Longtime attendee with some skepticism and questions

[excelsells]

To preface, prior to 2019 I had attended every AN event since around 2003. I have a long history with the con and I loved to attend each year, and have joined Nominoichi every year since its introduction. But I have a lot of questions about how this event is being handled. Every other major convention's been back in full swing with all restrictions lifted already, but they're still going to demand medical records, masks, and cutting the number of seller tables? Really? Doesn't that just put additional burden onto volunteer staff who already have to stand in the heat for 3+ days checking passes? How would they even be able to verify the proofs? Will staff be required to constantly question or chastise attendees who take masks off? Practically everywhere else that I know of, masks have become entirely optional now. Having to wear one all weekend in mid-July heat will be awful. This is easily one of the sweatiest events around, even when the weather is nice.

The Anime North twitter account is unfortunately Protected, presumably not open to PR interactions or suggestions for guests, and there seems to be no communication going on about how things will be handled at Nominoichi, with only a few months away, so I will speak my thoughts here. Firstly, demanding vaccine records is really unnecessary, since the current strain of Covid-19 is so weak that being vaccinated has no effect on whether you will catch it or not anymore. (Not to even mention the fact Covid already dies quickly in direct sunlight.) This will simply create a lot of friction between staff and congoers and hold up lines, for no real reason since whether you got the vaccine or not, your risk is the same with the current variant.

If you go to a convention, you run the same risk of catching a bug as you would any year prior to all this. The 'con flu', as they call it. The 'danger' of Covid - as something life-threatening to ordinary healthy people - has, to the best of my knowledge, overwhelmingly passed. All that mandatory masks will do is require staff to constantly pester people all weekend about them, and make everyone's faces sweaty and clammy in hot mid-July, knowing they will pull it down anyway to talk, to eat, to breathe, etc. And if you lose track of it, then what? How rigidly will these pointless extra precautions be enforced? To be clear, I'm not at all bothered if people choose to wear masks voluntarily, or always keep their medical receipts in their wallets, but I'd vastly prefer the choice to be left alone about all of it, and I think a $75 ticket should at least entitle me to that.

 

[The Chris McKenna]

The Nominoichi is a part of Anime North and therefore all the rules and regulations that apply to the convention about masks and vaccines will also apply at the Nominoichi.

There will be no special exceptions, nor any additional rules, for the Nominoichi.

This section of the forum is specifically for the discussion about the Nominoichi event only. Discussions about other events, or the convention as a whole, are 'off topic' for this board and so I'm going to lock this thread.

I will also encourage you to make your concerns known through the proper channels.

Thanks for your interest in the Nominoichi.