A follow-up on the Philly COVID policy

Fellow rope enthusiasts,

We’d like to share a bit more information about the covid policy for Philly.

First of all, we want to apologize for announcing the policy so late. The lead up to Philly has been more complicated than expected, and we simply overlooked the covid policy in the midst of dealing with other issues. That shouldn’t have happened, and we’re taking steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

We know some of you are disappointed that we’re requiring masks this time around. We share that disappointment, but we think it’s the right policy for this event. Accessibility is a core NARIX value, and we decided masking was appropriate in order to make the Philly event accessible to some of the more medically vulnerable members of our community.

This is a complicated topic, and we don’t rely on a single metric for making these decisions. In consultation with our in-house epidemiologist, we made the decision based on:

• The current state of covid in the US

• The experience of some recent kink events

• Ventilation at the venue

We remain hopeful that we won’t need masks at future NARIX events, and we’ll work to have better systems in place for setting covid policy before our next event.

Thank you for bearing with us as we navigate this complex terrain.

- The NARIX Steering Committee (Havoc, Ivy, Nox, and Tornus)