It looks like VT students are leading fairly normal lives. Whether or not the school is testing everyone really doesn’t matter as long as the campus isn’t overrun with sick students and staff. As was pointed out earlier, VT seems to be less risk averse and it is currently paying off for students and parents.
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Yes, when it came down to it, how schools handled Covid did factor into the college choice my son made. He wanted to attend classes in person and not get sick. I think how schools handle Covid will be a bigger factor in college decisions for the Class of 2022. You have to choose what is right for you.
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I think its an issue of having them washed and ready, staffing impacts dish room. etc.
Barnard’s weekly results:
6 positive out of 3,387 tests - 0.12%.
https://alert.barnard.edu/dashboard
Students have an app to schedule their recurring walk-in test appointments and usually see their result updated the next day. Their app will act as a pass to facilities as long as their most recent test was within x days.
Barnard and Columbia U had instituted temporary restrictions to dorm visitors, and made some food options grab’n’go after an up-tick the week prior that were traced to off-campus gatherings. The Univ implored students to adapt their behavior to help keep everything in-person.
Actively monitoring COVID state is crucial to be able isolate early/proactively, and to dynamically adjust policies early-on!
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You wouldn’t know you were overrun, if you only test those who report symptoms, and only after they got sick.
It’s like posting sole sentries at the only gate at your Fort and let them report if your fort was being overrun — ignoring the hoards that scaled the other 3 sides.
Many colleges seem to have moved away from last year’s zero tolerance towards covid towards a more reasonable expectation of limited outbreaks balanced by moderate safety measures.
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My son’s university has over 20,000 students. It’s like a small town. Are there small towns in America testing everyone? Covid isn’t going away. People need to live with it. The population at his school is 90%+ vaccinated(BTW, the surrounding area most definitely isn’t vaccinated anywhere near that level). These are young people that generally handle the virus better than older populations. They’re required to mask indoors. Classes are in person. Football games are happening. They’re doing the right things and living their lives to the best of their abilities. What would you have them do differently?
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Bowdoin moved back to green so they are really trying to get back to a more normal situation. Only had one case in the last ten days for students. They didn’t plan to do much surveillance testing but started testing twice a week after they had 30-some cases. So, indoor dining is back at 100 percent, no masks required in dorms, and masks can come off at the student union too if you’re hanging out studying and not in a big group. Masks likely to be required in class for the rest of the semester.
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Simmons continues to do well. As of 9/23 they were at a .19% positivity rate. We just got the email about parents weekend. All visitors to campus will be required to upload negative test results before arriving.
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Second hand knowledge but Pomona College has zero cases and is still PCR testing everyone every week.
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Columbia has more than 30,000 students!?
Not quite - in a small town of 20,000 (like my home town), some people live in apartments, many more live in homes, some rural - over many many square miles. They don’t all congregate daily by the thousands in the same lecture halls, dining rooms, libraries.
Given that (most) Universities are just this fall trying to open fully for the first time for all students, specially amidst a much-more-deadly variant that causes more young people to be affected - would it not be super-sensible to start off the semester with tight monitoring of this “live trial” - and start relaxing things progressively once they have actual data to base their decisions on?
Instead “People” are dying with it - otherwise this wouldn’t be a topic, wouldn’t it?
Yes, younger people on campus generally handle it better than the older populations staffing the surrounding businesses, restaurants, grocery stores, movie theatres,…
Some Universities do accept, that their actions greatly affect the communities that surround them and let that influence their decisions!
Universities are in the fortunate situation that they can act like small countries - that have intelligent leaders: They can mandate testing, they can enforce effective contact tracing, incl. the required use of suitable mobile apps, etc.
We know what works - because we can watch it work better in other industrialized nations.
We even had plenty of advance notice: By watching the virus explode in Northern Italy until an entire swath of the country was fenced off, we knew 3 - 4 weeks ahead of time what we could have ramped up in the meantime to be better prepared than Italy could have been.
In comparison, by the time it go to the autoparts-manufacturer in southern Germany, they already were all hands on deck, with contact tracing, isolations, etc.
Yes, we can remain ignorant and tell the thousands of U.S. deaths each week that they just needed to “live” with it!
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I really wish people would find another way to say what they mean here, because the problem is precisely the number of people who don’t live with it, and some uncounted number who would dearly love to stop living with it but are still sick after months, can’t work, can’t do anything about it, can’t find treatment because it doesn’t exist.
If it’s hard for people to get their heads around that, then take the picture to the end of the line: you get a call from your son, he’s tested positive, he doesn’t feel good, you make reassuring noises but are far away and something in his voice makes you very nervous. Four days later he’s in the hospital. Twelve days later he’s full of tubes. And then you luck out: two months later he comes out of the hospital. Nevermind the bill that’ll come with more digits than you’ve seen at once before on a bill, and yes it’ll be real: he’s alive. But he’s decidedly unwell, and you will spend at least the next year of your life as his nurse and do-everything parent. You take a leave of absence from your job which may well turn into “not coming back”.
