Rates Still Dropping. Time for a Superspreader Event?

It's Tier Tuesday so time to check the latest stats on Covid-19 spread. This week the numbers take on extra significance as I'm headed to Las Vegas for 2½ days of meetings in rooms with 200 colleagues in a crowded casino-hotel where masks are no longer required and vaccines have never been required. Wow, that has all the hallmarks of a superspreader event. So let's check what the risks are.

The good news is Covid-19 case rates continue their drop from the Omicron/winter holidays surge. The 7-day average new case is down a third from a week ago, 43,250 vs. 64,294 (source: New York Times Coronavirus in the U.S., retrieved 8 Mar 2022). That's a tiny fraction of the rate seen at the peak in mid-January, when some days saw more than 1 million new cases reported.

On a normalized basis the US rate is down to 13 cases per 100,000 population over the past week. That's a level not seen in months. Specifically, not since July, when we were ramping into the Delta surge.

Locally, Santa Clara County, California, has a normalized rate of 11, lower than the national average. And Clark County, Nevada, surrounding Las Vegas, is even lower than that, at 9.8. (I imagine, though, that an area with a huge tourist population has many more cases than reported as many people who are actually sick & spreading disease leave before getting tested.)

So, the good news is that things are better than they have been in 6 months. The not-so-good news? These rates are still 3-4x higher than in June 2021, the time when the president was talking about July 4 being Freedom From Covid Day. Were there business trips in June 2021? Heck, no! Every major employer consider it too dangerous. The small employer I work for did, too.

So, is this a go or a no-go? I weighed the risks of this trip in January. Rates were high at the time, but I figured they'd drop. I knew I could cancel and attend remotely if they didn't. Well, the rates have definitely dropped, but unfortunately so, too, have masking requirements. I've heard from colleagues that Vegas is basically packed now with all the Covid-deniers who refused to go back when the city was requiring masks in casinos. (How is it known they're Covid-deniers? Mostly because they're such staunch deniers that they enjoy telling everyone every few minutes!)

Still, as I noted in January, there's immense pressure to attend in person. Oh, the company allows people to attend remotely, and managers say we won't be judged either way on our decision, but the fact remains that attending remotely vs. attending in person are not at all equal. People who are there will get way more out of it, particularly in the all-important area of relationship building. So I'm packing my masks and taking my chances as I board a flight to Vegas later today.

2 Years, 2 Weeks, and 2 Days

SJC Airport - Tue, 8 Mar 2022, 12:15pm

2 years, 2 weeks, and 2 days. That is the answer to the question I've posed many times in this blog, How long will it be until I have another business trip?

My last trip for business was 20 Feb 2020, returning home from a few days of meetings in Las Vegas. Ironically this trip, 2 years, 2 weeks, and 2 days later, is back to the same place for the same reason. It's a sales kickoff event at the Aria in Las Vegas.

Business travel feels like an old muscle I haven't exercised in a while. Last night I felt a tiny bit stressed about packing... until I started packing then remembered it's a non-issue because I've done it so many times. It's something you never forget once you master it, like riding a bicycle.

The airport was uncrowded today. Well, most of it was uncrowded. There were no lines at security. Most of the gates were empty. I got through the security shuffle that I had plenty of time to go back and look for my hat I lost. It turned out it was all the way out at the baggage check desk. So I got to do the security shuffle twice.

And the mostly empty airport terminal? It was mostly empty because everyone was clustered up at my gate. Most of the gates are empty, yet my flight is going out full. Thankfully my elite status has helped me get a seat that's not too bad of a sardine-can situation.

Well, here I am in seat 11B. The next step is push back, then taxi, then take off. Back to traveling for business!

Keep reading: Vegas, Baby! I Hate Vegas.

Vegas, Baby. I Hate Vegas

I checked in to my hotel in Las Vegas about an hour ago. We're at the Aria again this year; same as 2020. My room is similar in look to the one I had 2 years ago, except this time it has a Strip view:



I don't recall if my room last time had a Strip view. I wasn't in my room and awake enough to really stare out the window. And I'm pretty sure I didn't have any opportunities to look outside during daylight.

I've got a few hours between checking in to the hotel and checking in to our conference and attending the first event this evening. Some people would use this time to begin sampling all that Las Vegas has to offer. I'm using it to relax in my room. That's partly because I need to relax a bit and partly because, well, I'm not interested in most of what Las Vegas has to offer.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not a prude, or anything. I used to play Vegas and Reno many years ago. I enjoyed them years ago, enough that I made several trips a year. But for what I liked about it then, it's gone downhill since. The table games are mostly shit now, with awful rules that house enormous odds.

It used to be that casinos competed for gamblers by offering good odds. Even though almost no gambler would win against the house in the long run, the belief that it was possible, or at least the belief that it was close to a fair game, was what kept people coming. Moreover, the rooms, food, and shows were loss leaders to draw gamblers. That mean great rooms, food, and shows, cheap.

Over the past 20 years the gambler mentality shifted from "I'm going to gamble and I think I can win, so I care about finding a good game" to, "I'm just going to lose, so I might as well find someplace swanky looking to enjoy losing in." Casino-goers as a whole lost even the slightest awareness of good games vs. shit games. And the rooms, food, and shows became ends in and of themselves. Now you can routinely pay hundreds for a room, hundreds per seat for a dinner, and hundreds per seat for a show.

This is the new Vegas?

Deal me out.

UPDATE: While Vegas itself is no fun, Seeing Colleagues in 3D (next blog) sure is!

SKO Day 0: Seeing People in 3D

Day 0 of this sales kickoff (SKO) went pretty easy. I landed in Las Vegas after 2pm, got to my hotel by 3pm, and largely took it easy until just after 6. Then there was a reception at 6:30 on one of the decks outside.

Doing a meet-and-greet with people in person was like exercising and old muscle that hasn't been used much lately. In fact basically not in... 2 years, 2 weeks, and 2 days. In that time a lot of new people have joined my company. And I've seen many of them... but only in 2D. In 3D some of them look different!

For example, my boss is 6'5". He does not look that tall on camera. He positions his camera in his home office in such a way that it makes him look of average height, about 5'11".

Meanwhile one of the VPs in our organization positions his camera in the opposite fashion, making him look an imposing 6'2"... with a haughty and abrasive communication style. He's actually about 5'5". Seeing him in person, in 3D, totally changed my perspective on him. Now I see him as a yappy little dog, a person who projects his insecurity by barking constantly. I noticed a lot of other people recalibrating around him, too. He grabbed a microphone to speak and couldn't even project his voice with the help of a microphone. People ignored him instead of kow-towing to him. I wonder if he'll even last 6 more months now.

Our reception wound down at 9pm. In 24/7 Las Vegas that seems lame but it's actually a good thing. Some people see these SKO events as boondoggles, opportunities to live it up with drinking, gambling, dancing, etc. to all hours of the morning. But the fact, is they're more like timed rallies.

With 12+ hours a day of training and other events that you have to be "on" for, there isn't room for dragging yourself back to the hotel in the not-so-wee hours of the morning and then working through a raging hangover the next day. It's better you get yourself to bed before midnight each night— and not stinking drunk— so you can be ready for a full workday the next morning beginning at 7am.

Next: Mostly Maskless in Vegas