Things change so quickly! Let’s hope they don’t have to reinstate more stringent practices.
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Indeed! Just reading their new policy and it seems very liberal. I, too, hope they won’t have to backtrack.
Let’s say 80% of the students and faculty at a university are vaccinated. Is that enough to “do away” with most Covid policies, with possibly only routine testing of the non-vaccinated?
Just trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel. AKA learning to live with Covid since we’ll never get to zero cases.
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I had COVID in Jan with a very mild case, however, today 7 months later still having issues with no smell and problems with my ears. My entire sensory system is damaged and I only had a head cold with COVID.
I did get vaccinated because I want to protect myself from having worse symptoms if I would contact again and to protect my family.
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My D24’s Boston-area school (Simmons) will be requiring masks indoors for all (in addition to requiring the vax).
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I’m trying to figure out why some schools are requiring masks. Maybe they don’t have a high enough percentage of students and faculty vaccinated even though it’s supposedly mandatory? Or because they have a large percentage of international students and that vaccination situation is unknown right now? I thought the idea was mandatory vax equals very few to no cases. I guess, if a school is not a separate campus and has a lot of people who aren’t students and staff coming and going then they are worried about unvaccinated and unmasked individuals bringing Covid to campus? Still don’t see why that matters since the people the school is affiliated with should all be vaccinated.
I’m not sure (re: Simmons). The only thing I can really think is that since it is an urban campus with a lot of community-based involvement (I think 47% of the students are nursing majors, for example) there’s really no way to keep the students in a bubble. I think the notion that fully vaccinated = few to no cases is evolving pretty quickly into the idea that fully vax = low chance of hospitalization or death, but still plenty of opportunity to spread the illness. 
I kind of get that, but does it matter much if there’s Covid on campus if those getting it are vaccinated - they’ll be almost 100 percent asymptomatic or not that sick and won’t spread it to others if the vaccine is mandatory. I think I shared upthread that our county is 80% vaccinated and our town has had one case in three weeks (and that was 20 days ago) and we aren’t a bubble. People go to work and people come here to work or shop…
No masks for anyone except the under 12 set indoors.
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Duplicate…deleted
Msdynamite85:
The UKs health secretary, Sajid Javid, has tested positive for Covid and was double vaccinated.
Where does it say he was double vaccinated? He received both doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but that’s not double vaccinated.
Mr Javid previously tweeted that he had received the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.
Covid: Pfizer and AstraZeneca jabs work against Indian variant - study - BBC News) found two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine was 60% effective at stopping symptomatic disease from the Delta variant, which is now dominant across the UK. Two jabs of the Pfizer vaccine was 88% effective.
Could it be that they do not believe that they will have herd immunity (possibly due to interaction with the local community, or incoming international students) but want to protect the medically vulnerable (those who have medical conditions that reduce immunity from vaccination, cannot get vaccinated for bona fide medical reasons, etc.)?
I still don’t think that explains it. If we have 80 percent vaccinated here and no cases for weeks then clearly the people who can’t get vaccinated have not been catching Covid. When does it end? Those who can’t get the vaccine can wear masks and the vaccinated really do not spread Covid. Those who just choose to not get vaccinated are on their own. In the case of these colleges that are mandating the vaccine, I have to think their vax rate is north of 90 percent.
I wish the schools with mask mandates would publish why they have them. Show us how they came to the conclusion to mandate them and who exactly they are trying to protect…and why the mask wearing will do the job. I haven’t seen anyone explain it including LA county. No medical explanation at all.
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Your quickest route to an answer, rather than asking on these forums, would be for you to reach out to each of these schools and ask for an explanation.
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Yep. But I don’t have a student at these schools. I think that’s why I was so frustrated with @Luckyjade2024 because I thought maybe students or parents at a mask-mandating school like Tufts would be making some phone calls. If masks are mandated at our kids’ schools, I’ll be on the horn right away.
Perhaps students and parents of students at these schools simply don’t feel as strongly about it as you do.
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Our entire family has been fully vaccinated and we all wear our masks in public 100% of the time. Why? D works in a local deli where they can not and will not ask a customer’s vaccine status. She has 2 coworkers who brag about being unvaccinated and will not wear a mask, at work or in the community. Our community has a 2% positivity rate, and climbing. We are the home of a unique sporting venue that brings 10s of thousands of visitors to town from mid-July through Labor Day. DH is immunocompromised and takes a medication where they can’t tell if he even acquired any immunity after being vaccinated. He has also been hospitalized with pneumonia in the past so we know his lungs are not 100%. D and I wear our masks to protect him. I left my favorite coffee shop empty handed yesterday because I was the only mask in the whole place and there was nowhere to stand where I wasn’t physically touching someone.
I understand those who are fed up with the masking and don’t understand why we insist on wearing masks or leave when we don’t feel safe. I just wish they demonstrated an ounce of compassion for someone with different needs than theirs.
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I do have compassion and that’s one of the reasons we all got vaccinated right away. We don’t have to mask as well. We won’t give you or anyone in your family Covid if we are vaccinated.
I care because college is expensive and we want every bit of the experience for our kids. Masking for no reason makes no sense. There’s zero medical reasons for vaccinated people to wear masks. I think it’s being done in places like LA because the unvaccinated by choice aren’t wearing masks and cases are climbing. Unless every retailer is checking vaccine cards at the door, they don’t know who is vaccinated so it’s now masks for everyone.
The unvaccinated are the ones who need to get their vaccines to protect the vulnerable.
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You can say that vaccinated people can’t pass the virus on but what about the outbreak with the Yankees? Vaccinated people still became infected. I find it hard to believe that the virus that they tested positive for knows it can be spread from them to someone else because their host was vaccinated.
I would hope as the parent of a student at an expensive college, DH would be able to have a safe experience at parents weekend, too. Any vaccinated parent, student, or faculty member should be able to feel safe if they have underlying health conditions, especially if they have been vaccinated to try and protect themselves.
I was just listening to Andy Slavitt’s podcast In the Bubble and he said the chances of an infected vaccinated person giving someone else Covid is so so low and agrees that vaccinated people do not need to wear masks. Now, those who are compromised might want to wear masks for sure. And he said that, if he had a family member he wanted to visit, who couldn’t be vaccinated then he would wear a mask if he was within six feet of them. But, for the general public, no, he doesn’t think vaccinated people should be wearing masks. I’m sure part of it is that, if vaccinated people have to go back to wearing masks, the unvaccinated will never get vaccinated. It’s a fine line to walk.
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If Andy Slavitt is vaccinated then why would he feel the need to wear a mask around “compromised” family members? Either a vaccinated person could transmit the virus, or not.
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we are seeing more and more breakthrough cases of those who are vaccinated. Not that they get extremely sick, but one of the Gymnastics alternate who was vaccinated turned out positive. Delta is not be messed with. I really believe that if Delta had not come along we would be in a better position. All the Yankees are vaccinated I believe, yet they are seeing these cases. There are those immune compromised who are attending colleges and will be in a position of breakthrough cases. Until the schools fully understand the prevalence of Covid on campus after a few weeks even with vaccination, it might be prudent to start with masking and testing. Better than going remote again :(.
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