Key considerations
- Wide protection from a vaccine unlikely before spring 2021
- Gatherings or extended conversations indoors are especially risky, even with masks and distancing
- Many UUFCC members are high risk
- Year-long risk and uncertainty with PSU students returning
- Additional demands on staff and volunteers already strained/limited by pandemic
- Invest mainly in plans and activities that won’t be upended by changing infection risk, and will
- Maintain and build UUFCC community
- Care for others or advance social justice (outside UUFCC)
Especially Relevant Information Resources
- UUA President’s update Covid Guidance for the Delta variant, August 20, 2021. https://www.uua.org/pressroom/press-releases/guidance-delta-variant
- UUA letter with recommendation to plan for online services until May 2021. https://www.uua.org/pressroom/press-releases/message-uua-president-updated-guidance-gathering.
- Webinar – Safely returning to in-person ministry.” Presented by UUFCC’s insurance company, Church Mutual Insurance. See video or slides at https://coronavirus.churchmutual.com/resource/webinar-safely-returning-to-in-person-ministry/.
- “The Risks – Know Them – Avoid Them.” Posted May 2020 by Erin Bromage, immunologist on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them
- Re-opening advice, including to think of COVID19 precautions as “combination therapy.” Article (May 2020) by Atul Gawande, staff writer for The New Yorker, MacArthur Award recipient, and surgeon at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. https://www.newyorker.com/science/medical-dispatch/amid-the-coronavirus-crisis-a-regimen-for-reentry?utm_source=onsite-share&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=the-new-yorker.
- Frequently updated resource for tracking COVID-19 trends in Centre County (and elsewhere). https://covidactnow.org/us/pa/county/centre_county?s=821152.