New social media site connects COVID-cautious people

Most COVID-19 restrictions have been loosened around the world and several Canadian provinces have largely opened up, dropping mask mandates and vaccine requirements.

But many are not quite ready to give up precautions altogether — some are choosing to err on the side of caution while others who are immunocompromised or otherwise vulnerable have no choice but to stay vigilant.

A new social media site is helping connect like-minded people who want to socialize with others, but prefer doing so with pandemic precautions in place.

Personal project turned global website

COVID Meetups was co-founded by Canadian Debashish Shaw and his wife Emily, based out of Zurich, Switzerland.

Debashish tells CityNews the idea took shape when they were looking to setup playdates for their daughter with other families who were continuing to be careful about COVID-19. He says existing timeline-based social media sites were less than ideal.

“This is actually something we wanted for ourselves. We aren’t so thrilled about the prospect of being continuously reinfected by the coronavirus and we thought ‘there must be other families like us,’” he said. “[People have] essentially been given the choice of either taking humongous risks, especially for vulnerable families and for those with health issues or stay at home — that’s the choice we’ve given them through our society and it’s really not fair to them.”

As Emily runs a software company and Debashish is also a software developer, they decided to combine their talents and come up with a solution. The website launched in January, which Debashish describes as “like a shared spreadsheet, but a little bit more advanced than that.”

“The nice thing about software is, if we can solve that problem for ourselves, it scales. And now we can solve that same problem for families in Toronto, families across Canada, the U.S. and really the whole world,” he said.

Currently the site is a simple list of member profiles with short descriptions and an option to connect via instant message within the platform. Even at this nascent stage, it has grown to a community of 1,200 members in 39 countries.

Debashish says the feedback from around the world has been overwhelmingly positive.

“I’ve been around a lot of tech startups myself and through my career. I would say that I’ve never received this much positive feedback at such an early stage, ever,” he said. “We’ve had families say this has been life changing for them …they’ve finally been able to organize activities for their children who have sometimes been in isolation for many months or years.”

While it may have started as a way to organize playdates for children, it quickly became clear that the focus needed to expand to include all ages.

“As you can imagine, a lot of people have lost friends during the pandemic …even family members who refuse to accept that long COVID is a thing or that COVID can pose much higher risks than they believe it does,” said Debashish. “There’s an obvious, crying need here for even adults or singles or those who are COVID long haulers, the disabled community to provide them a platform to find each other in their local area.”

The site is currently available in English, German and Italian, with plans to add more languages in the near future. They also plan to expand functionality on the site by adding groups.

“So instead of just messaging one-to-one, which, unless you have children — it’s almost like dating, which a lot of people aren’t necessarily interested in or comfortable with,” explained Debashish.

He says groups would help people organize joint activities or share information about things like businesses in their area that are taking COVID precautions. He cites the case of a woman with disabilities in Australia who joined the site as an example.

“[She] walked to three different dentistry practices as a disabled person looking for a dentist wearing an N95 mask. She said ‘everyone in there had their mask on their chin and this just isn’t safe,'” said Debashish. He hopes people will use the site’s groups as a hive-mind, so it is easier to locate such services where they can feel safe.

A broader purpose

Like many who are remaining cautious, Debashish opines that the current COVID-19 policies in many countries are not stringent enough.

He feels it is possible to live with the virus in the community without necessarily being infected if the right measures are put in place, citing an Italian study that showed proper ventilation in schools reduced COVID cases by 82 per cent.

“The pandemic can be mitigated to a huge extent …we can very realistically go back to the type of risks we were taking in 2019 with our lives and not have to risk organ damage or long COVID everyday,” he said. “[The current policy] is one of pretending that the pandemic doesn’t exist and … the numbers are surging in Europe and they’re surging across North America. The status quo doesn’t work for anyone, so we do need some kind of change.”

In the long run, Debashish hopes the site will have a wider impact and lead to such policy changes that he feels will help control COVID-19 and make society, as a whole, safer.

“The goal here is to really unite everyone on their own platform to say, ‘look, there are a lot of us here and we want to push for these changes. We want HEPA filters in schools, we want businesses to take some more precautions … we’re looking for projects and services where we can do things in a less risky manner,” he said. “[Right now] we safely organize play dates. In the future, we’ll try to push for things like safe schools.”

In order to realize those goals, Debashish reached out to the World Health Network (WHN) – a global coalition of doctors and scientists who aim to advise policymakers about practical strategies to eliminate COVID-19. WHN has taken over the day-to-day operations while the husband-wife duo work to build out the site.

“They officially host it for us, if you will. And then we can continue to build upon it and try to bring more members in. The goal here really is to just speed things up,” he said.

WHN says they are pleased with the progress the site has made and that many are signing up to find ways to connect while feeling safe and comfortable.

“Polls say that most people want more safety for themselves and their loved ones than governments are providing. By connecting with others who care through covidmeetups.com, people can support each other, and decide about getting together, whether virtually or in person while implementing safety measures.” said Yaneer Bar-Yam, co-founder of WHN.

Debashish added with WHN’s support and the demand they’ve already seen, they feel well equipped to scale up from here on.

“We’ve had people from all over the world asking for Hebrew versions …all the major languages — when you have this kind of early momentum behind it, I do believe we can do great things, even though it’s very, very early and it’s admittedly a very simple project today,” he said.