D’s college last year had strict rules and tons of surveillance testing including monitoring wastewater from dorms. They have discontinued both because they were too much money and/or effort, as they explained in an online meeting with families. How on earth do colleges even expect to have a handle on how many infections there are? I feel like administrators are taking the ostrich approach - stick your head in the sand and it just goes away.
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That would be the usual way for university admins, though the idea is to stick your head in the sand until the parents go away, which usually takes a maximum of four years, blink of an eye in university time.
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The Rice reddit isn’t providing a whole lot of clarity on the situation – someone said 35 positives in a week, but who knows how accurate that is – but it does show that Rice students have a long way to go in reading comprehension of health news. Very disheartening – if Rice kids can’t get the story straight, I don’t see what hope there is for most people.
A guy who came to work on my internet service the other day was wearing a neck gaiter with a mask under it, had the gaiter pulled way up because someone told him you can catch covid through your ears.
Are any colleges/universities doing wastewater testing this year? My daughter’s school did wastewater testing plus multiple testing each week last year but has discontinued both (weekly testing only for those 1.5% of campus unvaccinated absent symptoms).
It’s not a matter of the kids getting the story straight - information is not being given out at this point. So it’s all just rumors.
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This communication below shows the vaccination rate at Rice as of a week or so ago. 98% of undergrads had filled out the survey and of those 94% reported they were vaccinated. Some of the international students just received their vaccinations last week when they arrived in Houston. I assume more have reported since then since students have holds on their accounts (can’t register or change classes) and there are other consequences for not reporting. My daughter did have to upload her vaccination card.
https://coronavirus.rice.edu/news/covid-19-response-weekly-update-august-16
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If he was wearing a mask and had an additional layer on top of that then he is extra protected.
I say, let him be. There are much worse beliefs out there.
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The school has not released numbers yet as they are still working through retests but a parent said that her child was retested and told they were retesting about 2/3 of the positive cases.
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They’re discussing Covid/vax/booster news generally on the subreddit, not just the Rice numbers. You can go have a look if you like, you don’t have to be on reddit to read.
I’m impressed by the amount of spine they’re showing there, btw. I mean yes, there’s considerable rep and money on the line if they don’t, but it’s not easy, where they are.
I did, and there are. The point is the sea of misinfo and the lack of ability to ask questions critically about the info from random sources and factcheck.
I’ve seen it. I just know that the kids on campus have no idea what is going on in regards to the current situation with the positives. The only students on campus right now are freshman and orientation week advisors who have been completely wrapped up in orientation until today. The rest of the population is not even there yet and is only hearing rumors and what the school is officially putting out. And there are a lot of rumors going around. All they know is there were a lot of positives and Rice cracked down. They were angry about it. Now they are hearing there were a lot of false positives but it’s a lot of speculation. Reddit is also not very popular at Rice. It tends to be the same few people, alums, and parents who post there. I would not say it’s a very representative population - in my opinion.
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I’m surprised that Rice doesn’t share much information on its COVID dashboard.
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They had a great covid dashboard last year. They took it down at the end of the year when they stopped testing. We were told they were making changes to it to reflect some different information and it would be back this week but it wasn’t. I suspect because they realized the information was wrong due to the possible false positives and are waiting to update it before making it public.
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This is surprising news.
Well, our K12 public schools are about to close again. 1100 cases in the first 2 weeks of school. No vax mandate, no vax possible for 5-11, and no mask mandate. That was predictable.
Wow! That’s a lot of cases. How many people total are in the school district?
I believe they have 66k kids enrolled.
@JBStillFlying the rest of the hotel became housing. the renovated it.
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Have they announced they are going remote or are parents and teachers making educated guesses?
They announced on Friday afternoon that the situation was dire and would need to immediately improve to stay in person. I expect midweek they will go remote. If there were 1100 reported cases, I expect there were another 2-3k unreported. A community positivity rate of 23% leaves few options
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