided by the state itself.

I know it's a short leash but that's the way it is. Still trying to keep the thread open.
Once again take your computer models from anywhere but Indy somewhere else.

Mike

Just an off chance question, I haven't seen it posted. Is there discussion of moving the dates? location etc? And before it starts, I get the entire logistics's on it. Just a question. 

I have to say I don't really see the point in the epidemiology data; it's good for a scare, but to get from the data we have to any kind of prediction for August you've got to have a model, and as noted, the models we have haven't proven to be all that accurate. Alternately, we could do the dueling organization game, where one side points out all the conventions that have already cancelled, while the other side points out that Carnival Cruises has announced it's starting up cruises again as of August 1 (https://news.yahoo.com/carnival-restart-cruises-florida-texas-140016618.html); ultimately, that's just noise, and not very illustrative of the underlying issues involved.

If I'm in charge of GenCon, what makes my decision for me are the answers to a number of sub-questions:

- Are there policies and/or procedures that would make a large gathering safe enough to run?

For example, how frequently would public spaces need to be disinfected (things like the handrails on escalators and stairways)? Is the ICC providing that service, or would we need to have some of our volunteers do that? It might be possible to reduce the number of tables in some gaming rooms to enforce distancing between tables, but would that reduce the overall capacity for running games so that some events would need to be cancelled? For events that don't allow table distancing (like LARPs), would we put the onus on the event organizer to enforce rules on distancing and protective equipment, or would we just not allow those events this year? How much would eliminating certain events hit the expected attendance?

- Given concerns over the virus and other health issues, are there going to be enough volunteers to run the convention?

Certainly, some volunteers have likely already withdrawn from the convention, even if it does go on as scheduled, due to health concerns. Is the remaining volunteer staff going to be enough to run a convention for the number of badges sold? What if announcing that the convention is actually going to happen causes a sudden surge in badge sales? Attendees would likely cut the con a significant amount of slack this year given the circumstances, but a bad customer experience is still a bad customer experience, and the con wants to limit those as much as possible.

- What do you do about people who refuse to follow the health guidelines?

If you thought enforcing costume 'peacebonding' policies or other safety concerns was challenging, what about this issue, which for some con-goers will be literally life-or-death? If the con says it's going on, and announces health policies that it expects all attendees to abide by, and then a significant number of con-goers simply don't abide, what then? Is the security staff at the ICC going to be sufficient? Will the Indy police have to be called in? If the con needs to contract officers to supplement the security force (because that's how it works when you have a potential issue you know about in advance), how does the con pay for that?

There's way more specific and relevant points to be considered then what the Colts schedule is going to look like or what other events may be happening in and around the Indy area on the weekend of the convention. Having a civil conversation around those topics is likely to be much more helpful and productive than simply gasping about models (and would actually be on-topic for the thread).

The cloth masks that most people wear are more for keeping their own sneeze particles in than for keeping others' out. Which means everyone would have to wear them for maximum effectiveness (I saw someone online call it another form of "herd immunity," and while I don't think that's entirely accurate, I think it works well as an analogy). So I would imagine a strict mask policy would be needed for the convention to be safe - but if it's going to be strict, there have to be consequences for not wearing them. Which means security and/or police presence dedicated to enforcing it in addition to keeping the con safe in the usual ways for everyone. That might be more a case of "one more thing to watch out for" than "this many officers need to be assigned solely to watch for people not wearing masks," but it's something to consider.

I see a lot of talk about the exhibit hall and it's crowdedness, but I am curious about guidelines regarding games both board and RPG. Obviously the events have been delayed, but a big part of my Gencon experience has always been games -- both event ticketed and play testing in exhibit hall.

I am merely just curious as of right now, not criticising nor asking for what Gencon will actually do and if this post is deemed inappropriate by mods, I am sorry.

I guess what I'm wondering about is registering for an event (especially an expensive one) where another person (either another player or a GM) is exhibiting symptoms and has no mask (or cannot wear a mask) or has a mask and is touching their face and game pieces. Play-testing games with game runners also puts a lot of faith in the game-runner. Even wearing a mask, they will be touching pieces that you may also be touching.

Same with video game tournament event. If groups are rotating computers, controllers/consoles and sitting next to each other, will there be an out if someone doesn't appear well? Computer games may have an easy 6 ft range, but shared screen console games on TVs may make the layout a bit different. 

I guess I'm thinking a lot of the regular Gencon events will look a lot different this year or be canceled entirely, if the event does go on.

Sadly my home country has closed borders to non-essential travel until at least August so it is now academic for me whether it goes ahead or not. Many thanks to Mike for quickly processing my system credit refund.

Whether it goes ahead or not I wish everyone involved on both the planning, attending, and vending sides all the best and will be looking to see if I can still support businesses via mail order. 

Sanitizing decks of cards, piles of meeples, chips, tokens, etc., etc., is an absolute nightmare. That doesn't seem likely to happen effectively.

As far as the surface-to-person transmission issue, the answer there is not to touch your face before washing or sanitizing your hands. Wearing a mask helps with that a lot (it's a constant reminder not to touch your face that you can feel), and people can carry hand sanitizer (or the ICC can set up sanitizing stations) to handle the other part of that equation.

Source: I'm an "essential worker" that's dealing with people five days a week in the middle of all this.

But man is that a horrible solution.

I imagine it will be hard to buy hand sanitizer in Indy that weekend. In fact I can't buy it now locally. I haven't seen a bottle in months when looking for them. 

I agree with a lot of the questions raised above and am curious what convention goers are supposed to do if they see people violating policies.  I know many people who have objected to wearing masks (even in stores that have required it), and that seems like it will be a baseline precaution.  Given the diversity in the gaming community, I imagine the guidelines that are to be adopted would be a significant source of potential disagreement for many convention attendees.

Going into a store to buy food and essential supplies is one thing, where leeway on that might be allowed (even though it really SHOULDN'T be, unless the person has a legitimate medical reason for not being able to wear a mask). But a convention you don't strictly need to attend? Nope - you wanna come, you follow the rules that are meant to keep everyone safe.