Masks required?

Hi, all. I can’t find any recent posts on this topic, forgive me if I missed a discussion.
We are opening up again as of next week and are trying to decide what to do about masks. We thought we’d greet guests and say “Hi, we are fully vaccinated.” Then they say “We are too!” and we say “If you are comfortable with no masks, we are.” We have a shared space.
But if they say “No vax for us!” we ask them to wear masks and we do too.

We do have “We are vaccinated; vaccinated guests preferred” in our description.

But upon checking Airbnb instructions for hosts it reads:

Airbnb web instructions for hosts:

COVID-19 safety practices (required)

Wear a mask and practice social distancing

All hosts and guests must agree to:

  • Wear a mask or face covering when interacting in person
  • Maintain 6 feet/2 meters of distance from each other at all times

So, are we breaking rules if we don’t require masks and how do you all feel about it?

There are definitely many previous discussions of this topic but they may be buried in not so obvious threads.

https://airhostsforum.com/search?q=masks%20order%3Alatest

I’m currently mostly closed for two reasons. One, I’m very busy with my dog sitting. Two, I’m not comfortable having covid spreaders in my home. Even among friends we are still socializing outdoors as much as possible. I won’t spend extended time indoors with people I don’t know to be vaccinated. I’m asking people visiting my home (like contractors giving estimates) to wear their mask when we are in close quarters indoors. In other words, I’d wear a mask when interacting in person indoors with Airbnb guests but I have no plans to be indoors with Airbnb guests.

I haven’t made up my mind about if I want to host non-vaccinated folks and I can’t require it so I guess I’ll just minimize my hosting until I feel comfortable.

As for Airbnb’s requirements it’s like any of their policies. They will enforce it by having hosts and guests complain if they have an issue with it. I think the risks are low of running afoul of them.

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@Rachael52 It doesn’t sound like you are aware that vaccinated people can still contract and spread the virus. Mask wearing in close quarters would be the prudent thing to do for your own safety and that of your guests, regardless of rules.

As vaccination rates increase and infection rates go down, masking may not be necessary, but with the extremely infectious and severe Delta and who knows what other variants might occur, I’d be sticking to masking in shared spaces for now.

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Thanks for the response. Our town has totally opened up with rates so low and our vaccination rates really high, but you are right that we must be vigilant about the variants.

Well, that’s the thing, though, about an area totally opening up. The local infection rate may be low and vaccination rate high, so your community is now considered safe, but then travelers come in from different areas and can be spreaders. It’s so difficult to deal with.

I was just reading an article yesterday that the majority of new, severe hospital cases are now young, unvaccinated people. The older people who were hardest hit up til now are now mostly vaccinated and take precautions. The young, as always, think they are invulnerable, or their age group hadn’t been called to be vaccinated yet.

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You make good points, Muddy. Thank you.

At this point I believe that whatever you are comfortable with within safety guidelines should be acceptable. Of course, the more frequent you wear a mask around guests the safer you are, but if you are vaccinated and the guests are too, then no worries. If you believe a guest is not being forthcoming with their vaccination then require masks and leave it at that. Just like @muddy said vaccinations don’t mean you are 100% safe so be mindful of close interaction with your guests and set guidelines for the before their arrival.

Regardless of how you decide to handle vaccinated versus unvaccinated, you have to accept that people will lie and fake vaccination records to accommodate their own beliefs about COVID and masks. Most of our guests are honest, but I can’t believe that 100% will be. Make your decision with that in mind. Airbnb can issue guidelines and badges, but they don’t enforce a lot unless a host and guest get into a tiff.

This is exactly what happened here. We “opened up” in late June last year and by the end of August our figures were sky high again.

Lesson learned? Nope. Same shit at Christmas and we ended up in a hard lock down by this February.

Surely lesson… no. Semana Santa (Easter week) we had the same shit all over again and dodged another hard lock down more by luck than anything else I suspect.

