Vaccination
I am scheduled to receive my second COVID-19 vaccination injection this Wednesday. Two weeks after that, I will be a Fully Vaccinated Person (FVP). As such, I will not be completely immune from COVID-19 (no vaccine is 100% effective), but my chances of infection will be significantly reduced, and the chances that I will contract an infection serious enough to require hospitalization will be reduced to a level of insignificance. I will, thus, have more freedom of movement than I do now. And that will, hopefully, be the case for all of us over time as more and more people become FVPs.
The current vaccination roll-out provides us with some welcome opportunities, which we intend to seize. While USGL has no plans to adopt a requirement that all members be vaccinated to attend OTO events (although it is my hope that you all do so voluntarily), we are currently developing a separate set of Covid-19 prevention standards for events where all attendees are verified FVPs, in conformance with the CDC’s recommendations regarding gatherings of FVPs. These separate standards will, happily, make FVP events much closer to the sorts of events that we all remember. Events where all attendees are not, or cannot be, reliably verified as FVPs will remain subject to the older, more restrictive standards, possibly with some amendments as the situation develops. It will, of course, be up to the local body leadership to choose whether to hold FVP events.
Once a sufficient proportion of the general population has been fully vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, we will completely reevaluate our COVID-19 standards for events. The COVID-19 response team has worked diligently to ensure the USGL requirements are evidence-based and in conformity with the state of the science, and will continue to do so.