Everything he worked for is gone. He can’t think straight and has taken a semester off that turned into two, and now you can’t tell whether he’ll ever be going back, ever be able to handle the rigor and pace of his school. His new friends have mostly moved on. He and his girlfriend, after a painfully long time, decided she’d start seeing other people. His old friends from high school are scattered. He gets tired going from room to room in your house and is suicidal a good bit of the time. Frankly, it’s not a sentiment unknown to you, either, and your marriage is suffering.
Now. What would you like to do so that this doesn’t happen?
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Yes, very sad scenario, could also happen as a result of a car accident, of course. We still drive.
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Sons school has a less than a 2% positivity rate, but they are not conducting regular surveillance testing of vaccinated students. Football games and activities are going on business as usual. Son reports that he has not heard of anyone testing positive in his dorm or classes. My school age kids are in school(not eligible for vaccine) no social distancing and they have not gotten sick or been a close contact of anyone that was sick.
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The U.S. ranks 47th as a country when it comes to vaccination status. You may want to turn your accusatory finger at the surrounding areas around campuses with 90%+ vaccinatation rates. I just checked, the town my son’s college is in has a vaccination rate of 45.9%. The school’s vaccination rate essentially laps the locals. How many of the “thousands of U.S. deaths each week” are vaccinated college students? Maybe the town should be surveilance testing to protect the students.
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@bennty My son is an EMT that has worked through this entire pandemic. He’s been decontaminated more times than I can tally because of Covid patients in his ambulance. He’s very good about PPE and constant cleaning. He’s transported a total of 2 students to the ER with Covid. Both had excellent SpO2 levels and were likely having panic attacks rather than Covid related breathing issues. He hasn’t transported a single student since 2020.
I’m living with health issues that I didn’t cause. I’m perfectly comfortable with advising people to live with Covid as a potential risk. Until more Amerians get vaccinated this isn’t going to slow down.
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We are in agreement that the low vaccinations rates need to be improved and are a key driver!
But when two people can take action to affect an outcome, then either one of them should move still forward what with THEY can, rather than finding excuses for their own inactions by pointing to someone else lack of action (even if this is America).
Columbia isn’t testing everyone, every week are they? A friend’s D attends and she said they had to test on arrival and then participate in random surveillance testing if vaccinated or weekly if unvaccinated.
Schools are like states. Each state has implemented Covid protocols and restrictions In their own way; California vs Texas or Florida. Some more stringently and widespread than others. It’s the risk assessment/tolerance argument again. To use your country analogy it’s like Sweden vs New Zealand. And students are able, to a certain extent, to choose the schools that align with their (and their parents) risk tolerance. Last year, even before the vaccines were available, many schools didn’t implement widespread testing.
As far as working better, no country has a stellar record with covid. People held up New Zealand and Australia as the gold standard but at what cost? they’ve basically isolated themselves from the rest of the world and implemented marshal law. The US was never going down that path, nor did approx 98% of the rest of the countries in the world. Even countries that implemented strict protocols have had widespread death and multiple surges and waves. Heck, in the US, even states with the most strict masking and restrictions have struggled such as Hawaii and California.
We have incredibly effective vaccines. People have unfettered access to them. Many schools are comfortable with relying on a high level of student and staff vaccination and are not requiring daily or weekly testing of every student. Some are not.
Society, in general, is open. Yes we have masking (albeit with uneven uptake) and some vaccine and testing mandates, but no lockdowns or social distancing. Most universities and colleges are mirroring this, to greater or lesser extents.
The people dying of Covid are primarily the unvaccinated and that’s their choice. It’s unfortunate that there’s a quarter or so of the population refusing to be vaccinated but the glass half full view is that nearly 75% of the country is at least partly if not fully vaccinated and hopefully some of that remaining 25% has some type of immunity from prior infection. As a country we are moving in the right direction. natural infection will eventually reach all the unvaccinated and they’ll either survive and have immunity or they won’t.
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As best I can tell, the school is following CDC guidelines. What authority are you basing your standards on?
I am very proud of our young people, who essentially did their “Americorps year” by manning the volunteer EMS services, while many/most older members understandibly stepped away.
My daughter and her young peers essentially ran our town’s EMS through the worst of it all, when even paid police offers were banned from entering residences any more, and fire fighters could not longer help with lift-assists. The only help they got for a while was volunteers using huge bales of plastic sheets to make them gowns, and financial donations to afford the purchase of UV devices so that they could keep reusing the same N95’s over and over!
That was the only “up-side” to colleges having gone remote: it brought our young volunteers back to their home towns where they kept us all safer - while all along she was terrified what she might end up bringing home to us one day.
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