Is it safe to go out to play chess tournaments?

What is covid-19 like in your community? That should have some bearing on the question.

Depends on where you are and where the tournament is. In nutshell a bog "NO".

no i almost got kidnapped once

Don’t live your live in fear. Covid is another flu most seem to survive with little impact.

#6 This comment has not aged well.

It killed my mother earlier this year. A couple weeks ago it made my brother-in-law and his son very sick.

My niece, who is an ICU nurse, has been working herself to exhaustion recently, as she was for most of 2020, trying to save the lives of unvaccinated people who also thought it is just a flu. In a recent text she told me: "One day I am comforting them and telling them they will be ok, the next I am wrapping their bodies for the morgue." At the end of her shift she sits in her car in the parking lot of the hospital and just cries. Eventually, she starts the car and goes home to her husband and their son to try to pretend things are ok.

Statistically it is worse than the a fairly bad  flu year.  This is not the Spanish flu, nor ebola most people survive it fine.    

I started playing OTB tourneys in July.  I've been to four of them.  All of them require masks for all players and anyone in the playing room. 

Given that I'm vaccinated (with a booster), and most other people are, and I wear a K-95 mask when I'm playing . . . I have to say that while I'm a bit cautious (and have pre-existing conditions) I feel comfortable enough to keep playing in OTB tourneys.

I started again in around early june. Played in... about ten now? Three of them were pretty big, chicago, North carolina classic, and the last one was my state championship. Just keep the mask on and dont go around touching everything and you'll be fine

In chicago, I played this older guy. He kept his mask a little down below his nose, but it was enough for the arbiter to come over about two or three times. After I lost to him (because I performed 2/7) I left quickly, but apparently he and the td got into some sort of shouting match regarding the mask problem. 

I think in lieu of a major personal experience like that, though, a leftist would generally support stringent reactions to the virus. So for example, leftists would look at a case like your example and think of it as more of a statistic, and probably label it as an anomaly that doesn't affect their overall opinion on the issue, until they personally experience that anomaly, that is, it happens to them.

As for the rightist, what's interesting is that I am not sure even getting COVID-19 would necessarily change their opinion, perhaps because they thought the struggle with it was manageable...

I have recently thought about how, even as the media continues to report many new COVID-19 cases, I don't see much about public opinion on the virus or the proper reaction to it changing. One would think that if there are more cases, some of those cases would involve a leftist getting it, and some would involve a rightist getting it. Presumably a leftist getting COVID-19 would look at that as a further confirmation on their attitude towards the virus (the need for a stringent reaction to it), but one might also assume that a rightist would change their mind after getting the supposedly dangerous virus.

But if public opinion hasn't majorly changed on it (I don't see a lot of data presented, but people still tend to be pretty divided on it and how stringent we should be with it), then that would mean that a lot of rightists got COVID-19 (again, because the spikes in COVID-19 cases would partially include rightists who got COVID-19), yet, didn't change their stance on it, or else, we would expect a steady increase in the amount of people who favor a stringent approach, by many of these rightists going from voting "against" to "for" in online polls and such, after getting COVID-19.

The experience of having the virus doesn't seem to be very moving for them, and perhaps they are not even afraid of the experience of getting it again given how they managed it the first time getting it. Perhaps not that many of them have a story where they got it and ended up spreading it to elderly people such as their grandparents, and then bad things happening to those elderly people -- although of course it's possible that they did spread COVID-19, but they don't believe they did and are mistaken -- maybe they got their grandparents sick, but they thought it wasn't COVID-19 but were mistaken about that.

I am just brainstorming a bit about the possibilities, but it is generally an interesting question that I see little discussion of at all, namely, this: Why is it that, while presumably leftists and rightists have been continuing to get COVID-19, there doesn't seem to be an effect in which rightists are changing their general attitude towards the virus and the proper reaction to it, despite there being an increasing supply of rightists who have personally experienced the virus? It's one thing to look at scientific predictions of how likely you are to get the virus, and what that will be like, but when you actually get it, you don't have to speculate on what it will be like for you, because you can just look at your exposure to the dangers of the virus that were in your direct experience. 

And so, the debate isn't necessarily just about differences about the potential, theoretical risk of the virus, but also about differences in the interpretation of the experience itself, and what that says about the seriousness of the virus or lack thereof. Perhaps we should see more debate between leftists who have gotten the virus and rightists who have gotten the virus and see how they have different takeaways from their experiences of having COVID-19 and why.

As for the general assessment of your risks in going to events during a pandemic, I would say, consider the data, but you also should be diligent in contextualizing that data for your own situation. So for example, if the death rate is 1% of the population or something (I don't remember the current numbers on this as discussion has tended to move elsewhere, for example about the Delta variant), that is obviously an important thing to consider; however, there are many other important things to consider as well. For example, if you are young and healthy, you would be misguided to extrapolate the 1% number onto your particular situation, because your chance of dying from it would be much less than 1% because of your age demographic being on the lower end of the data on deaths. Just looking at numbers can give you a fuzzy, stiff view on the issue, if you are only looking to make arbitrary extrapolations from it that don't put things into context.

Just for information there is a tmt in India and its rated on 9th of November And I am playing if you want you can also play 

India is a very big place with probably a lot of chess tournaments 

Elubas, that was quite a long post, but worth the time to read. I agree with almost all of it. Not only would I like to see an objective comparison between those two groups who get covid, I would also like to see a comparison between those two groups who get the vaccine, and who have had neither. Also, it would be interesting to compare the long term effects of those things on both groups. 

My personal view is eventually those comparisons can be made because from my understanding the vaccines do not prevent infection, but they do help minimize adverse effects from the virus. So eventually everyone will get covid (excepting of course the situations where someone dies of something else first like car accident, heart attack, etc)

If you wanna play outside with people over the board you should take some precautions. First of all get rid of the board and peices, bring a laptop pc ask your friend to do the same. sit on a chair 5 ft apart and open Lichess... have fun.

Yeah Covid is still going on and whenever we go out we should have mask and sanitizer so before going out to play OTB (On the Board chess ) we should take serious  precautions.

Of course its safe.  Do not live in fear.

@IMKeto I agree we should not live in fear but its not safe health is most important thing if you dont have health you dont have anything and its not safe outside corona is still going on