I disagree with your point about participants not being cautious enough about covid. Last I heard (someone correct me if this was later updated), four attendees tested positive during or after the conference, out of about 900 participants. That is an impressively low rate, and indicates that the safety measures worked well! I want to commend the organizers for doing a great job addressing covid issues: they had lots of rapid tests available for us, gave lots of advice about travel safety, and didn’t do anything excessive or unwarranted by the risk level, like cancelling the conference or social-distancing the discussions.
Notice that I did not criticized the organisers, I think encouraging but not imposing masks was a good enough approach. What worried me was the possible consequences of getting covid abroad.
On the other hand, 4 people was around what I expected based on the 14 days incidence.
My intuition is that people behaved that way because they say people in London acting that way. And if not wearing masks at the event was the right behavior, then does that mean that we should not wear them anymore anywhere?
It depends on your preferences of course, but under uncertainty I prefer to stick to masks, especially being so low cost.
I disagree with your point about participants not being cautious enough about covid. Last I heard (someone correct me if this was later updated), four attendees tested positive during or after the conference, out of about 900 participants. That is an impressively low rate, and indicates that the safety measures worked well! I want to commend the organizers for doing a great job addressing covid issues: they had lots of rapid tests available for us, gave lots of advice about travel safety, and didn’t do anything excessive or unwarranted by the risk level, like cancelling the conference or social-distancing the discussions.
Notice that I did not criticized the organisers, I think encouraging but not imposing masks was a good enough approach. What worried me was the possible consequences of getting covid abroad. On the other hand, 4 people was around what I expected based on the 14 days incidence. My intuition is that people behaved that way because they say people in London acting that way. And if not wearing masks at the event was the right behavior, then does that mean that we should not wear them anymore anywhere? It depends on your preferences of course, but under uncertainty I prefer to stick to masks, especially being so low cost.