Thanks for sharing that article! Very interesting. Now if they had only mentioned long covid among the breakthrough cases!
It seems that vaccinated people who get Covid are contagious for less time than the unvaccinated. So wondering if the 10-14 day isolation is necessary? If a vaccinated student tests positive, I would want a confirmative test done the next day, and if that one is also positive and the student goes into isolation, then he/she should be testing at regular intervals and be returned to class as soon as the test is negative. That may be well before 10-14 days.
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Agreed. It does seem like isolation could be shorter. The college Iâve seen that have posted isolation info are still saying 10 days because CDC hasnât changed that. Itâs my hope as well that isolation days be cut way shorter than that! Hopefully, there will be more info soon about viral loads and that could change.
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If we need to test everyone for Covid on a campus with vaccination rates at 95+, then we should be testing regularly for more diseases. Why isnât everyone routinely tested for influenza, meningitis, MRSA, RSV, mono, rotavirus, and enteroviruses?
A certain percentage of people infected with all of those diseases is asymptomatic.
In-person instruction would be impossible if we quarantined anyone who tested positive for an infectious disease. Some relatively common infectious diseases are worse than Covid and we donât even have a vaccine for a lot of them, yet we are not testing everyone multiple times a week.
(Edited to say that I meant to reply to the thread, not @EmptyNestSoon2 âsorry about that!)
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oh my - the original comment was removed before I saw it but not sure why there would be any assumption about the smarts of âfarm kidsâ or children of first responders. I had farmers as clients in my corporate finance practice back in a former life and they were among the most sophisticated and knowledgable about financial matters. Many of the âfarm kidsâ around here end up at our state flagshipâs (well-regarded) engineering program, among other opportunities. So not sure where that comment came from. My kidsâ college has been actively reaching out to children of first responders for a few years now and Iâm sure they are not the only ones to do so. There are bright, driven students pretty much everywhere and there remain a good number of untapped wells.
GPA is correlated with good exit outcomes, but thatâs because of what it signals about ability and diligence. I truly doubt employers and grad schools stop there; those are typically minimum requirements for any job or grad school admission.
Duke announces 2 clusters - 29 medical students and 7 field hockey team members. All vaccinated, most asymptomatic - theyâre now required to isolate for 10 days. I am very worried about how they will keep classes in person.
Here is the press release:
Looks like the vaccines did their jobs in changing COVID-19 from a significant health threat to a minor annoyance (health-wise) for those students. But now they lose 10 days of school. Given how much medical school crams into classes, catching up may be hard to do for the medical students (though if the medical students are in contact with vulnerable patients, they do need to avoid such contact anyway).
They could just let the unlucky students forced out of school for 10 days at a time to catch up by themselves.
Dukeâs web site does not seem to mention how required 10 day isolation is handled and whether it is a Duke-provided COVID-19 dorm or the students must find a place at their own expense (or hit the street like homeless people).
They had isolation dorms and used hotels for short term quarantine last year, arranged by Duke, theyâve communicated nothing about a change to that - so Iâd be very surprised if students needed to find their own accommodations.
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I remember watching a segment on CNN last year on an interview of a young, college age, women whoâs younger brother just passed away of COVID. The boy had prexisting medical conditions and got the disease from their father who was a front line essential worker and caught it on the job.
There is a situation where asymptomatic screening and relocation/ isolation ( of the father) could have saved a life.
If college students donât want the inconvenience of missing class, I suggest they tell the college to sponsor a nearby low SES housing development instead . Kill two birds with one stone.
The death of a child is always a tragedy. A medically fragile child is susceptible to many diseases. For example, RSV sends 57,000 American children to the hospital each year, and about 500 die. RSV spreads the same way as Covid, but we do not have a vaccine for it, and over 40% of RSV infections are asymptomatic. Should we be testing everyone for RSV, and quarantining?
RSV is just one common disease that could be deadly for a vulnerable segment of our population. We have a vaccine for influenza, but an average of 36,000 Americans die of it every year anyway. One in three influenza infections are asymptomatic.
MRSA kills about 20,000 a year, and about 6 million Americans are carrying it asymptomatically at any one time. I could go on, but I think the point is that we canât possibly test everyone constantly for every potentially dangerous infectious disease.
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So now we are suggesting that families should be separated and quarantined outside their home whenever someone tests positive? How does that end well?
I was talking specifically about routine COVID testing in colleges.
The current discussion here was about how some students donât want to face the negative consequences of testing positive so might avoid testing. I said fine, donât test and tell the college to donate that test and room in a quarantine dorm/hotel to a person in a medically vulnerable household who wants it and otherwise canât afford it. Win Win.
I absolutely agree that instead of testing young, healthy, vaccinated, asymptomatic college students, we should test parents of medically fragile children, caregivers for the elderly, etc.
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Was just reading about how the ped hospitals in TX were full not only of Covid patients but RSV as well! RSV is apparently having a pretty strong showing in several states now, having been put off this past winter due to masking and social distancing.
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I donât think this semester is too soon to get on with it. But I agree with you that things may move (too) slowly.
I thought this column from Peggy Noonan (even though itâs focused more on K-12) hit the right note:
âAt a certain point youâve got to remember what Sean Conneryâs character said in David Mametâs great screenplay of âThe Untouchables.â The Canadian Mounties had screwed up the ambush, Eliot Nessâs men didnât know whether to join in. âOh what the hell, you gotta die of something,â Conneryâs character said. And they charged.
Life has to be lived.
And school this fall is everything. The only truly dreadful decision that could be made is if class doesnât start throughout the country in September. That would be a generational disaster for kids who by then will have missed more than a year at school, some at vital stages. They will never make up what they were supposed to learn, and kids from disturbed and neglectful homes will never fully recover from what they witnessed or experienced. Itâs going to take a lot to turn that around. We canât even imagine what it will take.
If school does not begin across the country, it will curdle public opinion toward Joe Biden. A presidentâs base is, actually, the entire country. Heâd be better off fearing that.â
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Letâs live in a parallel universe where in March 2020 the federal government invested massively in education. Letâs say that every school in the country had a 15 to 1 student teacher ratio so every kid could socially distance in class. Every teacher had personal access to masks, hand sanitizer and biweekly testing. They are given 10 days paid time off on top of their normal sick leave entitlement should they get covid. Those teachers of high medical risk of covid, ( 65+, pre-existing conditions etc ) are allowed to either retire with full pension or teach online.
Why is the choice made out to be either close schools or open suboptimaly?
UCF is doing recruitment virtually. That was not the original plan. I just hope they keep in person classes.
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As a FYI, most medical schools record lectures which are then posted to the class website for students to review at their convenience. Itâs pretty common at some schools-- those without mandatory lecture attendance-- for students to skip lecture altogether and just review the recordings (often at high speed).
Now the in-person clinical stuffâmissing 10 days is a big deal. Given that many clinical rotations are only 3-4 weeks long, a student may have to remediate a rotation if they miss half of it due to being in covid isolation.
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I hope schools have plans for recorded lectures and so forth if theyâre going to test, isolate and quarantine students. I would be amazed at the complete reversal from spring 2021 to fall 2021 of just about every Covid protocol/restriction, except that higher Ed is a business and they canât afford another year like last year.
Like another poster mentioned upthread, Iâm trying to adjust to the idea that my D will get Covid sometime this year, and I just hope itâs not a severe case and she can make up the work sheâll miss.
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Read this one and tell me that again.
There are things worse than zoom school.
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