THE ROPECRAFT CHICAGO COVID-19 VACCINATION POLICY

We have a Covid-19 vaccination requirement for our guests this year and feel strongly that this is appropriate for a gathering of our size and the right choice for what we think our situation will be in May given current public health recommendations. 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. This requirement was disclosed up front before your ticket purchase so the below information should just be a helpful refresher!

We would like all of our attendees, presenters, staff, vendors and volunteers to be up to date with their Covid-19 vaccinations using United States Center for Disease Control definitions and standards. Please see this link for current recommendations: Staying Up to Date with COVID-19 Vaccines | COVID-19 | CDC

UPDATED February 2025:

What we require you to have in order to attend our event is at least one updated Covid-19 vaccine within the last two years before the event. We highly suggest you receive the one prepared for the 2024-2025 season if it is accessible to you and available in your area. We recognize that availability and pricing of the most recent vaccine may be questionable at the time of our event and are adapting to that ahead of time.

If you don’t meet these requirements, you not be allowed to attend our event for the health and safety of all of us. Your ticket will transfer to our next event by default and you can also sell, donate or gift it to another person for this year. There are some folks at higher risk of serious illness or worse during this time and we have to choose to protect the health of those folks with every tool we have as our priority.

CDC Recommendation for Everyone Aged 5 Years and Older

Get 1 updated COVID-19 vaccine

Everyone 5 years and older should get 1 updated Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine prepared for the 2024-2025 fall/winter/spring seasons, regardless of whether they’ve received prior vaccines.

If you are seeking an exemption to our policy:

We need one of four things in order to grant that exemption for you. Please upload documentation onto our Covid-19 form when released. Exemptions are due May 15th but we suggest that you submit paperwork by May 5th in case we need additional information from you. Exemptions will NOT be granted at the door. 

  1. A medical note from a physician specifically stating that you are allergic to a vaccine component and ineligible to receive any of the available updated Covid-19 vaccines.
  2. A medical note from a physician specifically stating that you have had Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome (MIS) within the 90 days before the event OR before that and you have not yet recovered.
  3. A medical note from a physician specifying that you are ineligible to receive the Covid vaccine for other reasons. Please note: just recently having had a Covid infection is not under normal circumstances an acceptable reason for an exception.
  4. Official documentation from a country outside the United States that specifies who is and is not eligible for the updated 2024-2025 vaccine that indicates that you are not eligible to receive it.

A note on recent covid infections:

If you have had Covid-19 recently, the CDC recommends that you do not wait longer than 2 months to get vaccinated but that it is safe to get vaccinated as soon as you are no longer contagious. This includes people who were treated using Paxlovid.

In addition to our vaccination requirement stated above, we also reserve the right to add additional health and safety measures for our event depending on City, State and United States public health recommendations for the time of our event. Folks should be prepared for the possibility of required masking, pre-event Covid testing, health screenings and capacity limitations. Folks should also consider utilizing masking, pre-event Covid testing, health screenings and evaluating their crowd tolerance as part of their own risk profiles generally whether at our event or on an airplane or in a grocery store. Be risk-aware and polite to your fellow con-goers!

Any policy decision we make will exclude some folks

Requiring the Covid-19 vaccine for a large group event follows public health policy recommendations and is current best practice per the best science we have available at the moment. This is what we are planning to do at this time. 

  • Not requiring the Covid-19 vaccine or other mitigation measures would make our convention objectively less safe for all of us and our friends and loved ones that we return to after gathering. This list of folks including immunocompromised folks who do not have access to the protection that the vaccine provides, other high risk folks generally regardless of vaccination status, and children too young to be vaccinated.
  • Only requiring Covid-19 testing before the event would not address the possibility of contracting Covid-19 while traveling to the event and then spreading it at the event, a thing that is much more likely if a person is not vaccinated against Covid-19 and traveling without other mitigation measures like masking. The current variant of Covid-19 circulating is spreading on a timeline where PCR testing isn’t capturing the data folks need and rapid testing is still being evaluated for efficacy.
  • Universal masking at the event would have drawbacks ranging from communication to accessibility to bluntly just the fun of playing and sharing facial expressions of joy with others. We are choosing to require vaccination instead of universal masking at this time. Risk profiles as personal! We support unconditionally anyone who would wish to wear a mask at our event for health or other reasons.

Please remember that your vaccination protects not only you but also those around you. Likewise, please do not forget that lack of vaccination is a risk not only to an unvaccinated person but also a burden on our strained healthcare system and problem for folks needing to utilize hospital services for other reasons.