New Area for COVID-19 Topics - README

[MBAustin]

Please read carefully:

Because of the very high interest and posting activity regarding COVID-19, the site team has established this temporary new forum to contain all threads related to this pandemic situation. Covid threads posted in other forums will be moved here, after Moderator review.

All Community Rules will be strictly enforced in this forum. Posts in violation of the rules may be deleted without notification based on the judgment of the moderators.

There has been a lot of very useful information and perspective shared here on this topic, but unfortunately also a good bit that does not meet our standards. Please respect your fellow members by thinking through this before posting:

- Is it true?
- Is it helpful?
- Is it kind?

All new Covid discussions will be approved only after consensus of the Moderator team, to ensure topics are specific to our community, to drive helpful, thoughtful conversations, eg: Travel updates, treatment news.

Many other discussions on Covid quickly turn contentious, divisive, and argumentative, with little value for the ER.org community. Threads discussing vaccine positions, personal risk tolerance, behavior judgments, etc., go downhill very quickly and have proven non-viable for positive interactions.

Threads about individual Covid experiences of members, family of members, neighbors, relatives, acquaintances of members belong in the "I've got Covid" thread. If you start a new thread to announce you have Covid it will be merged into that thread.

If you create a new Covid thread, please understand it may be some time for the Mod team to issue a decision on approval.

If you have any questions about this, feel free to PM any moderator.

Wishing good health to all,
The Moderator Team

P.S. Now go wash your hands!

P.P.S. Older threads will be routinely closed to avoid re-infection.

P.P.P.S. All new threads in the COVID forum require moderator authorization and will remain offline until approved by a moderator.