The only thing is that PCR tests seem to be picking up omicron better than rapids so it’s a little more confusing than when it was just delta.
Both S and H were symptomatic and negative on rapids for four days before a positive rapid test. I have to think they were contagious while symptomatic, no? Even a month ago, I assumed one could take a rapid and be good for the day to be out and about but now I’m not so sure.
Certainly, if someone is symptomatic, it’s possible they have Covid and are contagious even with a negative rapid now. That’s part of the reason I’m ready to throw my hands up and just say I give up. No way people are going to stay inside every time they have a minor sore throat or sniffles (that could be contagious Covid).
People seem to have issues with their own schools/kids schools on the take and go meals, the isolation and testing policies, the online classes. There isn’t anything anyone on CC can do about that. There are plenty of schools with different policies and it seems your only option is to pick one of those schools. If school A has only online courses, they aren’t going to change that policy because School B has in person classes. School A isn’t going to drop its vax requirement because a neighboring school (or the state, or the county) has a different requirement, as shown by the Boston schools all having different requirements last year.
I don’t get the big deal about grab and go meals. The school doesn’t want 10 kids sitting at a table shoulder to shoulder 3 times a day (and a different 10 kids for every meal). Sure, they are going to get together to eat with their friends, but probably not 10, and not in a room where 200 students are eating, walking around the cafeteria to get drinks or napkins or silverware they forget to get before sitting down. That’s the same for the restaurant too, that it may only have tables for 4, with a little more space, and no one walking around unmasked serving themselves. but the school can’t control the restaurants in town, only its own facilities, and they think not having 200 kids eating in one room is the best policy.
Do you think they aren’t getting the same quality food? That’s a different issue that the school may have to address. The school I work at (Prek-5th grade) has grab and take to your classroom breakfast, and then a hot lunch and snack delivered to the classrooms every day. No more cafeteria at all (and won’t have it for the foreseeable future). Even the teachers aren’t allowed to sit together at the (very small) table in the teacher’s lounge - microwave your food and then back to your classroom or to a bigger space in the former cafeteria, but not at the same table. The kids get same food as before, just delivered rather than having students pass through a food line. My biggest objection is all the packaging and nothing washed and reused. The classrooms are a mess and I don’t know how the teachers can stand it (I’m always picking up banana peels and chicken nuggets off the floors). But the kids are getting fed and fewer germs are being spread and it’s the best option during the covid crisis. My sister (4th grade teacher) has her kids eat outside whenever possible.
@TexasTiger2 had a great explanation for this on one of these threads. No, if you are vaccinated, being symptomatic is not equivalent to being contagious as your immune system is primed to kick in as soon as it detects virus, but it still takes a few days to build up to the levels where the person is contagious. So, if you are symptomatic you should keep testing for a few days, and if it does turn positive you are probably contagious. But not necessarily for those couple of days prior. PCR on the other hand will pick up very small amounts of virus (or even viral particles) but the person is not necessarily contagious esp. if they are vaccinated & it’s early in the infection or if they are post-infection. I agree with @ucbalumnus it’s time to retire PCR testing in most cases & go to antigen testing, at least for the vaccinated.
Eating in the dining hall at many LACs is a bonding experience. Kids hang out during and after meals. Meet up with friends. Bowdoin and Colgate and many other LACs have infamous late night hours for dining some days of the week that are big social times. All gone if you’re grabbing and eating with your roommate or one/two friends. It’s where you run into professors and deans and other friends you met in class who you don’t live with. You might sit down with a friend who sitting with a friend from his class and then you get introduced and make a new friend.
Making new friends and broadening ones friend group is difficult in these times. Grab and go dining makes college even more lonely.
Also, I’m willing to bet that these kids and their families dine out. I work in a middle school and eating lunch is a whole theater thing too and then these kids pack up after school, head to Starbucks and take off their masks to eat and drink inside. Also, many many of them traveled for the holidays and continue to go on vacations throughout the year (skiing, beaches, etc ) and are definitely eating out on those trips. Lastly? Our neighborhood restaurants are packed and have been for over a year.
These same kids who do all of this eating out are spaced six feet apart, given 15 min to eat and forced back to masks right after that.
And many of the schools with surveillance testing were able to quickly and accurately assess the conditions on their campuses and transition from more restrictive policies such as grab-and-go to more relaxed polices such as in-person dining as the numbers warranted.
Further, through surveillance testing, vaccine mandates, mask requirements and sound policy decisions, these schools were able to minimize outbreaks, protect the health of potentially vulnerable professors and staff, and provide the kids with a fairly normal and safe college experience. Getting tested, wearing a mask, and having some grab-and-go meals was an inconvenience, but it wasn’t “catastrophic.”
Packing hundreds of kids into crowded dining halls multiple times a day is not the same as having small groups of students occasional wander into town for lunch. While this sort of armchair quarterbacking and blanket condemnation of these institutions seems to be de rigueur, it is rarely based on complete and accurate information. We’d have to know quite a bit more about the reasons behind individual colleges decision-making in order to draw informed opinions.
A case in point is Stanford, which has enacted policies you and others have objected to here, including online classes for the first few weeks of the semester. After reading their reasoning you noted that this was
“a reasonable and thoughtful plan from Stanford. Let’s hope others follow.”
