Windy City Fusion

From March 7 – 13, 2022 we ran a survey soliciting feedback from our community on what the community felt was appropriate covid-19 guidelines moving forward. The State of Illinois and the City of Chicago have lifted their mask and vaccine mandates, giving us our first opportunity to craft our guidelines without any legal restrictions. While organizers Janea and Kent have their own strong beliefs about covid safety and how to keep the community safe at this time, we also know that our values may not be shared by everyone. We felt that now was a great time to get some detailed feedback to help shape our guidelines.

The survey consisted of 10 questions, 8 of which were on a scale of one to five. The last two were open ended questions community members could use to provide more detailed feedback. We had 27 responses. Here’s the decisions coming out of that survey, and the aggregate results from 6 of the survey questions.

Vaccines

The community is overwhelmingly in favor of continuing with a vaccine requirement. This can be seen clearly in the graph below. This was underscored by several responses to our open-ended question about covid guidelines where community members emphasized how important a vaccine requirement is to them. This is backed up by statistics that show that vaccinated and boosted individuals are more likely to have cases of covid-19 that are mild and/or need minimal medical intervention.

Windy City Fusion will therefore continue with our vaccine requirement. We apologize to dancers who feel uncomfortable disclosing their vaccination status, but both the greater community and organizers feel that this is a key factor of covid risk mitigation that allows us to return to social dancing, a high risk activity for the spread of airborne diseases.

Masks

The community is much more split on masks, with slightly more members in favor of masking than not. However, there is some nuance with a majority of dancers saying that they would feel comfortable being unmasked at a vaccinated-only event. You can see the split in the three graphs below:

In addition to this split within the community, we also know that masks have been problematic for dancers who have asthma, and/or may be recovering from a severe case of covid-19, or have other respiratory issues. If you already have issues breathing easily, it is very difficult to participate in physical activities with a mask on, particularly a N95 or KN95 level mask.

As we are keeping our vaccination requirement, we will be gradually loosening our mask requirement. For March, those who have respiratory issues may choose to go without a mask. Everyone else is asked to continue wearing a mask of some sort.

If cases continue to fall, and no other serious variant arises, we will move towards masks recommended but not required for everyone at some point this spring.

As we make this shift, we want to remind dancers that they are welcome to decline dances with anyone they choose. Which means that some masked dancers who may not feel safe dancing with an unmasked dancer may refuse those dances. All we ask is that these interactions remain polite. Everyone’s medical situation is different, and some dancers are living and working with individuals who remain at high risk for severe illness. We are all also going to heal from the trauma of the pandemic at different rates.

Snacks and Hot Beverages

Respondents were heavily in favor of bringing back our hot coffee and tea options, so you can look forward to once again having a caffeine crutch to make it to the end of the night.

Reponses around the snack table were more mixed, but generally in favor. For the next few months, we will experiment with new placements of the snack table in the main ballroom to allow dancers to snack unmasked without being in the middle of the dance floor. We will also have at least one fruit option (almost certainly strawberries) and some individually packaged snacks (such as sandwich crackers, fruit snacks, chips, etc.). We ask that everyone interacting with the snack table either washes their hands before doing so or at the very least uses hand sanitizer.

Conclusion

We want to thank everyone who participated in the survey. It is very helpful to know where everyone’s head is at, and how they are approaching their returns to social dancing. We know that finding reasonable accommodations for everyone is impossible, but we hope we’ve struck as fair a balance as we can between comfort and safety.

As has been true since our return, Windy City Fusion reserves the right to change our guidelines and/or cancel dances at any time. We will continue to monitor case levels, ICU bed availability, and overall stress on our healthcare system so long as such information remains available to us.

We feel it is good practice for all of our dancers to not attend WCF when they are ill and/or inside of a contagion window of any communicable disease. We encourage dancers who have access to covid tests to use them prior to an event, and ask that they not attend if that test comes back positive. We ask that anyone who has a known exposure to covid but does not have access to a test to not attend WCF during the incubation period of up to 14 days. Remember, even if you feel fine, you may have an asymptomatic case that is contagious.

If you have any comments, questions, or concerns about our Covid Guidelines, please reach out to us either via our Facebook, Instagram, or email.