This afternoon I spoke with the owners of the venues that we use for Time 4A Pint GTGs. One venue plans to reopen this week, and has offered to host a group of up to 30 people on Tuesday 28th July.

The room in question has its own entrance from the street, its own bar, and own toilets separate from the rest of the public customers.

Having looked through various risk assessment criteria, if we were to host an event on the 28th, I would:

• Limit attendance to 25
• Provide hand sanitiser on entry and at each of the tables
• Operate a mini track and track policy, where any attendee that is taken ill within 14 days of the event contacts me, and I contact the rest of the attendees
• Need to offer only one ticket option/price of £15

So these are things that I can, and will do if I run an event on the 28th.

To understand if this is something people want, I've created a simple two question survey - Asking you to provide your email, and let me know wether or not you'd like to come along.

If you have a minute to spare, I'd appreciate the feedback.

Cheers

Chris

 

It depends how big the space is and if all attendees can separate from one another sufficiently. Also, if you do anything like this indoors, make sure windows and doors are all open to allow maximum ventilation. Even so, if one attendee has this virus, he or she probably won’t be the only one by the time it ends. I am a Microbiologist, and I am astounded by how transmissible this virus is.

But, if you can do it outside in the beer garden, do that instead. Outside is a whole different animal with this virus than inside...many viruses, actually.

 

Are gatherings like this actually allowed at the moment?

 

Yes. Or I wouldn’t be posing the question.

 

Would love to come, haven't been attending since May 2019...and March 2020 didn't work out as planned. Have fun, stay save, Ill be back later.

 

I’m in two minds about hosting an event this early to be honest.

It can be done to the letter of the guidelines - but what if the guidelines are wrong?

 

As someone that runs hospitality venues this is my advice:

1- Ask for the occupancy of the space and cut it in half
2- Go to the space in person with a measuring tape and calculate 6ft increments. As many people as you can fit 6ft apart should be your limit (wether or not they say 6ft apparat it will ensure enough negative space in the rooms when moving) If the space cannot hold the occupancy you want look for another space or lower the occupancy. You don't? you increase the risk of anyone in attendance considerably
3- Require masks coming in and out. Masks can be removed when stationary (seating is best) and eating or drinking but discourage roaming around without masks
4- Take all attendees temperature prior to entering
5- Send an email blast to your guests with the following questions:
Do you fill Ill?
Have you been in close proximity to anyone diagnosed with or suffering from COVID Like symptoms
Have you been traveling within the last 10 days?
If any of these answers is positive then ask the attendee to not come.

6-Use disposable glassware and tableware that is pre packaged.
7- No buffet or shared table service. If you want to serve food pre-make some food boxes
8- There is a 15 minute rapid result test. I would recommend everyone get's tested the day of the event. This is a LOT to ask, and not all negative testing is reliable. But any positive testing is 99% reliable
9- Have plenty of hand sanitizer available. if it is a watch event, not sure how I would feel about my watches being wiped between handling by people, nor how I would feel passing my watches along so:
10- get disposable rubber gloves fro everyone.
11: Get plastic ziplock bags so people like me can put their watches in the bags so people don't actually handle them. The bags themselves can be wiped or sprayed between people.

Overall I would recommend you don't do this depending on what the situation is where you are, but if you really want to do it the above should help mitigate. Masks alone along with the space can bring risk down to 3% from 17% without them

 

Good advice @Nobel Prize.

The room holds 75 people. I’ve had 60 in there before and it was busy. The venue/law allows for 30, but I’d feel safer at 20/25.


I’m leaning towards this being a no go... but will think more over the weekend about how it might work.

 

Those are great suggestions above.

Also, in addition to taking everyone's temperature when they arrive, some places in my area (like dentist offices) test everyone's blood oxygen level with a Pulse Oximeter (not expensive, about $35 on Amazon). A normal reading will be above 96% or so. You'll need to wipe the meter between tests with an alcohol swab.

As far as testing people's temperature, the non-touching kind that scans the forehead is best.

Another idea, to increase air flow ventilation in the room, maybe put a few electric fans in front of the open windows.

.

 

The Time4APint cluster

 

In the netherlands restaurants, shops, etc, are open for a couple of weeks and we dont see a problematic increase of new infections. And we only wear masks in public transportation. But at this moment we have only app. 2500 people in the netherlands who can infect other people. In other countries that level is higher. My father was a micro biologist as well for 40 years. But it's always difficult these assesments. What is possible and what is not...

Edit:

As long as you can keep a certain distance to eachother, you dont touch eachother, you dont sing, scream, etc, in closed settings, I think everything will be fine. The risk is acceptable IMHO... But I'm in my 40's and healthy. So maybe it's easy to say.

 

Been there, done that

 

The pub holy trinity: burger, chips, Guinness.

 

The pubs in UK were allowed to open on 4th and my local has the beer garden open with a table booking system, hand sanitizer, table waiting etc. I live in a village so population density is hardly the same as London and cases are few and far between in Somerset - we're all miserable sods as well so not much social interaction.

I'm just nudging the high risk age group but, I don't have any specific illnesses that mean I am at higher risk. Because of that, I'm happy to drop in a couple of times per week and see friends and we've done that. Took a couple of adjacent tables this week and there were four couples. We could chat although it got a bit loud as not all of us have the best hearing...

You can't get up and wander about saying hello to people so, it's not the usual environment, much waving to people on other tables but, obviously, not the same. It's how you manage your risk, I suppose and I've read as much as I can be bothered to and decided that the situation is fine for us. I'd be more wary if I had some underlying condition. They closed the village deli this week as it was impractical to open and still use their cafe area. I'd like the pub to be open in the future and want to support them but, I'm not daft enough to put my health at risk for that.

Perhaps, as has been mentioned by @3nicewatches consider doing it outside in a country pub. You might find you can take one end of a beer garden for security. I think if we wait for all to go back to normal, you will be waiting many months or even years so, adjusting what you're doing, Chris, might mean you can still get together.

By the way, on the security issue, being out in the sticks is obviously not like London. Some years ago I was on a course at the British Horological Institute and we would go to the village pub every night - six or eight of us. It was always busy and one of our OF members said he'd like to drop in and say hello so joined the group one evening. He came in and dropped tens of thousands of pounds worth of watches on the table for people to look at and this was in a busy pub. Only John Murphy, the course instructor, and I had any idea of the value and rarity of these watches and he graciously passed them around the table for people to look at and try on. There were no issues as most people couldn't care.

In my local, there are 3 horologists and one used to be on Antiques roadshow. You can turn up with anything from the 1600s to last year and one of us will have an opinion but everyone else has no interest at all.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do and make it very clear to attendees that the rules will be applied to maintain confidence in your planning.

Cheers, Chris

 

The risks involved in hosting this event are far too high for all involved at the present time.

 

Not to worry; I am pretty certain that the bars and pubs in Brazil are still open.