Yes, he was complaining about the air circulation/ventilation issue, not the room size.
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While Iām perfectly content that my kidsā school and my own school have classroom mask mandates (for now; length of time TBD), what bothers me more is just the behavioral indecency, not necessarily the lack of mask mandate (although given GAās current level of transmission, I do believe they should require masks). For example, letās say Bowdoin does drop its classroom mask mandate soon if they deem that it is safe to do so in their circumstances. If Homerdogās son has an 88 year old professor who requests that his students wear masks after the mandate is over to make him feel more comfortable , I think heād be a real $#@*%$. to refuse to wear it (by the way, Iām guessing Homerdogās son is a good kid and would wear it for the professor). Similarly, even if my family arrives at an event early in order to get seats, if there is an 88 year old who arrives after us and has nowhere to sit, we graciously offer the seat to them, even though we are not required to do so. Itās just so blazingly obvious that those are the only decent options.
However, where this probably turns to a grayer area for me, so itās far more interesting, would be a circumstance like this: a campus that is 100% fully vaccinated, that is regularly testing everyone and it has exceptionally low or perhaps even zero recent transmission, in an area with declining and very low transmission. The experts on this campus have deemed the risks of covid as very minimal and therefore does not require masks. A youthful, physically healthy professor wants all their students to wear masks in their well-ventilated, air-purified, high-ceilinged, spacious classroom, despite the infinitesimal risk of covid, because this professor probably has an anxiety problem, and is not assessing risks in a rational way. I suppose in this case I would still hope my children would comply out of human decency (perhaps if itās an issue for them, comply in the classroom but then go have a conversation with someone about it), but at some point, the anxiety-riddled professor is impinging on the students lives in an irrational manner (when the risks of covid become lower than they used to be for catching other communicable diseases, and no one used to ask people to wear masks because they could have meningitis theoretically). Anyway, I think we will be heading towards more of these grayer-areas, whereas this UGa case with the 88 year old professor seems pretty obviously wrong, I would hope even to most people who are ready to ditch their masks.
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Brava @EmptyNestSoon2 Well said
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Some of the old social distancing rules were based on incomplete information. Unfortunately, better information available now (e.g. the large difference in risk between indoor and outdoor) seems to be ignored much of the time.
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What if the young professor is teaching a pre- registration medical professional course and a handful of those students work part time on a COVID ward in the local hospital as an assistant nurse?
Unless a school has purely wealthy students who donāt need to work pay their way through school to at least some extent then itās impossible for those students to be in an air tight bubble.
Ahhh, but I said it was in a very low risk area with barely any local transmission (these means emptying Covid wardsā¦). This will be the case in many areas of our country in the coming months as we get through this awful delta surge. There really will be circumstances of lower risk, and there will be Uber-anxious people who wont clearly recognize it when it happens (additionally, in the medical settings, we wear n95s and take precautions to protect ourselves and others). These risk assessments donāt have to do with wealth. And plenty of wealthy students work in their communities, obviously 
. The experts at the school have already deemed the overall situation as safe and are thoughtfully no longer requiring masks on this campus, even knowing that some of their students (wealthy and not) have work obligations and other reasons to sometimes mix in the low-risk local community. Although you might want to highjack my scenario, I tried to be clear: there will be times when risk in areas eventually get very low, yet there will be people not ready to see that. Thatās what Iāll see as a gray areaābeing respectful of othersā wishes even when they are irrational. These are situations people will be managing going forward, and I hope we can all handle them with grace.
I donāt know if this will effect study abroad plans this year, but will be keeping an eye on this.
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Dukeās CV positive cases jumped from last week. 349 students positive, up to 1.59% positivity rate (last week .64%). Duke letting faculty decide if they want to go remote for the next two weeks or continue to teach in person classes. No more indoor dining. Masks indoor and outdoor unless drinking/eating; exercising alone or ānot around othersā.
Any idea what their vaccination rate was?
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Here we goā¦ Moved my D20 into the dorms on Wednesday. Her roommate began to feel unwell on Saturday and tested positive today. My D feels fine, for now, but just got a pcr test.
Iām pretty sure that some professors will ask kids to wear masks for class at Bowdoin and that all will comply. With fewer than five students total with medical waivers, there really arenāt kids there who would refuse to do what they are asked.
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Duke has a student vaccination rate of 98% and an employee rate of 92%. From their community message to give perspective:
āIn the last week alone, 304 undergraduates, 45 graduate students and 15 employees tested positive for COVID-19 and are isolating. All but eight of these individuals were vaccinated, and the vast majority of them were, and continue to be, asymptomatic. A small number have minor, cold- and flu-like symptoms, and none have been hospitalized.ā
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Duke did PCR testing upon arrival and it took 24-48 hours to get results. Kids were not asked to quarantine while they waited for results. Seems like they should have used rapid tests. Clearly some kids came to campus with Covid.
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Students vaccination rates were 98%, faculty 95%.
Iām sure some kids did show up to Duke with Covid, but the bigger issue were the packed bars and fraternities before classes started - considering the positive rate of the surrounding community, there was no possible way there wasnāt going to be transmission. Pretty much everyone my daughter knows who arrived early to help with freshman orientation is positive. Forget online classes, if they want to stop the spread, shut down the bars and fraternities.
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@Darcy123 Yep, and itās not just this college. You are going to see the same thing take place with colleges throughout the nation, unfortunately. I think there is/was a false sense of security by the students that if they are vaccinated, they are āuntouchableā.
The big question is will colleges (and high schools) go to mandatory online learning again this fall or will they āacceptā that x % of students and faculty/admin will get CV but the school will continue to forge aheadā¦?
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The vast majority of universities are NOT testing vaccinated students regularly. I think itās really only a dozen or so and the majority of those are in New England where the surrounding vaccination rates may save them from huge numbers. I think itās going to be extremely difficult for Duke to deal with the reality of large numbers - I have no doubt UNC Chapel Hill has the exact same problem if not worse, but theyāre not testing vaccinated students and so can ride it out hoping no one becomes seriously ill - which is much riskier from them as they do not have the same student/staff vaccination rate.
My daughterās still waiting to hear from her professors on how theyāre going to operate for next 2 weeks. If Duke decides to go online, I seriously wish Duke would just send them home - last semester was way worse than fall and with the campus at full capacity they are not going to stop spread without insane restrictions.
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I agree. Unfortunately many (most?) schools are not testing.
so if 98% are vaccinated, and by being vaccinated you dont get as sick, or sick at all, and the staff likely is vaccinated as well, and everyone has to wear masks in the classroom, at one point does putting things online and locking down make no sense.? The vaccines apparently do not stop delta, just how sick ones gets from it. The colleges went out of their way to Require vaccines and Masks and are worse off because of Delta than last year.
It almost makes sense if they can isolate from the community in some cases to just let the darn thing do its thing. There is not enough Q or Isolation space for all these students. There is no stopping Delta right now, even in the highly vaccinated states.
I think eventually everyone will likely get delta or a variant at some point. The vaccines prevent death, hospitalizations and hopefully long covid for the young.
Vaccines were suppose to make fall 21 ānormalā . I guess we are back to online classes for all. We need in a vaccinated population to live with it.
Just my 2 cents.
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my reply is for schools that required vaccines. For those that dont, and have a high population of unvaccinated, the story is different