If online classes are deemed necessary, why allow students back on campus to live in a congregate setting?
Online classes seem a half measure…
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Yep. These restrictions aren’t going to slow Covid. College kids will get together to eat their to go meals, find off campus parties or restaurants where they can gather, etc.
No college has been sued over a case of Covid. I just don’t get it.
Fine, test the students when they arrive and three days later. Find the cases and isolate them. If that is done then why the rest of the restrictions? Masks in classes make sense. Mandating boosting makes sense. After that? None of it really does.
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My guess is to identify the CV+ students upon arrival and isolate until they are no longer infectious. If schools delayed all students’ arrival, they would still require another two weeks of remote instruction in order to allow the + cases to keep up with their classes. An attempt at some mitigation?
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Agree. (Except for the booster part). The parties and the bars haven’t stopped. Zoom classes or even worse the asynchronous courses are just allowing for more bar hopping. Kids can go out until 4 am and watch their 8:00 am class at 3:00 pm when they wake up.
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My son and twelve of his friends were at a New Years party. They all tested positive. They all had to stay away from school for 5 days. They all tested negative on day 6. None had symptoms.
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The article did mention putting healthy kids in study lounges though.
Forgive me if this seems rude, but what is your experience with modeling infectious disease transmission and/or managing a large and complex campus?
Schools like Stanford are using models informed by epidemiology, operations research, environmental health, and administrative experience. They are considering local conditions and constraints such as the existing regulatory environment. None that I’m aware are seeking zero transmission, but rather to mitigate transmission to varying degrees. They are factoring in not just individual risk but population risk, systemic risk, institutional risk, and community risk, including but not limited to hospital capacity.
They have a fairly good grasp of the effect of each intervention and the difference, for example, between weekly testing and daily testing or between grab and go and packed dining halls.
These are multivariate, sophisticated models. I’d suggest reaching out to the schools attended by your kids to understand in greater depth what their models show. If you have expertise in an area that isn’t represented in their decision-making, I’m sure they’d welcome the input.
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Given the disparate protocols last year by schools which were within walking distance of each other in Boston for example, I would not conclude that any university policies are determined by infectious disease models as much as the administration’s degree of risk aversion.
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delete
Sure, different schools and administrators will assess and tolerate risks differently. In some cases institutional solvency will override health considerations. So there will always be differences. But to claim, as some in this thread have, that interventions like grab and go dining or weekly testing are some sort of theater is simply false in most of the cases I’ve seen. Those interventions are driven by modeling at most of these large institutions, as they are at most large businesses. The fact that some schools or regions are ignoring or denying risks in the absence of any modeling whatsoever isn’t sufficient to call into question the interventions of institutions that are weighing and modeling risks.
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Exactly. Each college had its own restrictions and, even within a given location, those varied. And a vast number of colleges in some red states didn’t have hardly any of these restrictions (maybe masking in class) so does that mean those administrations don’t know there’s a pandemic? My point is that it’s one virus and being handled differently by college yet there’s not been one big national story about any disasters at schools that had fewer restrictions. Who are we protecting at this point if everyone is required to be boosted and wear masks? Professors for the most part want to be in person. Students want to be in person. This variant isn’t hospitalizing boosted people and there are plenty of boosters to be had. Even at schools that don’t require them, it’s up to those who want to protect themselves to get one and the others can pay a price for not getting one but it’s their choice.
As for reducing hospitalizations, college kids who are boosted aren’t going to the hospital.
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Actually…can you prove this? My understanding is that there ARE boosted folks who have been hospitalized but that this is the minority.
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Ugh so what are you suggesting? You’re for surveillance testing, masking everywhere, no dining, remote class etc even though we have boosters and omicron is less virulent? That’s so sad. I disagree. Time to move on.
I need to be done for now because I just keep repeating myself. One last try. Why grab and go on a campus when restaurants in the same town are open and hopping? Why limit gatherings on a campus when they are not limited in the town?
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Many schools appeared to function just fine throughout the pandemic without weekly testing or grab-and-go dining. No doubt there were more outbreaks, and likely more undetected cases, but it was not a catastrophic event at any school, as some had predicted. One might reasonably question the purpose of asymptomatic surveillance testing when community transmission is widespread anyway. Similarly, it makes little sense to close the 4 dining halls on a campus but keep the 14 restaurants in the next block open for in person dining. The models being used may not adequately consider the surrounding community practices, which can largely undercut a campus protocol. I would not say the actions of many colleges have inspired confidence.
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Correct; this was one of the points in my reply to roycroftmom. The other being a logical argument- if there is no available rooms for sick kids to move out, then there must be no addtl space for healthy kids to move to
I didn’t make or endorse the policy, just reporting what Stanford decided. It explains the rationale in its statement, posted previously
There are plenty of colleges that are not testing or requiring vaccines. And the kids are not wearing masks unless the teacher of the particular class requires one. My child goes to one of those schools. No difference in issues with our students.
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I’m just asking for you to please give a reference for no boosted people being in hospitals.
I was NOT commenting on anything else in this thread when I responded to you about this comment.
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My kid goes to one also.
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Do rapid tests on arrival, then every day for the next five or so days, to catch incoming viral passengers.
Or do rapid tests every day for the whole term if the residential college can get enough test kits. Of course, anyone who tests positive should practice avoidance of exposing others, and provision for remote learning should be made for those who are doing so.
Don’t use PCR tests for surveillance or precautionary testing. By the time a positive result comes back, the person could have been spreading for a few days. By the time a negative result comes back, the person could have been infected between the test and the result.
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