But colleges are mandating the vaccine. I have to assume that 95% or more will be vaccinated. At least I know that Colgate and Bowdoin are not making it easy to come to campus without a vaccine. In that situation? There aren’t going to be breakthrough infections. There should really be little to no infection on campus.
“Public health officials have tracked 4,450 “breakthrough” cases of COVID-19 among Massachusetts residents fully vaccinated against the disease, representing about one-tenth of 1% of the roughly 4.2 million people immunized.”
One tenth of one percent? And that’s numbers for an entire state where maybe 60% have been vaccinated. On a campus where almost everyone is vaccinated, these stats from MA just are not relevant.
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I don’t understand why doctors would refuse to test symptomatic people (unless you meant they are hospitalized?)……regardless, one doesn’t need to see a doctor, or get a doctor’s approval to get tested.
One can still get a rapid test (including PCR) at many locations (eg drug stores, urgent care clinics, etc), plus there are several different $20-$30 home based tests on the market that are available at Walgreens, CVS, etc.
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Los Angeles County now has a mask requirement, not recommendation, for indoors now. Note that Los Angeles County has a relatively low vaccination rate compared to other urban coastal counties in California, probably related to lower SES and higher Latino and Black populations (less connection to and trust in the health care system), although these characteristics are probably less associated with mask opposition than for other demographics of unvaccinated people.
It is the counties in the San Francisco bay area that are recommending masks for everyone indoors, and encouraging business to have “mask for everyone indoors” instead of “honor system mask required if unvaccinated”. Most of these counties have high vaccination rates, probably related to higher SES and higher Asian populations (fastest to get vaccinated, slowest to remove masks).
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As of May 1, 2021, CDC transitioned from monitoring all reported vaccine breakthrough cases to focus on identifying and investigating only hospitalized or fatal cases due to any cause. This shift will help maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance.
Previous data on all vaccine breakthrough cases reported to CDC from January–April 2021 are available.
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Colgate is not mandating the vaccine and has a less stringent policy than Tufts
At this time, the Task Force does not recommend requiring COVID-19 vaccines for any campus community member (students, staff and faculty) . While we strongly recommend community members to receive a vaccine, we know that there is a myriad of reasons, whether personal or medical, why this may not be practical. Current vaccines are being administered with Emergency Use Authorization by the Federal Drug Administration. Until and unless these vaccines receive non-emergency use approval, we do not recommend requiring vaccination among members of the Colgate community.
Lucky. Please stop. That’s old news. We as Colgate parents received news that they are now mandating the vaccine. D had to send her vaccine info into Colgate weeks ago.
That press release is from months ago. Did you think I was lying or don’t know what’s going on at our D21’s school??
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Once the FDA fully approves the vaccine you’re going to see many more mandates especially for schools. For people who who are ok with that, the risk is going to be very low to those students because the community will be highly vaccinated. My daughters school is more than 95% vaccinated. No masks required, fully in person, etc. My rising college freshman while he fortunately has all in person classes at Michigan, they’re still requiring masks in classes unless 75% of students are vaccinated even though the mandate is only those living in dorms are required to be vaccinated. They’re encouraging everyone to upload their status by yesterday. As of 7/14 68% is where they’re at. Some classes that had been remote have moved to in person which is a good sign but 68% is still too low. Hoping when the FDA approves then everyone will be required.UM was a sh*tshow last year.
I do think schools will do better than last year. And certain areas and communities will do better. But not all areas. People and students in college will ultimately have to decide what kind of school they want to be at. I know if I was starting the process again and my kids were seniors I probably would take Texas off the table for consideration for my kids. Academically it has been phenomenal for my daughter but as far as covid, a big fat failure. Fortunately she never got it and was vaccinated right away but I will continue to worry and the fact that her condo HOA is now emailing PSAs to mask up and reporting what’s going on when we’ve never had a single notification from them since we bought the place tells me who’s doing the groundwork for trying to encourage people to get vaccinated. Drs are admitting they didn’t expect this new surge in cases and hospitalizations until a few months from now so one can only imagine where we will be in 2 weeks!!
I’m guessing, though, that Tufts will be vaccinated very well. I would expect above 90 percent if not way more so why the masks? That’s the crux of the issue.
I spoke with my son in Sf tonight and he said the spread between those who received first dose and fully vaccinated is very small whereas in other cities/places it’s much wider. Very impressive and good for them that they’re encouraging people to wear masks again but I assume it’s only a matter of time before they require them.
