I feel like schools are thinking roommates are just collateral damage, especially overenrolled or schools without easy hotel options.
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Yes we can do a test here but we are flying out 36 hours before we move D in so we will be in the air and airport (masked of course) and then shopping and in the hotel. We will be super careful in those 36 hours. I need to find where to get a rapid test because our two more local Walgreens are now out of the supplies to run the tests and the pharmacists told me that they aren’t sure when they’ll offer the tests again!
go buy some of them that are CVS. maybe you can even order off amazon. Also a very small pharmacy near me had the at home rapid tests. Better than nothing.
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I just called the pharmacy to confirm they have the take home tests. They do. I’ll get some today. Do we all think these are fairly accurate?
They don’t think that they caught it at work. One had a visit from her father in law and the other two where out socialising celebrating pride.
My local area has relatively low cases overall. This is just a coincidence of several colleagues catching it at the same time.
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I ordered Abbott BinaxNOW tests from Walmart, they were less expensive there than at Walgreens and CVS when I last checked. You can also use HSA $ to pay for these tests.
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They very likely will be. Last summer unvaccinated S lived with a roommate who was positive and didn’t catch it. This summer, he’s vaccinated but caught it in less than an hour with someone (he’s not had a longer contact than that in the last two weeks). He also seems to have passed it on to another friend who he saw briefly indoors. Roommate hasn’t tested positive yet, but there’s not much to be done right now. Fortunately the cases are all very mild, just like a brief head cold.
I have mixed feelings about surveillance screening, I think it will lead to avoidance if cases are mild and penalties for testing positive are severe.
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All positives amongst my S’s group were confirmed by PCR. Less clear if there were any false negatives. He did test negative last week (on both rapid and PCR tests), only tested positive after his mild symptoms appeared.
That’s not the critical window if your objective is to get a negative test result at drop off. The incubation period is 48 hours or more. So it’s really about being careful in the week or so before leaving home.
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they say they are 86% accurate on the packaging.
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You need a different mask if you are having those symptoms. I am a physician and I lived in an n95 all day long except for lunch for almost a year(now we do just a surgical for non-sick patients). So did /does our whole office as well as hospitals and clinics allover the place. My kids were in person and masked all day—did fine, so did all the teachers….but…some find that certain dense cloth masks do NOT exchange air well! We dont use cloth masks in clinic settings but when I have occasionally worn some types, they can be harder to wear than medical masks. Regular Surgical masks are light, easy and protective . You can even exercise for hours and hours in them(standard dance/ballet intensive protocols around the country). Please try some medical masks that are designed to be worn allday—you should not be having this hard of a time with mask-wearing.
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Our school has a plan for the ones who test positive on move in. But yes trying to be careful as possible before that. Movein is next week, vaccines are mandated, there are in-person orientation events for parents(the large event has been moved outside), and masks are required during move in and to start the semester (indoors other than dorms/ when eating) then they will reassess. Seems a common plan. Sigh.
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D19 and D21’s college is not doing pre-arrival or surveillance testing of vaccinated students. I think that’s wise, because their vaccination percentage is high, and they don’t have a plan for what to do with the results of those tests.
Colleges that are going to test everyone will need to do so even more often than last year in order to catch cases before the positive person becomes contagious. The incubation period (time from exposure to potential transmission) with Alpha was six days, but with Delta, it is four days. So, let’s say the college is testing twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays. If a person gets exposed on Friday, they will test negative on Monday, but be potentially spreading on Tuesday and Wednesday before their positive test on Thursday. (I said potentially spreading, because if they are vaccinated, their immune system will have already attacked the virus and made them less contagious.) With a shorter time to infectivity, it’s harder to get people out of circulation before they can transmit.
All the studies I’ve seen support that 18-22 year olds have a robust reaction to the vaccine. Their immune systems are young and react in the right ways to the virus. The chance of them getting sick enough to miss class is low, and their chance of severe illness is close to zero.
The more I think about it, the more I think mandatory vaccination and masking at indoor gatherings is the way to minimize disruption to the college experience.
The small number of unvaccinated students and staff are at greater risk for spreading the virus and severe illness, so they should be tested (possibly 3 times a week). Vaccinated people who are at high risk medically should be tested if symptomatic so that they can get the monoclonals if positive. But regular vaccinated college kids? How does testing them help the individual or the community? (Besides the fact that it’s untenable for the majority of colleges to test 3 times a week.)
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Also, Princeton just announced that all students, regardless of vaccination status, will be required to wear a mask indoors unless they are working alone or are eating or drinking. No mask is required outdoors.
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I understand what you are saying, but lecturing for any length of time in a mask is difficult and unpleasant. It is not the same as occasional conversational exchange in a workplace because it’s sustained. I do wear surgical masks now because I have found cloth to be too uncomfortable. Fortunately my fall class sessions are only 80 minutes long and they are not back-to-back, so I am hoping to not have the problem I am having now during the very long summer class sessions.
I am no longer expecting not to get the virus. I now believe that we’ll all get it at some point and I’ll be exposed at work. I’m accepted this as the reality and I still don’t want to teach remotely. However, I dread the disruption that the constant testing, quarantine, and isolation will create.
Last year I willingly went online because I thought it would provide more consistency, but I had a negative experience with building engagement and community, so I don’t want to do that again. At any rate, my employer is strongly pressuring faculty to come back to campus. Even if we teach online, we are supposed to do it from our campus offices.
