sorry moved it a lot. still learning talk. created a sub group now for us to work in.

Thanks @Franzi! Seems like the insurance question might be one of the first to answer - i.e. whether our event insurance would cover for a possible event cancellation, and whether we should actually close the insurance contract asap to ensure we're covered like this? @Holger Wessels can you maybe contact the broker about this?

No mention of it from the Amt as of yet, but I will check with them when we talk next!

Sorry to be sorta trolling, but it's too funny not to ;-)

Official statement from Burning Man Corp. about the Covid-19 'Corona' virus.

Tenderloin, SF March 9th 2020 (Global Playawire) -In recent days Burning Man HQ has been bombarded by questions, concerns and wild, unhinged demands concerning this years Burn and Covid19, playa name 'Dusty Corona'.  Frankly we've been appalled by most of your inquiries but nonetheless feel compelled to respond lest even worse rumors and fear mongering narratives get granted default legitimacy by our silence.  

So listen and listen good.

Say 'Yes' to Corona

People actively hosting the Corona virus will be allowed into Burning Man this year so long as they are ticket holders and are not trying to smuggle weapons, fireworks, animals or face masks.  The 12 Principals are quiet clear about this:  RADICAL INCLUSION doesn't just mean inviting your friends or allowing a Bloomberg voter to camp with you - it means actively welcoming carriers of a catastrophic global public health pandemic into the Steambath Project, on your art car, and yes, in your bacon.  

If you can't handle it there is always Coachella.

Safety will remain a distant 3rd.

After a behind closed door vote by the 32nd Council of Burning Man Elders (CBE), the 11th Principal - 'Safety Third' will remain 3rd and not be moved up to 'Safety 2nd' displacing Gorilla tape and zip ties.  In practice this means people with Corona virus will be admitted with a ticket (see above) and any face mask that looks like it might be effective will be confiscated at the gate.

Burning Man is an Experiment 

And like any good experiment it will be studied by people who are better than you.  Scientists will be seen on the playa in large numbers carrying out varied and sundry medical and scientific studies to better understand what happens when a deadly global virus experiencing hockey stick growth is embraced by an open, loving community like Burners.  A few notable examples will be MAPS conducting nightly tests on 1000 subjects at White Ocean of whether 2C-B is a potential vaccine for the Corona virus.  Foam Against the Machine will also be testing Dr. Bronners Magic Soap as a possible super fun and foamy topical vaccine.

You have already given your consent to on-demand blood, saliva and other specimen testing.  If you don't believe us, read the back of your ticket and don't be surprised when you are required to give a blood sample to some guy jumping out of a golf cart in a hazmat suit near the Temple at 2am yelling. "YOU'VE BEEN CHOSEN!  YOU'VE BEEN CHOSEN!  

Corona virus and the 12 Principals

We believe that the Radical Inclusion of Corona virus carriers on the playa is a Gift untainted by Commodification.  We believe the Corona virus is fully Self Reliant and excited to fully Express itself at Burning Man this year.  We believe if there are any negative effects of Corona virus on the playa that our Communal Effort and sense of Civic Responsibility will allow us to leave for the Grand Sierra Resort with No Trace of Corona virus interrupting the Immediacy of jumping in the pool head first, Safety Third.

See you dusty Burners.  Please, for the love of Larry Harvey, no more questions.

There is currently a discussion thread on the Burning Man regional contacts list around the cancellation of the French Creme Brûlee (planned for May I think), before they started to spend 15-20k. The swiss are still discussing their March 19th event since in Switzerland all gahterings over 1000 people are banned and smaller ones over 150 people need to do a risk assessment and get an ok from the health autorities. They say

So far we haven't made the decision to cancel. We are trying to comply with all regulations and make sure we can get a permit. That means we are taking some financial risks. We definitely want to be able to refund most of the ticket if we get cancelled.but the further we go, the more money we spend. Hard times. "

shall I share thoughts and decisions of other regional groups about their burns here or somewhere?

This is the daily updated page of the swiss burn: https://www.vfbss.org/pandamic

and the FAQ for Africa Burn: https://www.afrikaburn.com/latest-news/coronavirus-advisory

I've copy-pasted the two main discussions around that topic from the Burning Man Regionals Mailinglist into two documents. There are some interesting thoughts (burried) in the discussions. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1H9eJqS4qBjZFmFXA73w5FR9sNZ93Ns568zwNo3qCWzU/edit?usp=sharing and https://docs.google.com/document/d/1szPo3kEUJji1dSylDSITWYabpP0h4axw-bzZcafm0fo/edit?usp=sharing. In the end it all comes down to the Civic Responsibility principle "Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare".

Short Update: We have checked event cancellation insurance. Nothing would really cover us right now. Alex and myself are looking into the financial risk analysis and will share asap.

@Purzel can you update on advise that you would give as a paramedic?

@Jan Thomas can you update on how the Amt sees the situation right now? Are they even willing in giving us a permission?

@Saskia (The Fuzzy Facilitator) can you upload the corona protocols from club commission in here?

I think tomorrow the Ministerpräsidenten der Länder will meet and shall agree on a common strategy concerning cancellation of events and other means. Maybe we'll get some first clarification for Mecklenburg-Vorpommern then.

