Improving the Odds

My big activity is Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, and it’s been hit pretty hard by the Covid-19 shutdowns.

There is a great reason for this. If you were to try and find an activity with a greater risk of transmission I don’t think you could find one.

At a typical class, you’d show up, and there’s be quite a bit of hand shaking, hand slapping, and bro-hugs. The change rooms are tiny in size, and packed with people before and after class.

During class, you’d watch a demonstration lesson, and then grab a partner to work on what you’d just seen. You and your partner would be in immediate, direct contact, and working vigorously, and sweating, and puffing.

Then there would be another demo, and more practice. Perhaps you’d have the same partner, but maybe you wouldn’t. This would happen a number of times.

After the instructional segment, it would be time to roll. Here, effort increases significantly, and you change partners every few minutes.

That’s contact with a lot of people, sharing a lot of breath and sweat.

It is easy to imagine a single infected individual managing to infect and entire gym full of people by attending a single class.

That’s why nobody questioned the shutdown, but now it is time to start opening up again.

How can we change things to improve the odds?

The only guarantee would be to attend a class where nobody has Covid. Unfortunately, that is impossible to arrange.

The goal has to be to decrease the risk of contagion to something below 100%; not really very easy with a grappling activity.

The first step needs to be reducing the number of possible transmission points. This means direct contact with the smallest number of participants. This means having only a single partner.

Over a longer period of time than one class, that still means always having the same partner, or having a very small pool of partners.

A good example of being able to keep to a single partner would be if a couple came to train together. They only work together.

This isn’t always an option. If a pair of friends partner up for the long haul, and one can’t attend, then the other would be unable to train.

A more flexible, but slightly more risky venture, is having a little cell of partners. Our school seems to accept 3 persons per cell as a viable option.

This means if you are the only member of your cell present at a given class, you do not train. If two of you are present, you are good to go. If all three are present, you work together taking turns.

Between partners there is really nothing that can be done to protect each other except by minimizing the chance that you will be bringing Covid into your cell or to your partner.

It is pretty much guaranteed that if you work this closely with an infected person you will also get infected.

However, there are a lot of things that can be done to prevent transmission between the cells.

This means maintaining social distance when not actually in the lesson, and not using the change rooms or washroom. It means masks and hand sanitizer.

It also means sterilization of the mat before and after every session.

During actual training the mat must be segmented in a way that physically separates the participants. Partners or cells would be assigned a segment, and be expected to stay there.

They would be required to remain in their area during demonstrations, and at all other times. No wandering closer for a better view.

There would need to be good ventilation, and no hanging about before or after class.

There would need to be limits on exertion, to prevent spreading viral material unnecessarily around the room.

Sessions would need to be short, to decrease exposure time.

All of these measures, other than the permanent partner/cell rules, are aimed at not spreading Covid amongst people who are not in actual physical contact. The permanent partner/cell rules are to limit the number of people who share physical contact.

There should be no free-rolling, as that often ends up being very high exertion, which means more sweat and more airborne transmission. If there were to be free rolling, it should be limited to regular partners/cells only, on their same designated mat space. No rolling around all over using your body to soak up viral material left behind by other class members during the training session.

I can imagine being in a cell where somebody rolls with people chosen willy-nilly, and putting everybody at great risk, and then not bothering to tell their cell about it.

In my own case I’d want cellmates who would honestly inform me if they ever worked with a partner outside of the cell, or if they were at risk of exposure anywhere else. I could then decide if it was acceptable to me, or choose to isolate from them for the required two weeks.

At the nearby North Vancouver school, they are taking it all super-seriously.

They insist on face masks for all attendees though out the entire time they are present. This is not to protect their partners, but to lower the risk for surrounding students.

They also are tying to insist that all partners be members of the same household. This way their Jiu-Jitsu training would not be expanding their current close-contact bubbles at all. I don’t know if they will be able to stick to this.

Anyhow, that’s what is happening around here, in my little Jiu-Jitsu world.

For now.