How to not catch the conf flu

Summary

We’re a clinically vulnerable family and we take infection control very seriously. My first-author paper was accepted as a spotlight (top 23 out of 801) at the ICML 2026 Mechanistic Interpretability Workshop. We thought long and hard and decided that me travelling from the UK to Seoul is worth the risk. Below I describe the trip and the precautions we took to minimise the risk of me catching the conf flu and bringing it back home. A well-fitting mask probably did most of the work, but we used many other layers of protection.

4 weeks before the workshop

Spotlight notification, I jokingly tell my wife that maybe I should consider going, esp since covid numbers are at a 5-year low. We ask her parents if they’d be willing to quarantine for a week and then drive to us for 24h to help her with childcare while I’m away. They happily agree. [1] I start looking into the feasibility of it all, checking the biggest risks, how long I’d be there, etc. Chatty is very helpful.

3 weeks before

Uni approves funding for my trip, including higher expenses for risk reduction: driving+parking and taxis instead public transportation, and a hotel in Gangnam walking distance away from the conference location. I guess I’m going!

I start ordering things like extra masks, SIP valves [2], stoggles, extra Pluslife covid tests.

1-2 weeks before

We get covid vaccines.

5 days before

Wife’s parents arrive, we Pluslife test them, [3] all negative, party time! I start sleeping alone to get some better sleep before the trip. It sort of works, but not perfectly. I get the SIP valves, fit them on two 3M Aura 9330+ masks. Here I should’ve done a quick qualitative fit-test on the valved masks, esp with a straw in, but I didn’t. Oops.

2 days before - travel day

I drive for 2h to Heathrow, park, wait in the car until ~2h before the flight. I eat a large meal my wife has prepared the night before, put on my SIP-valved mask, get my hand sanitiser locked and loaded, go to the terminal and s…