We do. With seatbelts. And airbags. And abs brakes. And all sorts of other mandated safety features. And some of us stop at stop signs, slow down around schools and follow the numerous traffic laws. It’s all geared toward minimizing the risk to ourselves and others, even in situations where the risk seems extremely low.
Risk analysis has to consider the cost of avoiding the risk, and low cost measures may make sense even when the risk seems small. What’s the “cost” of wearing a mask? Is it greater than wearing a seatbelt?
Maybe the non-maskers also skip seatbelts? Driving is risky. I wear a seatbelt and drive a big SUV. You couldn’t pay me to drive a little car. People make their own risk assessments everyday. People scuba, sky dive, bungee jump. I wouldn’t do any of those. Living does come with a certain amount of risk. And we each live at the level we’re comfortable.
Williams is testing vaccinated students, staff, and faculty 1x week, unvaccinated 2x week. They are at 0 positives; the last positive test was 11 days ago. (They haven’t had an outbreak this semester.)
The college has announced a strict testing policy for those who travel off-campus. “Students, if you plan to take a personal trip outside of Berkshire County during the four-day weekend in mid-October or at any point this fall, you should carefully review the student travel requirements first. After you get back you’ll have to mask everywhere on campus (including in residence halls, except your own room, and takeout dining only) until you clear two negative tests.”
When vaccinated students arrived on campus at the beginning of the semester, they only had to clear one negative test to be able to dine indoors and go maskless in the dorms.
Maybe. And maybe they drive drunk. Sometimes our risk assessments aren’t just about us. Some are not comfortable with others driving drunk, or at excessive speeds, or violating other rules which put us all at danger.
And some acknowledge that we have reasonable driving rules, most obey them, and we hope for the best. We don’t adopt a speed limit of 10mph, though that would save lives. We balance the rules with the risk.
If you are caught driving without a seatbelt the police will stop and you give you a ticket. If caught without a mask some poor store clerk will ask you to put one on but that’s about it. If the police gave out substantial tickets for not wearing a mask, I think more would wear the masks.
Saw the aftermath of a crash between an SUV and a car. The SUV was upside-down while the car was right-side-up. However, it looked like no serious injuries.
And yet people still get tickets every day for seatbelts, speeding, drunk driving, reckless driving, texting while driving, etc.
I haven’t seen a law passed yet regarding general mask wearing with penalties outside of a few circumstances. I’m not sure I want the police to focus so much energy on masks. I’d prefer them to keep focusing on other things.
I’m not necessarily saying that people should get tickets for not wearing masks, just pointing out that, compared to not wearing a seatbelt, not wearing a mask does not have much of a punishment. In fact when seat belt laws were first passed I did not wear mine because it was uncomfortable. I was a bit annoyed actually. But after getting a ticket I’ve always worn it, and I don’t even notice anymore. Just something I do. Like wear a mask in public.
Well - I think any discussion of risk tolerance has to include the surrounding areas, because schools aren’t bubbled.
Notably absent from the discussion of who comes and goes are the large – sometimes enormous – staffs that make the place run. The professors are the tip of the iceberg. You have facilities maintenance people. Clerical staff of all kinds. Student advisors. Financial aid office people. Grants office people. Janitorial staff. Catering and food service staff. Disability services people. Student health people. Residential services and student-life people. Development people, admissions people, the list goes on and on. And while only some of them will have direct contact with students, they will all have direct contact with other employees who have direct with students.
There’s a somewhat addictive and quite simple epidemic game that gives a feel for why it’s important to take that broader view: https://vax.herokuapp.com/ . Substitute “mask” for “vax” and you get a very similar idea.
Which is why I think the feds can stop pussyfooting around the way they have been. I do get the whole bipartisan thing but what you’re describing is what happens with almost every new regulation. People complain, but in the end it’s not an onerous thing, and then it’s just part of normal living except for the fringe activists. Same thing happened with recycling and smoking bans in restaurants – people were out of their minds furious, and now they’re bothered if someone throws paper in the garbage at work or puts a cigarette on the table in a restaurant.
I was using the seat belts in cars before it was required, since it was obvious to me that being strapped into the seat was safer than being bounced around the inside of the car if a crash occurred (and it was obvious without having been in a car crash). Although maybe looking at the crash photos in the California Highway Patrolman magazine in the school library had some influence…
I did find it annoying that, for several years, cars sold in the US had to have “automatic restraints”, meaning either automatic seat belts (that were generally worse than regular seat belts) or (early) air bags (with high power deployment for unbelted occupants which made them less safe for some occupants using the seat belts – this was before they had variable power air bags based on seat belt use, seat position, and/or weight), because so many people in the US did not use the seat belts.
