If vaccines basically convert COVID-19 into another common cold (a minor annoyance at most), then that may be a victory for most of those who choose to get vaccinated. However, the following issues arise:
There will still be serious sickness and death among those who choose not to vaccinate, at least until everyone who is not vaccinated has been infected. Their choice, their consequences… although they may overload the medical system and expose others like…
Medically vulnerable who get less or no protection from vaccination, or who medically cannot get vaccinated will be in significant danger, since a common cold is considered unimportant by most, but could be deadly for them.
Children under 12 are still vulnerable due to non-availability of vaccines. While less vulnerable than adults to serious COVID-19, there are enough occurrences that parents and other still worry about it, at least until vaccine are available.
Quarantine / isolation / other policies aimed at mitigating COVID-19 are likely to feel like an unnecessary burden to many vaccinated people, if they feel that it is no more than a common cold, and they are not in contact with medically vulnerable people or children under 12. The burden may be resented more if it is perceived as trying to protect the voluntary non-vaccinators who do not want to be protected.
This is dismaying, but given CDC’s behavior, I wonder if this is something they knew or suspected, and if this is what’s driving their “track only severe cases” stance. Because yeah, if it turns out that you’re very likely to catch it when it’s going around even if you’re vaxed, the disincentive there for vaccination is huge. They’ve done very poorly with the “get the flu shot because even if you do get flu, it’ll be mild” campaigns. People just shrug and decide they’re not going to get the flu even when we’re swimming in flu and they’ve been wrong about it two out of the last five years.
Our local curve is now nearly vertical, and we haven’t seen this many positive tests in a week since January. Students have only just come back, so I’m guessing most of this will be actual locals in a reasonably well-vaccinated locality.
And just found out that more senior staff quit today. I’m guessing there’ll be a rain of that as time runs out on the university to institute a mask mandate and more students show up. I talked with my chair today and suggested that staff/fac who do not absolutely need to be in the building should not be here. Not all of the jobs can be done remotely, but a lot can, and many of the rest can seriously restrict the number of people they’re sharing air with at one time. If the students insist on being here unmasked/unvaxed, we can at least try to keep them in student corridors: hallway, classrooms, student union, dorms, etc. No reason for them to be in staff/fac spaces unless they need to use equipment/instruments in there. And we need to make sure the faculty and staff with very young children or vulnerable people at home do not need to come to campus.
And I wonder if the CDC’s lack in really strengthening their guidance for quarantining which should have been done because of the transmissibility of Delta is also because of a reason many don’t realize. Because the Kids Must Be in School No Matter What stance now, no sense in making guidance that would be keeping kids OUT of school. Now 3’ is enough for contact tracing/quarantining with Delta? Makes no sense in schools. And now school districts are complaining about that, since there are so many quarantining in many school districts that have opened.
Regarding colleges, I expect much of the same, really, until there is agreement that all will eventually be exposed, no matter what.
I wonder how the enrollment cliff will impact schools that have built extra dorms to accommodate more students or have extra apartment complexes – Purdue for one. Multiple new complexes going up in Texas with barely investment grade debt ratings.
I think it will hit the less desirable schools the hardest - places that are already struggling to fill their classes. For schools that are already rejecting 70/80/90% of applicants (many very qualified) their acceptance rates may go up as the pool shrinks, but since they are inundated with a crazy number of applicants right now, that may not be a bad thing.
Like I told the STEM ed coordinator here yesterday, there’s no point in edding in STEM if you’re not going to use what you learn. It isn’t necessary for everyone to be exposed and catch an illness that, so far, appears to leave 10-30% of people with longterm problems.
It might not be necessary but since this thing is looking to become endemic it’s probably going to be reality. Not saying this year, or even next, but I’m pretty sure eventually everyone will get covid. Hopefully most are vaccinated and have little trouble.
Assuming that it’s real, there’ll be some massive white elephants around. Most of the state systems are deep in institutional debt after two decades of debt partying, and they’ve left themselves no way out except eternal growth and COA-jacking. There are schools out there that’ve gone looking for massive balloon loans, too. On an operational level, it’ll mean condensing state systems the way the PA system’s gone, leaving not-rich kids with even fewer options and giving our international powers another kick in the nuts. But on the level of “what do you do with the buildings,” I’m reminded of what it took to clean up industrial sites in the Rust Belt, some of which are still in ruins 30 years on. Miles of ruins. At least universities don’t normally give you the heavy-metals and industrial solvents problems. But those buildings will just be hanging around, because I don’t know of anyone who’s in the market for a sprawling, shabby campus with a few naff aluminum-clad lab buildings and a 1990s B-school prefab palace.
The issue is going to be timescale. “Endemic” for a virus and its diseases that you understand well (like flu, or malaria) and “endemic” for a mystery, still-fitting-to-host virus that’s currently laying waste are very different things. When you say “everyone will get covid”, we don’t even know yet what “covid” means – it’s still undergoing rapid evolution for us, and we have no way of knowing just yet how stable it is. We just don’t know enough yet about this virus. It’s an unusually large virus with a lot of room for mutation, and my guess is we’re going to get some significant surprises in the next few years, some of them large enough that we have to ask whether we call the new one covid or not. Given the difference in transmissibility (at a minimum, we don’t know what else) between wt and delta, we’re already having trouble with the messaging, since people are still taking precautions for a virus that effectively no longer exists.
It’s a coronavirus, just like the other ones that already plague mankind. Of course those have been around forever and are innocuous now. That’s probably what will happen with this one eventually (hopefully). But, change, morph or what, it will still be Covid and we’ll all probably still get it eventually.
Beyond that - unfortunately, saying “it’s a coronavirus like the others” isn’t really meaningful, given the range of known coronaviruses and what they can do to humans. The reason we have as much knowledge of spikes as we’ve got now is that several years ago we had some massively destructive coronaviruses rolling around, and fortunately they overplayed their hand and burned themselves out, but in the meantime money’s gone to research. This one’s hit a sweet spot, and evolutionary forces are still pulling the slots handle on it. The datasets will be magical for researchers whose brains are still functioning well after this.
My dd going to Emmanuel first year. “As a critical next step in ensuring the safety and vibrancy of the Emmanuel educational experience, the COVID-19 vaccine will be required for all students enrolled in classes for the 2021-2022 academic year.”
She is grateful for this mandate and will be wearing a mask every day! When she was touring she was unhappy with the schools that required nothing.
It does look like the long term effect on younger people is extremely limited. This UK article (paywalled) notes than 950,000 people have reported long term symptoms (of which 334K say it doesn’t affect their daily life “at all” and only 182K say it affects them “a lot”).
Amongst those 50% are over 50 and most of the rest are 35-49 years old. Only 34K are under 16.
IMO, it is awfully soon to be coming to any conclusions about long-term effects. Oncologists have told us that the case of mono my H contracted when he was 19 is a suspected link to the Hodgkins Lymphoma he developed many years later.
I have every intention of doing my very best to avoid contracting Covid, even if my vaccination makes it likely I’d have a mild or even asymptomatic case.
