I’m a quantum retailer. As I’ve explained before, on other blog posts, the way I approach any problem is to first identify the two competing paradigms, and then try and find the consensus position between them. The interplay between stock, organised play and money, say. Or the hotness versus the lukewarm shelves of things nobody might want today, but in a week or a month or a year I will need.
Every decision I make as a business is an assessment of risk. Most of the time I am risking money, or my reputation, or customer goodwill. And I use the data to assess what the risk is, and whether or not i consider that risk acceptable.
Now, a lot has changed in the last three months. Risk means something different now. But my question remains the same – how can I mitigate my risk? How can I create a safe space in a world of asymptomatic virus carriers?
The first is that I could not reopen. Nobody would blame anyone in the current climate if they chose now to be the point they cashed out. But let’s assume that I’m not going to do that.
The second is that I can continue to do online sales and curbside delivery. But my country is set to resume in store sales from June 15th. I don’t have to do it. Take up is almost certainly going to be minimal.
But only one part of what we do in the games industry is being a store. And everything else we do is about being a community hub, often for folks who need a community hub to keep them sane. People crave normalcy in a crisis. During the Blitz, the Windmill Theatre never closed, despite the bombing. It was a beacon to a tired and frightened populace.
Admittedly a beacon offering full frontal nudity – historians tend to gloss over that part.
The thing is, as a community third space – with thankfully no full frontal nudity – that’s a responsibility I take seriously, but I also have a responsibility to my staff and customers to keep them safe. To keep them healthy.
Virus free.
At some point stores will start reopening for in store play. In the UK we won’t see that until July at the earliest – while I can claim to be a retail store for in store sales, I can’t really then ignore the fact that indoor seated social spaces like restaurants and clubs and bars and cafes and theatres all remain in lockdown. Even if I could mitigate effectively against the viral spread, I have a duty to society not to interpret the rules in a way that undermines them.
Unlike Dominic Cummings, it’s not just about me.
But I still have to plan – that’s my function. And whatever plan I come up with has to be perfect, using the best science, the best data, the best social engineering, the best signage, because the penalty for me fucking this up isn’t just losing money and going out of business.
So let’s look at the data. Let’s look at the science and let’s look at our ability to mitigate risk.
Yesterday the World Health Organisation released the findings of a study into limiting the spread of COVID-19. Unless you are one of the folks who believe that WHO are using 5G so Bill Gates can inject you with nanobots and help the reptoids enslave humanity, then this is information you might want to have to help mitigate your own risks and those of your staff and customers.
First off, social distancing.
The research found that your chance of catching COVD-19 from a contagious person dropped significantly with any form of social distancing. Without any social distancing, the infection rate was 13%.
With 1m social distancing that rate dropped to 2.6%.
With 2m social distancing, that rate halved further, to 1.3%.
Now, most stores probably can’t function as social spaces with 2m social distancing. I worked out that my 128 person capacity downstairs OP space drops to just 16. Since you would need to deep clean it before, possibly during and definitely after, the logistics of staffing something like a 16 person FNM make it practically financially untenable.
Think two staff, six hours, divide by 16. Unless folks are paying a significant entry fee and not getting prizes.
Now, that assumes that somebody in your play community has COVID-19. What are the chances of that? Well, unless your country is South Korea, you probably don’t have a decent track or trace program, or anywhere near enough testing to know for sure what infection rates actually are. Sweden – practicing a full ‘herd immunity’ strategy where restaurants remained open, there was no lockdown period and no social distancing – reports that just 7.3% of the population of Stockholm had COVID-19 antibodies in their system.
So in the most COVID-19 penetrated society on the planet, only 7.3% of people caught it.
1 in 13.
Now, we can reduce our risk factor further. We can use a contactless infra red temperature thermometer on customers who enter our premises. This will detect fever. But remember, COVID-19 is frequently asymptomatic. Many more people could not know they even have it, while infecting other people, than who are actively displaying classic symptoms.
We can insist that customers wear masks. There’s been a lot of conflicting information on masks – I’m sure all of it was well meaning, but it has muddied the waters a bit. This new study reveals that masks can reduce the incidences of infection from 17% (no mask) to 3% (mask). This means that wearing a mask reduces your chances of catching the virus by over 80%. By combining mask with social distancing policy, you are mitigating the risk further.
At Fan Boy Three it’s likely we will also require customers to wear gloves. Cards will have to be sleeved at all times, and your deck wiped down before play starts. There will be no ‘tableside’ judge calls. Since my tables will be located 2m away from each wall – and the players will play end to end along a 6’ trestle – so long as the players move out to the walls and socially distance between rounds it should be possible to pair and seat while maintaining close to 2m between player noses at all times. Remember, back to back or side to side is likely not as dangerous as front facing each other.
My chairs are Postura plus, designed for school use, anti-bacterial surfaces and easy to clean. Wizards of the Coast might hate them, but so do viruses.
Like you, I studied the case in Emerging Infectious Diseases that HVAC can infect people sitting near air con outflow if an infected person is sat near the intake. Since it is impossible to tell an asymptomatic inflected person from a non infected person, that’s a difficult equation to solve. Except by not sitting anyone in either intake or outflow zones.
However, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) did their own study from the Wuhan restaurant data. They found that the restaurant had no outdoor air supply, and the window exhaust fans weren’t functioning. No similar cases have been reported – despite the prevalence of aircon in pharmacies all over the US. Still, they would say that – they are the governing body of the HVAC industry!
Fortunately my ventilation system doesn’t recycle air – it extracts it, and replaces it with clean air from outside. Hopefully this further mitigates risk.
Stores in the UK open for non-curbside on June 15th. Restaurants and pubs are expected to open early July. At that point there will be a certain degree of peer pressure applied to all stores to run in store activities again.
Those of you who spoke to me at GAMA Expo will know that my plan was based around a three month shutdown. Well, three months are already here, and we are heading into month four. Britain is currently posting a higher daily death total than the rest of Europe combined. Half the number of deaths in the US on a fifth of the population. Even thinking about reopening seems premature.
But think I must.
The R rate in the North is twice that in London. People are acting like lockdown never occurred. But I can’t. I am a nerd.
I respect the science.
Should I open at all, before there is a vaccine? I can mitigate my risk down to less than a percentage point. Half my credit card rate. But I would fight to reduce my credit card rate down a TENTH of a percentage, and at the end of the day that’s a thin sliver of money. And this is a thin sliver of death. I can mitigate my store, but I cannot mitigate the public transport somebody might use to get to my store. Mass transit infection rates were high. That 13% for no social distancing. If I create a draw that pulls people in and infects them on the way, what good was not infecting them in store?
Even those who survive can suffer complications for life.
But the people who advocated against lockdown also had a point. Without normality, without community, without social activity we have seen a rapid rise in mental illness. We social stores have a role to play, a need to fulfill. Our communities both NEED us to survive and they need US to SURVIVE.
And we need them.
Other things we’ve done? We have screens. We have masks. We have hand sanitiser stations. We have socially distancing floor markers being printed. Posters encouraging social distancing, and good COVID-19 hygiene. I have perspex virus screens for my counter, anti-bacterial wipes for cards, multi surface anti-bacterial cleaner for constant deep cleaning. My staff with underlying medical conditions – other than myself – are furloughed indefinitely. Is it enough?
Hopefully I will never know.
I am a quantum retailer. And this is a quantum problem. I owe it to my community to minimize the risk to them from all sources. I owe it to my staff to minimize risk to them. I owe it to my business to minimize risk to it.
And that is why I read the science.
The Quantum Retailer 