Colleges are always required as a minimum to follow the local or state directives regarding g protective measures, so it is never an option for them to be less risk averse than the surrounding communities. The only question is how many additional precautions, if any, they need to take beyond what ordinary citizens in the community are doing.
All the administrative support staff is also present in the K12 schools, in some companies, and in institutions. The Columbia University dining staff, for example, is likely to be exposed to the same risk as the dining staff at PS 112, or at the UN dining room, or NYC restaurants. In all cases, they are likely to live and commute in crowded conditions; there is nothing special that puts college staff more at risk than other workers. Possibly less, since so many colleges require vaccination.
The point is that the world of people extends beyond university students, and they matter, too. Even on CC.
For a long time I drove old cars partly because I didn’t want an overpowered airbag going off and smashing my face or doing worse damage.
A few years ago I stopped driving on highways. The local ones had become much more crowded, drivers faster and more aggressive, much more truck traffic. People’s cars are poorly maintained, and life in general here seems undervalued to me despite the politics around abortion. My vision and reflexes are not getting better with age, so after a particularly harrowing trip I was like that’s it, I’m out. I was fine with accepting the crazy-person label until a friend two blocks away was smashed in a highway pileup while running errands. Exactly my nightmare scenario: a non-roadworthy car in front of her stopped cold, she got caught in the pileup, and the guy behind her was in a deferred-maintenance truck. And that was it. At her memorial service, her poor stunned family was wondering aloud why, and I thought, “It’s very dangerous.” (Side note: memorial services. Why, why make just-bereft people dress up and put on a show. Seems so terribly cruel.)
The handling of the pandemic was doomed from the start, as the continental US is like 48 different countries, each with their own rules. State borders remained open, allowing those from states with strict rules to easily travel to “yolo” mask-less states and bring the virus back with them (not to mention many border cites who have workers that come over the state lines to work or attend school every day). This continues to be an issue as the pandemic marches on.
I did my part and got vaccinated. I do my part and follow the masking rules - primarily because the thought of being locked down again is too much to bear. I try not to show anger toward people I know who have actively CHOSEN not to get vaccinated, but that’s a tough one (thankfully common sense has prevailed with most of them and I’ve chosen to distance myself from the others because I fear that longstanding friendships could end).
Likewise, my college daughter follows the rules and her reward is having as normal a freshman year as is possible during a pandemic. I am satisfied with how her university is handling Covid. She is vaccinated on a vaccine-mandated campus and wearing masks in class, dining hall, library, etc. Every day that she is able to attend class, her clubs and sporting events, is a gift. They do not surveillance test and I support that as well. If I didn’t, I would be free to move her to a more strict college environment, or keep her home altogether.
Everyone has their own comfort level and the freedom to choose whether to send their kid to college during these times (and what kind of college to send your kid to). There is simply no way to compare what small LAC’s are doing with massive public universities. This is part of living with the virus. Each of us can choose how we do that. For some it may mean never leaving their houses for fear of contracting the virus. For others it means cautiously moving forward with life under this new normal.
Thought I’d swing back and give a Purdue update. They are only up to 85% fully vaccinated because they did not mandate the vaccine. That said, masks required indoors, they are still distancing classrooms, and they spent a bunch of money last year on air exchangers and such. Only testing non vaccinated students weekly plus those that are symptomatic or contact traced. Per the school newspaper they expelled a bunch of students who weren’t complying with testing.
Positivity rate continues to trend down and is below 1%, only 8 beds occupied in quarantine housing. There are currently 32 active cases with a total campus population of 55K (staff included).
D’s friends report that it’s basically business as usual with 100% mask compliance indoors. D is finishing up her final co-op rotation and has been on site in manufacturing facilities for almost all of Covid. I’m hoping there will be even higher vaccine rates (and boosters) when she returns to campus in January.
Purdue’s president sent a video message out yesterday basically saying they’ve been lucky with good weather and as more and more things move indoors, students need to be extra vigilant about mask wearing. He continues to urge vaccinations.
Each individual college has it’s own set of circumstances. There really isn’t one size fits all. Each individual college is responsible for following CDC and local guidelines. After that they are free to make decisions based on their own individual situations.
