On 02/09/2021 08:01, John C Klensin wrote:
--On Wednesday, September 1, 2021 16:56 +0200 JORDI PALET
MARTINEZ <jordi.palet=40consulintel.es@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Michael,
<snip>
Jordi,
I was hoping someone else would respond to the more general part
of this question, but no, so here goes. I don't think any of
what follows is inconsistent with Michael's response to your
note quotes above; just a different perspective on the same
issue.
IANAL, but I have spent some time dealing with insurance
companies, including special risk underwriters, and trying to
understand the statistical risk assessments on which willingness
to insure and rates are ultimately based. While neither RFC 8717
nor 8718 appear to mention insurance among the criteria, I
suppose it is safe to assume that, were an insurer come to the
IETF and say, e.g., "if one of your meetings turns into a
superspreader event, there will be no coverage for either the
LLC or individual IESG or LLC Board members being sued over the
irresponsible decision", there would be no f2f meeting.
Let me try to move this up a level from "one country is better
than another" discussions. It may be worth putting the
questions of what governments do aside and concentrate on the
insurance companies. The latter may be driven by political and
economic considerations (judging from the last 18 months, some
more than others, but maybe not consistently). The insurance
companies are fairly rational and predictable -- staying in
business depends on getting risk assessments and cost of losses
right.
First, they are in the business of assessing risk and writing
policies and charging fees that reflect those risks and allow
them to make sufficient profits to stay in business in the long
run. Unsurprisingly, there is normally a fair amount of
uniformity among insurance companies who offer to cover similar
risks under similar conditions for similar prices. There is
also a matter of assessing whether a particular potential
insurer is solvent enough and honest enough that they will
actually pay if there is a loss, but I hope we can agree that
Jay is almost certainly better at making that assessment than
either of us. One can typically get, for example, much higher
risk situations covered, but, again typically, at very exciting
prices.
Now, there may or may not be specific US rules that said
"insurance companies can't write policies unless the policy
holder agrees to follow CDC guidelines". I suspect that such
laws or regulations do not exist but it really makes no
difference. The insurers are still going to write policies that
require the insured to behave in a way that is consistent with
generally available guidelines in the country(ies) in which the
insured, the insurer, or both operate because, from the
standpoint of protecting themselves from the risk of losses and
potential expensive litigation over them, it just makes
statistical sense. Could one find a special risks insurer who
would write a policy that would protect the IETF LLC and all the
the IETF leadership even if such advice were ignored? Probably,
but I would assume, based on a bit of experience dealing with
special risk underwriters long ago, that Jay and the LLC Board
would take one look at the price quote and decide it was
impossible (I have no idea whether they would decide that the
community needed to be consulted about that decision, but I'd be
surprised if the answer was different either way).
The same issues would apply to US companies including MS unless
the IETF were indemnifying them, and non-US companies
considering having employees attend IETF meetings (you will note
that I did not say "IETF meetings in the US") at least unless
those companies did no business and had no representatives in
the US. The questions for their insurers are about what the
risks are and how they protect themselves.
So, now consider moving the LLC out of the US and into some
other country. I don't even know how to estimate how hard that
would be but assume it would be very difficult. For starters,
remember that the establishment of the LLC involved what
amounted to legal incorporation in the US as an ISOC entity
(however arms-length). ISOC itself is incorporated and
chartered in the US (that is probably not the exact legal
terminology, but I'm confident it is close enough). Could it be
done? Possibly but I'd guess it would be complicated, would
require new legal documentation and agreements, including
agreements from ISOC, and might require going through an
IASA2bis process to make sure document provisions and
terminology were all still aligned. Very expensive, including
in the costs of the IETF not getting technical work done, and I
think we would really have to be convinced that the real,
substantive, benefits --not just escaping some US rules on
principle-- would be considerable and would outweigh any risks
of large contributors going away. Remember, for example, that
contributions to organizations considered non-profits in the US
generally have tax benefits to US-based companies while
donations to foreign entities generally do not (there are
important exceptions, but they might re-entangle one with US
regulations and risks).
