MASK POLICY STATEMENT
Key Points
- Wearing masks is optional, but bring a mask with you!
- If another member asks you to mask up, please do so.
- If you’re unable to do so, take a break ’til they’re done.
- If you are ill, please stay home.
- If you have been exposed to Covid-19, please don’t come to the Makerspace for 5 days.
- If you test positive for Covid-19, please do not come to the Makerspace for at least 10 days.
The WHO and CDC both recommend wearing masks to reduce the spread of Covid-19, Flu, RSV, and other respiratory infections.
While Federal, State, County, and Municipal authorities have scaled back on official requirements, the message remains crystal clear: these diseases are still with us, and we can do a lot as individuals to keep them from spreading.
The EMS Board of Directors has worked tirelessly to present simple language, common sense policy statements that conform with the best advice available. We are not medical experts, but we do our best to heed their guidance in issues like this.
As such, the following is our best attempt to synthesize all of the advice we’ve seen, to provide simple, easy to follow guidelines that will hopefully reduce member-to-member friction, while also enabling everyone to be as safe as possible.
Mask Policy – “It’s okay to ask”
We all know there are members of our community who are not ready for full exposure following COVID-19. And many may have respiratory, auto-immune, and other health concerns, and children at home that are too young to be immunized; all factors that can make continuing to wear a mask, or even asking others to wear them, a fact of life.
In order to support all of our members in their use of the space, and to begin to knit our community together again through cooperation and compromise, what we ask is as follows.
- Please bring a covid-suitable mask with you, or keep one in your member-storage at the shop.
- If another member asks you if you’d be willing to put on a mask while they’re present, we ask that you do so.This issue has become highly charged, so please do what you can to make it easy for anyone taking the emotional step of asking.
- If you are unable or unwilling to wear a mask in these cases, we suggest vacating the shop until the asking member is finished.Please do what you can to avoid stressful interactions with one another, we don’t know everyone’s situation, or everyone’s burden.
We’ll do our best to keep a supply of disposable masks available as well.
Quarantining Policy
With the various back-and-forth policy changes over the years of governmental pandemic response, certain basic guidelines emerged. The following is our best attempt to synthesize those guidelines into three simple rules.
1. Stay Home
If you’re sick, stay home.
Whether it’s a cold, the flu, covid, or any other transmissible disease.. if you caught it at work, school, from someone in your family, someone sick on the bus, etc.. do yourself and your community a favor and stay home.
While we know that sick-time, off from work or school feels like time that could be spent tinkering on projects, remember that you have ‘co-workers’ sharing the space at the shop too.
2. Take Five
If you’re exposed to Covid, avoid the Makerspace for 5 days
Someone you work with, or someone you spent time with just tested positive for Covid? Take a few days off and make sure you’re not sick with it yourself!
We know it’s possible to be infected (and even spreading it) without having any symptoms yourself, and what to you might feel like a mild cough and some mild aches and pains, might be deadly for someone else, or someone they know.
Stay home, test for Covid, and avoid the shop for 5 days after your exposure even if you’re testing negative.
3. Take Ten
If you test positive for Covid, avoid the Makerspace for 10 days.
If you’ve definitely got it, the advice we’ve seen over and over is that you should isolate for 10 days, until the contagious period of the infection has passed. If you’re more-or-less back to feeling fine by the end of day 10, come on back!
If you’re immune-compromised and still feeling sick at day 10, or living with someone who is still sick, you may still be able to spread Covid. The advice we’ve seen is to isolate for another 10 days (20 total), but obviously you should be in contact with medical professionals by that point, so heed their advice.
This policy continues to be reviewed by the Board of Directors on a monthly basis.
