GLTC on COVID Safety, Masks, Vaccinations

+ Summer 2021 Update (7/10/2021) in Comments below!

letter to the Great Lakes Taiko Center (GLTC) community about wearing masks for COVID safety at our outdoor classes and group practices in Southeast Michigan (5/14/2021):

Dear Great Lakes Taiko Center Community,

We wanted to write to you after the most recent news from the CDC that people who are fully vaccinated for COVID do not need to wear masks for most indoor or outdoor activities.

While this is great news for the country, we are going to ask that all participants DO continue to wear masks in our Taiko Center activities. There are three reasons for this:

1. Throughout the pandemic, our top priority is the health and safety of our Taiko Center Community. COVID is a new thing and we are being extra careful to be sure our Taiko Center activities are safe. Wearing a mask does reduce the risk of catching and spreading COVID and so we ask that we still wear a mask at our Taiko Center activities.

2. COVID is still spreading rapidly in Michigan. If you look at national maps you will see that Michigan is listed as a high risk state for COVID. The number of COVID cases is decreasing (since mid April) but the numbers are still very high. For those interested in numbers, in the past week Michigan reported almost 3000 new cases per day. For comparison, during the first wave of COVID in Michigan (Spring 2020) the number of cases peaked about 1000 cases per day. Even though cases are coming down (this is good), we are still about three times higher than the first big wave of COVID in Michigan. This includes the spread of COVID variants which are more likely to cause infections and make people more sick.

3. Only about half of adults in Michigan have gotten the COVID vaccine. This means there are still a lot of people in Michigan who have not gotten the vaccine. Getting the COVID vaccine (either 1 shot or two shot version) is one of the most important things any of us can do right now to help protect themselves and others from COVID. We encourage everyone in our Taiko Center Community to get vaccinated as soon as possible. We do not plan on asking members of our Taiko Community to show proof that they got the vaccine. Instead, we plan to make decisions about Taiko Center activities based upon overall vaccination in the general public in Michigan.

So you might be wondering when will we start taking off our masks for Taiko Center activities. We are looking for two extra things before we take off our masks at the Taiko Center:

1. We are waiting until there is less spread of COVID in Michigan. This risk of COVID in Michigan (including Oakland and Washtenaw County) is still high-very high (3000 cases per day or about 30 cases per 100,000 people). We believe we should wait until this goes down to the low-low moderate range (less than 1000 cases per day or about 10 cases per 100,000). We hope this will happen in the next few weeks.

2. We would also like to wait until 70% of people in Michigan have gotten the COVID vaccine. The number of people getting the vaccine is slowing down so this might take several months or longer.

Ideally we would like to see BOTH of these things happen but we will consider a change if either of these things happen. For example if overall COVID cases in Michigan comes down and stays down for a few weeks we would consider taking off our masks even if overall vaccination rates are still not up to 70%.

Until then we ask that all of us continue to wear a mask for our in-person Taiko Center activities (outdoor classes & group practices).*

Please stay safe and well, and thank you for taking care of yourself and others.

Best,

Larry & Eileen for the Great Lakes Taiko Center (GLTC)