I get it, Andalucia is popular, and many Andalucians work throughout the rest of Spain and want to see their families at times of celebration, but every time we open our regional borders our infection rate goes through the roof.

Since we opened our national (and regional) borders on the 7th June, again we have seen our figures increase. Thankfully our vaccination program is going well which has, to a certain extent, kept things manageable.

We still take full precautions when checking in guests, masks, gloves and distance. We still allow 3hrs before even entering and apartment and 24hrs before turning it round.

If I did homeshare hosting, I’d be cautious about any claims made by guests regarding their vaccination status and do everything in my power to keep myself safe first and foremost.

Good luck @Rachael52, I hope all goes well for you.

JF

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I don’t care about the AirBnB rules, we have our local regulation that supercede anything AirBnB says.

We have to wear masks, and keep 1m distance between us and the guest, and between guest groups. I don’t know why I would want to get closer than 1m to a stanger.

Also the guest have to show proof, of vaccination, cured or tested. (And from next week we can test them ourselves)

We try to stick to this, but we are not policing our guests. It the children from 2 different guest groups play to I am not pulling them appart.

Like last year, the virus is gone for the summer, we will see it bouncing up again in september.

Have you seen their definition of “young”, they are calling 45-60 young now? And it is still mostly people with a precondion (BMI >32).

The mainstream media has picked up on this, so you could have seen it anywhere, there are lots of articles highlighting this.

Quite a few refer to this report from a week or so ago:

Fortunately, it doesn’t hit younger folk as hard as the elderly or those with pre existing conditions, but it’s too early to know what the long term effects will be.

You’ve been banging that drum since last year, it’s getting to be tedious now.

JF

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This is false. …

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You’ve been banging that drum since last year, it’s getting to be tedious now.

JF
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Do you actually take time to read the links you post, or are just parroting MSM?!
I made it easy for you, and took a snippet from the actual data in your :

Under|662x162

Obesity is the main precondition. That is why a lot of IC Specialist in Europe have requested to change priority selection from Age to BMI. This has been refused because because it was impossible to organize.

No, its true, we are down to 2 in 100.000 infections in the last 7 days and still dropping, faster then possible when it is only the result of the vaccinations.
It is exactly going like last summer.
The virus will bounce back end of september.

92 out 376 were obese, hardly “mostly”. I even did the arithmetic for you.

Actually it isn’t. In many countries the infection rate is on the increase, often on a regional basis, and has been for some time, despite vaccination campaigns.

Our daily figures have just been released (144 per 100k). After a slight drop in the past couple of days, our rate locally is on the rise again, as it has been since the first week in June.

Gone, eh?

JF

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@Chris No, the age group they were talking about in the article I read were teens and up to 50. Most of the cases are in their 20’s and 30’s. No pre-existing conditions.

And no, it doesn’t go away in summer. If that were the case, countries where the weather is warm pretty much all year wouldn’t have any virus. Ask Brasil, India, Mexico, etc, how that’s going for them.

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I guess “is gone” has a different meaning for you than for everyone else.

The virus didn’t go away last summer in the US. There are multiple reasons why there are fewer cases in summer.

What a load of …

Last summer the number of cases and deaths steadily increased and everyone knows it. What is the point of all these bald faced lies? You simply want to discredit yourself?

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I simply cannot imagine why someone would lie about this. Imagine if the President of the US said “it’s like a cold. It will be gone by April”. It would be like the president saying that the election he lost by over 7 million votes was somehow ‘stolen’. Lying about things is just wrong. And dangerous…

Seriously, only insane people make statements like this and expect to be believed. Does Chris think that nobody would simply look up the FACTS on what he spouts?

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Some people seem to be firmly convinced that whatever BS they happen to want to believe is true.

It’s a strange phenomenon.

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You need to be tougher on misinformation trolls that want to distract and quibble.

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If I thought the owner of the forum supported that, perhaps we (the moderator group) would be.

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