The Sick and the Restless

I went to SpeedGaming Live 2024 almost two weeks ago. The event itself was four days long, October 3 to October 6, and with the drive there and drive back, I expected to be away for a week. I’ve done this convention before, working it every year since it’s come back from COVID lockdown, so I know what to expect. This time, however, I got a bit of a surprise: con crud. I haven’t, in the past, gotten sick from one of these live events but apparently that was just a roll of the dice and, this time, my dice came up Seven (because I’ve dealt Craps before and I assume I was already on a number on the Pass Line and… meh, not worth explaining).

So yes, that’s part of why this site hasn’t updated for almost half a month: I was laid up with con crud. It was the kind of flu where I could be awake, and sitting on my couch, but my energy reserves were low and, absolutely, I didn’t have the brain capacity to try and write articles for my silly little web blog. I like you guys, but if the brain meats are sickly and can’t get their juices flowing, the articles just won’t happen. It’s a fact of brain chemistry there, the creative mind of he writer needs healthy grey pudding to function.

Regardless, con crud is a tried and true trope of the convention format. People go to a place where they’re packed in around each other, someone comes with a cold or flu or something, and suddenly everyone else has it. It’s a ripe breeding ground for bugs, letting them thrive in a new colony of hosts it wouldn’t have easily had otherwise. When you go to a convention there’s a good chance you will come away with a bug. For people like me, it was only a matter of time before it happened.

With that said, the way to help ensure you don’t catch something would, of course, be to force everyone to mask and protect themselves. During the comedown from COVID, when people were being far more secure about their personal safety, masks were often required at conventions. SGL didn’t even come back until after masking requirements were completely relaxed, and their rule was still “mask if you think you should.” That’s not as effective as not masking at all, but I did see a few people wearing masks this weekend, and they were either the ones that didn’t get sick, or were already sick and trying to prevent everyone else from catching something.

That, though, does point to something everyone should be doing but rarely actually do: avoid events if you have a virus. For a little while there, you were unable to visit places or travel around if you had a positive COVID test within a set number of days. Some tried to get around this, and the system wasn’t perfect, sure, but it led to a lot of people that were sick with COVID not going out and spreading it around, and that added to the level of protection everyone else received in the process.

Now, though, people do seem to feel like they can just go out if they’re sick and not worry about it. You don’t see many people with masks, but you do see plenty of people out and about in the world coughing, sneezing, and wheezing, spreading their ick all over the place. There doesn’t seem to be much concern anymore for getting people sick, with the thought more about, “I want to go do something, so I’m gonna go do it.” Whether someone else gets sick, or might have an issue with this behavior, isn’t a consideration.

In fact, at the convention, there was one person who confirmed they had COVID halfway into the event and still continued to attend, just wearing a mask. To me, as just a person attending, that feels irresponsible. I get that you want to be there, that you have friends you’re seeing and events your attending, and you spent a lot of money for the hotel and the tickets and everything else. I understand the desire. Just being in the presence of others, masked or not, puts them at risk of catching your virus, and you don’t know if everyone is up on their boosters (or even can get boostered) so you don’t know what damage your walking around could do.

If this all feels like a public service announcement for healthy living and masking up, well, it is. No one wants to get sick, and there are things people can do to avoid spreading their sickness around. I know when I’m sick I stay home. I’m lucky to have a job that lets me telework half the time, so I take what telework days I can when I’m sick, keeping up on tasks that need to get done, and I take sick days the rest of the time. But I don’t go out and spread it around my office, and I don’t go into public to do tasks while my virus is rampaging. That’s bad for everyone else around me.

I feel like conventions are already an elevated risk for people. It’s a bunch of people in tight spaces (and even if SGL is a smaller con, there were still plenty of rooms for people to pack into), talking to each other and spreading germs around. And that doesn’t take into account that convention goers are, if we’re being honest, gross. Con funk, that smell con goers have that let you know they’ve only been at the con for a few hours but it’s been days since they bathed, is also a common enough thing, and you know some of those dirty people probably have something they’re carrying as well. Petrie dishes on sneakers, walking around a con, spreading their foul air. We need to shift this whole perspective.

So yes, if you’re sick, do not go to a convention. If you feel a tickle in your throat, stay home. If you have a cough, don’t go into convention rooms. If you’re sneezing and you’re not sure if it’s from allergies, assume it’s not. The best thing you can do when you’re sick is to quarantine yourself away and avoid spreading your foul bug around to everyone else you see. It doesn’t take much to get someone else sick, even if you don’t mean to, and there’s no reason to take the chance and make the convention experience that much worse for everyone else.

Okay, with that out of the way, we’ll have a whole series of these dispatches coming up this week and next, most of them far more lighthearted. These are all the articles I meant to post sooner if someone hadn’t gotten me sick. There was a lot of fun stuff at the con (especially a lot of really great food) and we’re going to experience all of it again real soon…