UUCSR Pandemic Policy, updated December 2022
The Health Advisory Team wants to be sure that the congregation is informed about COVID issues so they can make the best choices for themselves and the entire community. In this spirit, we want to share the following scenario with you: A person who attended the wonderful Thanksgiving gathering did test positive for COVID the following day. All who attended were informed of this fact so they could watch carefully for symptoms. Other congregants have become ill since then. This trend of increased illness is clear in the community as well.
All of us are frustrated at this point in the pandemic. There is not going to be any way to completely avoid risk of COVID, only ways to lessen risk. In our opinion, the following actions lessen the risk for individuals as well as the community as a whole:
1. Vaccination is still the best way of reducing risk of severe illness and death. The current bivalent booster, obtained within 6 months, appears to be valuable. If it has been longer than 6 months since a booster, please get one.
2. Immunity from vaccines is better than from natural infection, but even people who are vaccinated and/or had COVID can get repeat infections and be contagious. This is not surprising with this type of virus.
3. Wearing high quality masks protects the wearer, decreasing risk of infection by about 50%. It also decreases the risk of spreading COVID to surrounding people. Thus if you have symptoms of any sort you should wear a mask, or not come to a public event. Higher quality masks (N95) work better.
4. Indoor gatherings where people are unmasked are more likely to spread COVID.
5. Most cases of COVID will not be serious or fatal, but this can’t be predicted for any individual. Age or underlying medical conditions still increase that risk.
6. If you get symptoms suggestive of COVID, treatment is available if started within the first 5 days of illness. So if you get mild symptoms, test at home, and report to your doctor if positive; repeat testing if negative initially.
7. No one can predict whether or when another variant will arise that changes all current assumptions.
8. At this time, December 2022, Covid, flu and other respiratory viruses are causing a significant surge of hospitalizations. All these will be decreased by wearing a mask.
UUCSR has tried to emphasize safety over convenience with COVID policy because increasing age is still the highest risk factor and we have many older congregants. There are also congregants who will return from UUCSR events to a home with vulnerable people and thus want to be extra cautious. For all these reasons, we appreciate that UUCSR has continued ZOOM services as an option, and continue to ask unvaccinated people to definitely wear a mask, ask anyone with a cough to wear a mask or stay home, and EVEN MORE STRONGLY ENCOURAGE THAT ALL CONGREGANTS WEAR A MASK WHILE INDOORS.
We also have to recognize that there is no set of choices that will bring risk to zero and that some congregants will choose a different approach. For this reason we ask that we show mutual respect for the choices of others, and be willing to try to comply with requests for specific needs for safety.
-HAT (Heath Advisory Team)
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