I think a realistic guess is "not going to happen". But suppose
it did. Then we would find out that every country has its own
rules or lack thereof and, even if we just look at the last
year, those rules change over time ...maybe in ways that can be
predicted and maybe not. From what I read in the news, the EU
is making different recommendations now than they made six
months ago. So is WHO. And individual countries are adapting
their rules in different ways. Lockdowns and rules about
international travel (who gets to come in and or leave and under
what restrictions) come and go. Could we see some national
rules and guidelines about how many doses (or even what
vaccines) count, change over the next year? Noting that
different countries have different vaccines available and may
not recognize some that they do not use as valid, we are partway
there already. I hope things won't get worse and more
complicated, but I would not want to bet against it.
Well, yes, much of that is happening already as far as this layman can tell.
The UK has a Foreign Office which advises whether or not it is safe to
travel to a country; not safe means no insurance. The UK has a
government which has the power to declare a country safe or not in terms
of the virus, such as quarantine on return. This summer we had the
government saying safe and the Foreign Office saying not safe so no
insurance so little or no travel (a bit like the CDC ony different).
At a time when both said safe, and people went, the government said not
safe at about three days notice - days! - leading to a scramble for
expensive flights home in order to avoid work destroying quarantine.
This has happened more than once this summer. The criteria for the
government decision are opaque but part of it is a question of which
variant is spreading fastest in the foreign country e.g. delta ok, beta
not, because of the vaccine used in the home country.
The EU has a list of approved vaccines but it does not include all those
approved by the UK and I imagine that world-wide, with Russian and
Chinese vaccines in play, the picture will remain complex.
There is as yet no Europe-wide agreement as to what constitutes evidence
of vaccination on a smart phone. (Some countries cannot handle the UK
apps).
Looking ahead, all vaccines lose their effectiveness in time. Reports
of studies in Israel suggest that these vaccines lose that sooner rather
than later so being at high risk, and being vaccinated early, may turn
out to be a bad idea. There has been much talk of a booster dose in the
autumn but there is no sign of a decision thereon. Originally the idea
of a booster was suggested to provide immunity against new variants that
emerge but perhaps it is the loss of effectiveness against existing
variants that is driving this. (There is a new 'flu' vaccine every year
in the UK).
I read of one immunologist saying that the government timescales are
wrong; pandemics last 10-15 years! That seems plausible with different
countries achieving herd immunity against different variants and the
virus playing ping-pong around the world, mutating along the way. I
think that the WHO is rather optimistic in using the Greek alphabet for
variants - a larger character set, such as a CJK language, would be better.
I can see a US-based IETF happening with mostly US participants, perhaps
the same could apply to a EU (but not Europe) based one. Otherwise, I
do not see us meeting in person for a few years; as a statesman once
said, 'I see the lamps going out all over Europe ...'
Just a layman's view.
Tom Petch
And, even if one wants to ignore governments or brand some as
even less reasonable than others, that brings me back to those
insurance companies. For obvious reasons, they don't like risks
they cannot quantify or constrain and will try to protect
themselves by either inventing restrictive rules of their own or
picking one or more sets of rules to follow. And the worst
nightmare for those wanting f2f meetings in particular locations
is not that they pick one set of onerous national rules but that
they decide to someone combine many sets of national rules
together, making the most restrictive choices where rules
conflict or overlap.
That brings me back to a variation on Brian's comment. COVID-19
is likely to be with us for a long time. Barring some really
major breakthroughs that will stop it (perhaps ones that do not
even require a cure for stupidity), Delta may be succeeded by
even more virulent (perhaps on different dimensions) Epsilon,
Zeta, or Eta. Given that, I think we, sooner or later, either
abandon the idea of f2f meetings entirely rather than going
through the motions of "nope, not the next one either" for each
scheduled meeting. Or we make a possibly-arbitrary decision to
move today meetings with a large fraction of participants online
(whether we call them hybrid or not) and, in all likelihood, a
shifting population of those who attend f2f based on applicable
national company and national recommendations and the ebb and
flow of infections and countermeasures.
best,
john
Tks!
