The Tethered Together Covid-19 Vaccination Policy

As we look to the future, we are optimistic that with proper health and safety precautions, this will be our most magical event yet. We have a Covid-19 vaccination requirement for our guests and feel strongly that this is appropriate for a gathering of our size and the only ethical choice we can make. Part of being a community is having standards, and basic respect and care for your fellow con-goers is a standard that is not up for debate for us.

2023 Event Attendees have been emailed an invitation to fill out their Covid-19 vaccination information ahead of the event. The more of us that do this, the easier registration will be for everyone. If you do not see that email, please check your spam folders or, for gmail users, your promotions tab. 

All exceptions to our vaccination policy MUST be documented and MUST be pre-cleared and will not be accepted at the door. This needs to be done on our attendee form or by contacting [email protected] by 2/25/2023. 

If you don’t meet the requirements below and do not have a valid exemption, regardless of your age you are NOT fully vaccinated and up to date and will not be allowed to attend our event for the health and safety of all of us. There are some folks at higher risk of serious illness during this time and we have to choose to protect the health of those folks with every tool we have.

Why are we doing this? Scientific data to date shows clearly that folks have the best outcomes facing current prevailing Covid-19 strain best when up to date on their Covid vaccinations. Immunity wanes over time, and we believe requiring Covid-19 vaccination is one part of gathering responsibly during this time but it is not the only part. 

We require all of our attendees, presenters, staff, vendors and volunteers to be up to date with their Covid-19 vaccinations using United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention definitions and standards. Please see this link for more information on what “fully vaccinated” and “up to date” means to us: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/stay-up-to-date.html.

In short, most of us should have completed our initial vaccination series and received the bivalent booster in addition to one or more other boosters.

If your most recent booster was not the bivalent booster and it was in 2022, you will need to go get the bivalent booster in order to attend the event. 

Anybody who has gotten the bivalent booster is good to go!

Here is the information we are using from the United States Center for Disease Control to determine who is eligible for a booster: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/booster-shot.html

VACCINATION FAQ FOR COMMON SITUATIONS

We would like to remind you that you verified that you would be by our event date before purchasing your ticket. If your circumstances have changed, we are able to defer your admission until 2024. Please contact [email protected] if you would like to do so.

If you are planning to get vaccinated (and we hope you are because our party is great and your health is too):

  1.  A single dose of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine given two weeks before our event’s start date gets you covered for our purposes.
  2. If you have completed your initial series of vaccinations less than two months ago, the booster is NOT required and you are all set.
  3. If you got vaccinated but your initial vaccine series was more than two months ago, you will need a booster. We prefer the bivalent one but the Novavax one or any your doctor would suggest would be sufficient.

Regardless of the date, you are all set to attend our event. Thank you for doing your part to keep yourself and your fellow attendees healthy!

You will need to get the bivalent booster.

  1. In one common scenario, your most recent booster was NOT the bivalent one AND was more than two months ago and you are eligible for the bivalent booster and will need to that or another recent booster to attend.
  2. In another common scenario, it has been two months since your initial vaccination series and you have not received a booster at all yet. You will need a booster to attend, preferably the bivalent one but the Novavax one is also available in some areas.

If you are seeking an exemption, we need one of four things in order to grant that exception:

  1. A medical note from a physician specifically stating that you are allergic to a vaccine component.
  2. Proof of a recently confirmed and documented case of Covid-19 from the last 60 days. Documentation means more proof than saying you had it.
  3. Proof via medical records that you were treated with monoclonal antibodies for Covid-19 infection in the last 90 days.
  4. Proof via medical records that you have been prescribed Paxlovid or another Covid-19 infection treatment in the last 60 days.

Since Covid-19 infection is a persistent concern, we want everyone to feel motivated and empowered to know their Covid-19 status before the event! Knowing your status is sexy, and we strongly suggest that folks take an at-home rapid Covid-19 test prior to arrival at the event at minimum AND every day if they want to really impress us. We will not be providing rapid tests; please bring your own. Rapid tests really are the best ones for this – the current variant of Covid-19 spreads rapidly so the long turnaround times and variable availability for PCR testing isn’t useful to us. Also, with laboratory PCR testing (which is highly sensitive), it is also possible to test positive for up to three months after infection and it’s untenable for us to track every single person’s personal situation there. A rapid positive means you are likely to be contagious right then and there, which is what you need to know to manage your risk and respect the folks around you. 

We are not testing at the door because we just don’t want the hygiene issue created by a room full of folks taking their masks off and putting things up their noses. Nobody wants this. Please use your own room (or car, or crash space, etc.) for this if you choose to (and you should – there’s a sweet prize for you). Snap a picture with your phone of your results and show us at the official Covid-19 testing booth to get a special badge ribbon from us to you. You could be “Covid-Tested, Tethered Approved” and we hope you will be for all of us!

There isn’t anything that we could say today that couldn’t be proven completely wrong tomorrow (a theme of event planning in these times), but what we are trying our best to do is honor the commitment we made when we decided to run this event – we will do everything reasonable, sensible and accessible to us to create a sexy and safer environment for folks to gather.