Acquaintances here went to Vegas for Thanksgiving and tested positive after returning home on the 30th. Monday, the husband was posting on FB how he was at the airport flying for work - less than a week later!! The wife is still symptomatic and the kid is still out of school…
Oh I’m sure that’s happening but a college can’t willingly release a student to hop into a cab to go to an airport.
I can’t imagine colleges with 21,000++ students having the manpower to monitor that. Are they going to physically restrain kids from leaving? Airlines aren’t requiring passengers to have a negative test before flying. Again though, if you’re vaccinated and masked then it shouldn’t be an issue. Those who choose not to vaccinate fly at their own peril. Those who can’t vaccinate should possibly avoid flying.
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I’m only talking about smaller schools that are testing everyone twice a week. They’ve got a system down with kids required to take PCR tests on a schedule. Those kids could get a positive test just a day before their flights out.
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This is an issue of responsibility. Should someone who knows s/he is infectious fly on an airplane? Should a college allow its students who it knows are infectious to fly home? Should an airline allow a passenger who it knows is infectious to board its airplane?
Schools offer isolation to their undergrads for the students’ benefit; they are not in the business of forcible confinement of adults. Students are always free to depart, but colleges can impose school specific consequences for departures contrary to school policies. Many adults students will make their own arrangements for isolation and or travel as they see fit.
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Hm well let’s hope it doesn’t come up p students leaving isolation and being punished by their college.
I think there would be very few such cases. Colleges would prefer not to provide housing and meals over winter break, and adults should be capable of making alternative arrangements for themselves. Nowhere else are infectious adults monitored in the US.
As mentioned above, it is safe to assume contagious people are near you at all times in public.
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D20’s school actually requires that anyone who lives within 200 miles of the school quarantine at home, if needed. So, I don’t think they would be knocking themselves out to keep students on campus.
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Rather depends upon their staffing issues over winter break,some of which may be subject to union rules. Some schools can remain open for the extra weeks and encourage internationals and others to remain; others have no staff to cover that time.
I agree. I do wonder if schools that do surveillance testing will stop doing so before finals so they don’t get in that situation.
I couldn’t imagine even the teeny tiny LAC’s wanting to get into the business of policing whether kids with a positive test get on an airplane. In-house legal departments all over the college world be imploding!
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To be clear, S21 did not have any remote classes. He started college fairly early compared to my other kids’ colleges. HIs freshman orientation started 8/12 and class for all students started 8/16. They planned it this way. His break is less than one week longer than S19 so he’s really not missing out on any more time with his college friends. In fact, several of them actually live in the DC/Philly area like us so they have already planned to go see their college basketball team play Villanova in a couple of weeks.
And the upside is that since he is home a couple weeks earlier than most college kids and while the high schoolers are still in school, he is getting to work a lot of hours back at his old job, yet have the weekends off when the high schoolers all work.
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@DeeCee36 As I mentioned to Homer, my son’s college did not pivot to remote classes after Thanksgiving. They started fall semester early. The only thing remote was his finals, a couple of which were papers so he wouldn’t have been having an “in person” exam for those anyway.
Actually - they are doing surveillance testing, and 24 positives out of 5000-6000 is comfortably in line what is seen elsewhere. Most recent test was 12 out of 5,000.
For comparison, Columbia’s surveillance testing has had between 20 and 40 positives weekly the entire time since September (with mandatory vaccinations):
Airlines (here in the US at least) don’t know and have never known what illnesses its passengers are flying with. Why would they want to assume that kind of liability? Up until last year passengers in the US flew mask-free - coughing and spreading known and unknown germs all over everyone around them. Plus, there’s no national requirement to surveillance test, so how can there be justification for policing the travel plans of a group of 18+ year old adults who just happen to go to a college that does test?
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Of course not. They probably prefer not to know. But if they knew, what do you think they should do? Should they at least inform the other passengers?
I think if they found out someone had flown with Ebola - they would definitely notify the passengers who sat around that person - but Covid (& flu, pneumonia, bronchitis, etc) doesn’t fall into that category - especially now with masks, vaccines being free & readily available for Covid and planes now supposedly having these super air cleaning systems. There is more than enough information out there that enables potential flyers to inform themselves about the risks of exposure and infection from a wide variety of viruses, when they choose to fly.
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You may not care but I’m sure there’re plenty of other passengers who wouldn’t get on that airplane if they knew they would be sitting next to someone who is infectious with Covid.
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Many airlines have been contact tracing if they find out a passenger had covid.