Toastmasters and Covid

Toastmasters clubs were hit hard by Covid.  Just after a Spring contest in 2020, my home club lost its meeting place.  The response within District 106 of educating clubs about Zoom online meetings was timely.  Eloquent Engineers Toastmasters and many other clubs still meet each week over Zoom. In 2021, we even completed the Speechcraft that we were midway through.  Now in 2022, we have again been granted access to the room where we used to meet.  We had a hybrid meeting last week.  Perhaps this Fall, we will provide an in-person Speechcraft.  

Are other clubs meeting in-person?

Other clubs are also starting to meet in person again.  Uncommon Speakers found a new meeting place last November.  Leadership Summit is meeting in person (hybrid), indoors, for the first time tomorrow.  Mills Early Risers restarted hybrid meetings.

Will PowerTalk meet in person for monthly 6:30 am meetings?  Maybe not.  The club has thrived with Zoom, brought in members from other states,  and who wants to get up that early?  PowerTalk is planning evening meetings that will likely be in person or hybrid.

Some clubs are having outdoor events.    Sunrisers got together in a city park for their annual awards picnic.  (They don't expect to get their room back at the retirement home any time soon, though.)  Mills Early Risers also has a picnic planned.  Leadership Summit met outdoors and pulled off a hybrid meeting last month, not far from the Costco parking lot in St. Louis Park.  PowerTalk has an outdoor event planned led by the club president.

Division D lost several clubs and meetings of the remaining clubs are less frequent.  Zoom fatigue is a real thing.  Many clubs have no in person site to return to.  Clubs are only now starting to be able to get back together in person.   Membership building was challenging in the Zoom-only environment.  

But, what are risks of meeting in-person or hybrid?

Covid risks are still real.  The Johns Hopkins daily report shows more than 100,000 Covid deaths in the United States per year at the current rate.  274*365=100000.  The risk of contracting  systematic or asymptomatic Covid continue to be very high despite this lull in the death rate.  Long covid is also real and not tremendously well understood.  The Twitter feeds of @EricTopol and @Bob_Wachter define risks in scientific ways.

 

To assess Covid risk from your meetings (indoor or outdoor), there is also a website, microcovid.org .  A number of controllable factors impact the risk.  For example, wearing a high quality mask is less risky than wearing a low quality mask.  Meeting outdoors is less risky than meeting indoors.  A well ventilated room is less risky than a crowded closed-in space. I like that this website quantifies risk.

Toastmasters is not dictating a particular response, as far as I can tell.   Individuals and clubs decide on their own what to do.  The benefits of meeting in-person-- better meetings, more new members, more mentorship--  likely outweigh risks, depending on how you look at things.