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MIT too, but still seeing cases per a professor on Twitter:
Vanderbilt implements “temporary” new masking protocols….no mention of how dining will be handled:
Dear members of the Vanderbilt community,
As we look forward to the start of the 2021–22 academic year, we are monitoring the evolving COVID-19 pandemic and public health guidance to keep our community as safe as possible. Today we are sharing information you will need as you prepare for the start of classes later this month.
We start this academic year in a tremendously better place than last year. In compliance with our requirements, more than 94 percent of us have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Vaccination, made possible in part by significant medical and scientific contributions here at Vanderbilt, is the very best protection our society has against this devastating virus. Thank you for stepping up and getting vaccinated to protect our community.
Because of our high vaccination rate, we are looking forward to an academic year that will offer fewer campus restrictions than last year. That said, we will take appropriate precautions in response to recent infection increases and to expert guidance related to the delta variant. We collaborate with medical leaders at Vanderbilt University Medical Center to understand emerging data, and our policies reflect the most current scientific guidance available.
We know today that the delta variant has fueled a rise in infections in Nashville and beyond and that vaccinated people infected with the variant are, in some cases, able to transmit the virus. However, we also know that vaccinated people are robustly protected against the disease. Breakthrough infections among the vaccinated are rare and, in most cases, produce only mild symptoms. Unfortunately, due to insufficient vaccination rates in our region, there has been a significant increase in infections and hospitalizations, which are almost entirely limited to unvaccinated individuals. To do our part in improving the situation, we are temporarily adjusting on-campus guidance, as outlined below.
Please carefully read the following updated protocols and guidance for the start of the fall 2021 semester. These protocols are effective beginning Monday, August 16.
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Masks are required indoors on campus, unless noted below. Masks are also required indoors whenever minors are present and at all indoor, off-campus Vanderbilt-hosted events. We will monitor cases and guidance to decide when we may lift this masking protocol.
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Masks are not required for vaccinated individuals in private offices, or in shared workspaces, classrooms or labs where individuals can stay at least six feet apart. Instructors when lecturing do not have to wear a mask if the instructor can maintain at least six feet of physical distancing from all students at all times. Additionally, roommates who are vaccinated are not required to wear masks when together in their residence hall room or suite.
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All campus community members and all visitors, including family members and loved ones, will be required to mask during move-in on Aug. 21–22. More detailed information about additional move-in protocols will be shared soon.
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As of Aug. 2, all visitors are required to wear masks in all indoor spaces on campus.
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Because vaccinated individuals are at a lower risk, they are exempt from quarantine if identified as a close contact to a positive case unless they become symptomatic. Anyone experiencing symptoms should get tested at either Student Health, Occupational Health or other testing location in the community and shelter in place while awaiting results. Undergraduate students experiencing symptoms will either shelter in place or be moved to quarantine housing by the Command Center while awaiting test results. Vaccinated, asymptomatic individuals who are close contacts of someone who tests positive should get tested at the Vanderbilt Testing Center or another community testing location three to five days after exposure.
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We firmly support the personal choice of anyone in our community to wear a mask for any reason at any time.
As we have all learned, we may need to change quickly to adapt to new information, and we have proven that we’re prepared to do so. Our public health command center remains operational to lead our contact tracing and other response efforts, which are a national model. We monitor the available data and analyze cases to identify trends and respond quickly.
We reiterate that vaccination is the most effective layer of protection against the devastating effects of this virus, and the additional layers of protection that are in place are intended to keep our community as safe as possible. We hope you will encourage everyone you know to get the vaccine. Be mindful of your interactions in the broader community where vaccination rates are lower and the risk of exposure is higher.
We encourage everyone to remain calm, and careful, as we move forward. We will use our collective intellect, creativity and expertise to tackle this challenge while still experiencing a one-of-a-kind collegiate experience. We are One Vanderbilt and one community. We are grateful for your commitment to keeping one another safe and for everything you do to support our educational mission.
Sincerely,
Daniel Diermeier
Chancellor
C. Cybele Raver
Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
Eric Kopstain
Vice Chancellor for Administration
Looks like they have quarantine housing for students as well.
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I talk all day , nonstop, 8-5:30, sometimes 30 patients a day and almost the whole visit is talking! I get it. I hope it gets better for you.
If vaccinated people are much less likely to get infected and much less likely to experience anything worse than a cold if they do get infected, then it really comes down to protecting:
- Medically vulnerable people who either cannot get vaccinated for medical reasons, or who have a weak or nonexistent response to vaccination.
- Those who choose not to get vaccinated.
- The college’s reputation, in terms of not having outbreaks hitting the news.
People generally probably overlook group 1 and consider group 2 as those taking voluntary risk of bad COVID-19 outcomes (and therefore not worth making an extra effort to protect if they will not do an easy act to protect themselves). The college is obviously concerned with 3, and it presumably believes that some prospective students or those in the local community are concerned enough that the college has to care. However, current students are less likely to be concerned about 3.
So if the college wants to “sell” a stricter COVID-19 policy (testing, quarantine, etc.) to vaccinated students, then it needs to convince vaccinated students that it is worth their extra effort and inconvenience to protect group 1 (the medically vulnerable).
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for K-8 on our school district, they have figured out a way to address parents on both ends of the issue. For non maskers (maybe the family got Delta already? the teachers?) they will offer a school where masks are optional . northern part of district and transportation up to the parents.
For the ones who want to go back to virtual, just K-2 , a new virtual option will be available. Parents must participate.
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