Received the following from the Amt just now, i.e. for now they're just warning to prepare for possible event cancellations:

I am happy we got a warning from the amt, it sounds like they send a warning for cancellation when corona gets worse, as corona seems to spread similar to influenza (slows down in warm dry weather) i have the feeling we have a good chance on still letting the event happen, as i am not a expert on the matter i cant be sure, i just dont want people to give up their hopes on kiezburn in june before we get some more data about corona (especially about how it will spread in the next weeks)

I have talked to several subject matter experts by now: we dont know anything. unfortunately. we don't know if it is seasonal or not (look at Spain 30degree and the virus keeps spreading). We dont know when we will find medicine to stop the outbreak. We dont know how long this will continues. What we do know is that all events are canceled until end of April and that next week we will have a shut down in Germany as well.

Current news from Club Comission and the club & event world.

Newsletter der Club Comission

Here is the current newsletter of the Club Comission. It contains all the longform information of most of the things I am summarizing here.
Information for visitors of clubs in english, spanish and german. Information on the legal situation. And also measures the CC takes to make politics help out club owners and event producers.

Legal stuff

• Seems like it is hard to predict how the next weeks are going to go down

• There seems to be no way we'll get around paying back ticket prices if we have to cancel. It doesn't matter wether the cancellation happens because KBorg gets sick personally, the Amt cancels the permit for the event or if we decide to cancel the event as a preventive measure

• IF the event is canceled from official sides no one can claim damages (Schadensersatzforderungen), tho. Also when we cancel the event when we're in an area that is under shut down.

What I see currently

• Virtually ALL club events for this weekend have been cancelled and probably will be canceled for a couple of weeks, as it seens

What I advise

• I am not sure, but maybe we should reconsider the start of ticket sale?
  Even if it impacts dreams and all. The developments have an astonishing pace and I assume we'll know better what to do 5 days from now

I have been thinking of this the whole day and my current opinion is that we should consider looking for a later date for KB, September perhaps? The risk of covernment forced cancellation is too big right now and also it's our responsibility to make choices that are good for the whole society.

I think moving the event later might not even be terrible since I assume a lot of early summer events will get cancelled so people might still have energy later. We have the advantage that we didn't sell our tickets yet so moving is still pretty possible without huge efforts.

I am not sure who could use this or if the information is already in hand of some one, so I post it anyway #lawyer insight on force majeure (sorry only german) https://www.ra-juedemann.de/corona-und-musikveranstaltungen-corona-teil-2/

currently a LOT of art, culture related institutes are closing(museum, gallerys, concerts..), Kitkat and Sysphos asking guests for thier mails, so they can inform the guests, just in case.

Here’s a compiled list of resources and templates from Burning Mans Steven Raspa:

“Dear People of the Regional Discussion List and organizers of Official Regional Events, 

Your volunteer Regional Events Committee has quickly compiled a list of links, examples, and things you may want to think about regarding the CoronaVirus (Covid 19) and event planning. This is NOT-NOT-NOT specific advice on what to do, but rather helpful ways of thinking and a few examples we hope will be helpful as you think about possible ways you might respond and create your own locally appropriate response plan. 
When the Regional Events Committee met 2 days ago we thought that compiling ideas from THIS discussion list and various sources on the Internet and our inboxes, would be helpful as official event teams develop their own local and specific responses to this challenge. The information here may become dated as we learn more about this virus, so there is a disclaimer at the front and we suggest you get the most up to date information from the World Health Organization or Health Department. 
This was written to give anyone with the link below editing access and you should feel free to include more examples as you like after each section, add comments and updates, whatever you think will make it most helpful as a community resource.  It is a living document. Help it evolve and be most useful. 

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

1. INTRODUCTORY NOTE

2. FACTORS TO CONSIDER

3. IF YOU DECIDE TO MOVE FORWARD WITH YOUR EVENT

4. GENERAL EVENT RISK MANAGEMENT AND CANCELLATION RISKS

5. EXAMPLE COMMUNICATIONS

6. EXAMPLE ANNOUNCEMENTS OF CANCELLATION, POSTPONEMENT & MOVING AHEAD

The link is below. Feel free to share it with your official event team leads and boards. 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sV8ypgcbzmXIvDq_o93t1f2j-6_Z3p0gasvCspdtzm4/edit?usp=sharing

I am sending this on behalf of the Regional Events Committee with our love and support. 

Special thanks to Jayman for taking a lead on the "General Event Risk Management and Cancellation Risks” section. 

And thanks to all of you here. We stole from some of you on this list liberally to create this as a starting point.

$teven 

Steven Raspa

Regional Network Committee

Burning Man “

Recommendation: block a weekend in September for Kiezburn as a backup, in coordination with Freiland

That's super mega helpful!

No an event insurance wouldnt cover that. If we have to cancel the event its more a contractual agreement we need to look into. Refunds, tickets yadayda

I am currently reading the terms & conditions from tickets and will let them check from a event cancellation perspective.I have also linked an article in my post with the most common cancelation scenarios.

I'll have to find out if there is a distinction between own cancellations because of precautions, and official cancellations by the authorities. Waiting for @Alexxx for some numbers from the budget to fill in the insurance request in detail.
What are our cancellation policies with Freiland and with the potential offers of services we're buying in (security, medical)?

Yeah I am thinking about the same line. I actually wanted to start an advice process early next week on this. My educated guess is that the event ban will extend into July and we would be massively effected.

Yeah Berlin has just announced their event cancellation.

well, I dont think that makes a big difference.. if in June its still recommended to not run big events we would take this serious irregardless of 999PAX or 1200PAX

I don't have that information yet.
Maybe we could also look into recommending to skip growth and to stay below 1000 ppl?

Holger told us last night that it’s likely that most insurance companies would explicitly exclude coronavirus in their coverage. If I understood correctly.

There are differences. Please see the article I linked in my post. @Holger Wessels can you share what the insurance you look into right now would cover and what not?