Contra Dance Contact Tracing

August 26th, 2022
contra, covid-19
Many contra dances require everyone to provide their emails for contact tracing. The idea is, if anyone later tests positive for covid everyone can be notified after. While I think this is good to offer, I don't think it should be mandatory.

People have a wide range of ways they're handling covid at this point. For some, a dance will be a large portion of their weekly covid exposure, even with everyone wearing high-filtration masks. After a notification they may want to avoid visiting vulnerable relatives, get tested, or increase masking. But other dancers are regularly eating inside restaurants, participating in large meetings, having crowded indoor singing parties, where learning that one of a hundred people they shared a room with may have been infectious isn't something they're going to change behavior over.

I do think dances should continue posting publicly about positive tests and making it easy to sign up to be notified, but I don't think they should be requiring people to provide their contact information. I'm glad BIDA's made this switch, which I've been pushing for months, and I'd encourage other dances to rethink this requirement as well.

Comment via: facebook, lesswrong, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Americans: call your senators today to stop the Save Our Bacon Act

The Farm Bill currently under consideration by the U.S.

via Thing of Things May 7, 2026

Fiddle Practice

For a while I wasn't learning how to play violin very well because whenever it was time to practice I didn't want to. I didn't really like practicing, because (1) it's boring, (2) I have better things to do, and (3) actually I guess there …

via Anna Wise's Blog Posts May 3, 2026

New Pony

I have a new pony. I got her from the Goodwill. Her name is "Rainbow" and her nickname is "Sparkles". We went the usual way, in the pink stroller. We went downstairs and I played with some of the toys. I found the pony in the toy area. …

via Nora Wise's Blog Posts May 3, 2026

more     (via openring)