Wearing a mask here or there is not the end of the world. We’ve all done it regularly for months. It’s a mich better option than having to close things down again which I don’t think anyone wants. So if things can remain open with masks required in certain scenarios so be it.
Could just be because it’s essentially in Boston which is a large metropolitan area and there are no doubt many parts of Boston that have low vaccination rates. Just like how there was a recent report that something like >80% of people in Northbrook are vaccinated yet only about 15% (I may have the number slightly off) in Cicero (or it may have been Berwyn I can’t recall) are vaccinated. Same county but completely different demographics SES etc. I know Tufts isn’t in Boston proper but I don’t know what area Medford is in but it can be any number of reasons or who the student population engages with. Not a rural campus or typical college campus where they’re more secluded.
Not saying that’s why but it could be anything. Wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing more of this.
This is from Tufts
Why do we have to wear face masks indoors if we are fully vaccinated?
COVID-19 transmission occurs indoors. Although currently rare, fully vaccinated individuals can contract COVID-19 and we remain concerned about the risk to the community from variants. As a residential community in which people may spend significant time together indoors, we have decided to maintain a mask wearing mandate indoors for the fall. In addition, while we anticipate that the vast majority of our students, faculty, and staff will be fully vaccinated before the term begins, some will still be unvaccinated. It is our shared responsibility to help protect these individuals from the virus to the extent that we can. Fully vaccinated individuals can contract and potentially spread COVID-19. We ask for your grace and cooperation with this mandate.
sorry for the paste
Why are you sending that to me? I didn’t ask the question about why Tufts is requiring masks being worn.
@homerdog is correct. The release you posted 8 hours ago was from April. It’s outdated. The latest update was in June:
On June 15, 2021, the Governor announced that all state-mandated COVID-19 health and safety restrictions were lifted effective immediately as 70 percent of New Yorkers age 18 or older have received at least the first dose of their COVID-19 vaccination series…
The State’s required health guidance…including that for institutions of higher education—including social gathering limits, capacity restrictions, social distancing, cleaning and disinfection, health screening, and contact information for tracing—are now lifted…
Pursuant to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines, fully vaccinated individuals (i.e. students , faculty, and staff ) are not required to maintain social distancing or wear masks, while unvaccinated individuals are responsible for continuing to wear a mask and practice social distancing in all locations.
That may not be the last word either. Everything can change and change quickly if we learned anything from this pandemic.
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It doesn’t change the fact that the information that was posted as “new” is nearly 4 months old and is incorrect.
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Wake Forest is not messing around, will disenroll students and cancel housing selections for students that haven’t provided proof of vaccination by August 1st.
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The thing about mandating masks on a campus is that, if it’s not 100 percent of the time, it’s not going to be effective. Kids will socialize without masks and apparently Tufts will even let unvaccinated students live with vaccinated ones. We all know that Covid spread on campuses came from social events. Won’t be any different this time around but the cases should be way way low if almost everyone is vaccinated.
I doubt sports teams will be made to wear them while competing. Is Tufts going to have kids from other campuses on their campus to compete? Will they mandate they wear masks or get tested?
To quarantine vaccinated kids is going backwards. I would be furious if either of our kids had an asymptomatic case, tested positive and then had to be quarantined. NONE of that is happening out in the real world. We don’t randomly test vaccinated people and there’s a reason for that. The chances are low they have Covid (like really really low!) and there’s almost zero chance of them spreading it.
We always knew there would be breakthrough cases. This isn’t some new news that should send people running for their masks.
I’d love to see the requirements for coming to school unvaccinated. I have a friend who says her D us just going to site religious reasons. They are Catholic but that’s not the reason and she admitted to me that her D won’t get one for a slew of reasons that point to conspiracy theories. Yet, will her college allow her “religious” exception? I guess they’ll see. If the FDA approves any of the vaccines, I say it needs to be mandatory. Forget all of these exceptions.
For those of you who say it’s no big deal to wear a mask, that’s not the point. This point is that the science has proven that vaccinated individuals are very safe now. I wonder what other viruses out there have a death rate of .01% that we aren’t worried about. As for those unvaccinated who are medically able, get the shot. That leaves a teeny tiny slice of students and I’m sure they will wear masks to protect themselves if they immune compromised
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My friend who has a daughter entering Pomona claims that college won’t take a religious exemption unless you put it on your application.