Boda Borg Boston

[psocoptera]

(Apologies to those who have already seen this elsewhere.)

Locals who have been to Boda Borg Boston - I've never been there. I have watched some videos but am having a hard time picturing the space/how crowded it is/how much your group is around other groups. Could people who have been there make some estimates of how covid-exposury a space it seems to you, compared with other places I might be able to visualize? (Like, a grocery store, an art museum, a skating rink, an indoor playground, a school cafeteria?) Thank you.

(I personally would prefer to stay on Team Not Going Places Like That, but with my kids spending all day around many unmasked people at school, who are all doing whatever-everything they want to do, it's getting harder for me to argue to them that we're accomplishing anything by trying to manage our exposure risk or not contribute to the risk of others. I'm angry and sad about it but what else is new.)

Comments

[jedusor]

with my kids spending all day around many unmasked people at school, who are all doing whatever-everything they want to do, it's getting harder for me to argue to them that we're accomplishing anything by trying to manage our exposure risk or not contribute to the risk of others

I... what?? Having to be around unmasked people who are taking risks is more reason to reduce risk elsewhere, not less! Obviously! Jesus christ

[psocoptera]

Ok, I don't disagree, but I think it's sort of a marginal budgeting problem - if you're spending 0 dollars in category "new appliances", $800 for a new dishwasher is a lot! You have to think about that! If you're spending $500K on a new house and committing to a mortgage payment for the next 30 years, "and by the way we'll probably need to replace the dishwasher" is just a drop in the bucket of this financial choice, even though it's the same $800. If you eat in a cafeteria with 150+ loud people every day, the additional 5 people you silently walked past at the grocery store are still 5 contacts you wouldn't have had otherwise, but when you model your risk budget with something like the microcovid risk calculator, their relative contribution to your total risk load is small, and the question becomes how much are those relatively small increases or decreases worth to you, against the background of what you don't get to choose about (or have already accepted the tradeoff of). Maybe they're still infinitely worthwhile to you! I respect that answer! Maybe enough small choices move the total enough to feel worthwhile in aggregate! But I think it becomes reasonable to start to think of it as a modeling problem, to look for tradeoffs where a little bit of extra risk produces a lot of extra something else you want, once your initial "well I don't want to be over this threshold at all" plan has failed.

[psocoptera]

I also still fly on airplanes sometimes though despite my belief that climate collapse will kill many more people than covid, so, I completely accept that my opinions about all of this stuff are less principled than those of the truly principled. :/

[randysmith]

So motyl is probably a better source, since she's been there in post-Covid times and I've only been there pre-Covid. Having said that ...

How comfortable I would feel would be heavily dependent on how many groups were there at once, oh, and whether they mandate maskes. Only one group is within any particular set of rooms at once, and if they've done a reasonable job of ventilation (?), I wouldn't be too worried about Covid contamination inside the rooms. But the halls can be fairly crowded, or at least have been pre-Covid if you didn't go on a weekday. I'd suggest calling and asking them how many groups they limit the building to at a time, and what their average actually is for different days. If that number of groups is noticeably under their number of rooms and they make positive noises about ventilation, I'd consider it a reasonable (*) risk. IF that group is noticeably *over* their number of rooms, I'd assume there's going to be a fair amount of hanging out near each other waiting for rooms.

(*) Wow the definition of that word is going to be person-specific though. If more words from me would help you translate from Randy-vocab to psocoptera-vocab, feel free to poke me for them.

[randysmith]

Sorry, re-read your question, a few more words: There is a cafeteria, but staying out of it is easy, and it's less of a problem than the rest of the building because the ceilings are high and there's a lot of room. As noted, each room will have only one group in it. The problem will be the hallways, where many groups may exist, and pass each other, and hang out near each other waiting for rooms to open. The hallways aren't particularly narrow, but neither are they particularly wide either.

[psocoptera]

This is very useful, thank you! Their website says that masks are optional as of Feb 4th, unfortunately. They claimed on twitter in Oct 2020 that there is "ventilation to every room" and "multiple" HEPA filters. I like your idea about asking about capacity, if they're willing to answer, although since the official state policy seems to be that there's no reason! to take any precautions any more! I'm not real optimistic they'd be caring about that any more. :(