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Comment by skrause | Hacker News Reader

Even last December there weren't any regulations in Germany that would have prevented the congress.

It was a weird time last December: After the cancellation of the congress was announced, there was a large congress of intensive care workers in Germany where the attendees were going around mostly maskless. I mean, who would be better at estimating the risks?

I also don't understand why the German hacker scene was and still is so much in favor Covid restrictions. There are hackerspaces that still require N95 masks today while in the general population nobody cares anymore. I honestly think that it's mostly virtue signalling, i.e. showing that you're a good member of the scene.

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> I honestly think that it's mostly virtue signalling, i.e. showing that you're a good member of the scene.

Completely agree. At the beginning of the pandemic, people who opposed the restrictions were considered selfish and showing a lack of solidarity, if not harmful. It quickly turned out that right-leaning people were more likely to oppose the restrictions. This turned the mask already into a symbol of virtue signaling which seemed to stuck with a certain part of the population.

It seems that the only people left caring about COVID restrictions are left-leaning academics who, since I rarely encounter them IRL, spend a lot of time online. So exactly what the CCC is.

> Even last December

While I believe the general CCC public to be more careful regarding covid, I'd say they had to make that decision long before december. I don't know how long beforehand though, as many rules ran out around a year ago(? not super sure).

> I honestly think that it's mostly virtue signalling, i.e. showing that you're a good member of the scene.

Out of curiosity, how would you describe the difference between virtue signaling and actually possessing a virtue, e.g., showing that you're a good member vs being a good member of the scene.

For me, virtue signalling always seemed to imply words instead of actions, claiming things instead of doing things. But actually wearing masks and canceling events are actions to me, not just words. (This relies on the assumption that the people organizing the events and spaces, actually care about them, and don't just run them to show how much they care.)

Or it's simply that it wasn't pragmatic for them to take the risk, because it would be PR hit and the winter months are a likely time for new "waves" to hit.

It's a combination of virtue signaling/perceiving the risk to be higher than others perceive it to be (right or wrong; not commenting on the merits), and the long lead times/limited financial reserves the org has in planning events.

The go/no go decision had to be made months before, and there was some risk of covid restrictions being in place in December which would have made the event suck or not happen. Probably harder to cancel a single event in, say, 2019 over that level of risk, but easier to continue not running it in 2020, 2021, and then in 2022, I think. I really hope it happens this year.

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