Perhaps if you had a better understanding of other schools reasoning you would be similarly in agreement.
A nurse in our clinic had a scratchy throat on Mon and Tues and then laryngitis on Wed refused daily suggestion to test. But finally agreed on Wed and yep positive.
Same rules for all of Denver public schools. Most are NOT eating out that often as the school district has a lot of poor families, and the school I’m at is about 95% minority and not wealthy. I agree they aren’t all following the masking at all times rules when at home, but DPS is doing what it can do while the kids are on its watch. That’s all the schools can do. We just had our first district go to online learning starting Monday as they have too many covid cases among the kids and staff to remain open. It is also a poorer district, so I don’t think it was vacation trips to Aspen or Cabo that cause the problem, but likely a lot of large family gatherings.
What you describe at the LAC dining halls of kids jumping from table to table and meeting friends of friends and professors is exactly what the school is trying to avoid - unmasks meetings. Again, the school can only control its own facilities and not the restaurants and bars in the town. I understand that students would prefer to eat together, but the school is trying to prevent an outbreak. Wasn’t there one just before Christmas break?
Your only option is to transfer to a school where open socializing is allowed. They exist. My daughter attends one with the only requirement being to wear a mask indoors and random testing when her number is called which I think it stupid as there could be hundreds of asymptomatic cases in those whose numbers are not chosen at random. Why randomly test if it is not going to control the spread?
Thank you for using kind words to describe students. I find it disheartening to hear/read them described as disease vectors and liars (about symptoms). We’re all doing the best we can. Students included.
I posted those articles on people underestimating their Covid symptoms. Yes, people often do lie and sometimes even to medical professionals. There’s nothing new there.
And we’re NOT ALL doing our best, not even close. My D knows several students at her school who are unvaccinated (with an admittedly, by them, conjured up exemption). And even though their school made testing mandatory once back to campus, somehow, after a full week back on campus, getting tested has somehow not been a priority for them. And their portals and email have not yet been turned off YET. BTW, my D was tested first day back to school, last Monday.
No, we’re not all doing all our best and that includes students. I wish that were true.
The lockdowns implemented at many colleges in the Spring of 2021 were detrimental to many students mental health, including one of my kids. I watched as positivety rates of less than one half of one percent were used as an excuse to keep classes online, students apart, and created a toxic atmosphere on my kid’s campus, and several others of her friends. The student newspaper has done exhaustive reporting on the difficult mental health consequences for kids on campus then, so please do not tell me that these were merely " inconveniences". The students described the campus as prison like, and a surprising number withdrew; psychiatric hospitalizations quadrupled. So maybe you understand a bit more about why some of us are worried as we see the re-imposition of restrictions that did so much harm last year at this time. If those types of restrictions are coming back, my kid will take a leave of absence, with my blessing. We were promised all these restrictions were temporary and would be lifted last time and that did not happen, so I do not trust the colleges this time.
Ooops. Sorry. Did not see those. I was referring to parents’ comments on a Facebook group I belong to. I stand by my statement that I feel we’re all trying to do our best and maybe my judgement is clouded by those I interact with. We’ve been dumping on students and young people from the start of the pandemic. I don’t like the derogatory language used to describe them. And I didn’t mean you.
Parents of fall 2022 freshman - please pay attention to the covid policies of the colleges your children are considering and factor into your decision rolling lockdowns, frequent grab and go and lots of exceptions for student athletes. Location matters - if you are in the middle of nowhere and the college has a very low covid risk tolerance, it becomes a fancy prison. Choose colleges that work for your risk tolerance level and the experience you want your child to have. Call it the “Covid Fit” factor.
“Viral passengers” referred to the virus, not the students.
The virus can hitch a ride as a passenger on an unknowing person (including students returning to college). Remember that many COVID-19 infections are asymptomatic, and COVID-19 is often contagious before symptoms even when symptomatic, so people are not lying when they believe that they do not have COVID-19 even if they are infected. What makes COVID-19 such a problem to control is that many people are unintentional and unknowing disease vectors, even though they feel fine and appear to others to be healthy.
While I am sincerely sorry that your child’s mental health suffered, I see no point in dwelling on policies enacted prior to vaccinations becoming readily available. The risk assessments were much different pre-vax; vulnerable people who were exposed to covid faced a pretty good chance of dying. That’s not just an “inconvenience” either.
But in the fall, after vaccinations became prevalent, most schools applied different risk assessments and fortunately were able to handle the situation much differently. Now circumstances have changed again, and schools are trying their best to figure out a way to remain functioning amidst the temporary onslaught of sick kids, staff, and faculty. Again, Stanford is a good example. It is doing what other schools are planning to do - online classes then phase back to normalcy. It is just that Stanford starts earlier so they are a bit ahead on the timeline.
Good idea, if that is what is best for your child. FWIW a family member of mine was also negatively impacted by remote learning and isolation would do also take a leave rather than go back to long-term remote learning, with my support. But their unwillingness to return to remote learning is a different issue for us than whether the schools acted (or are acting) unreasonably. In other words, I don’t blame the schools, and neither do they.
But since you seem to feel differently on this last point, and since you’ve repeatedly written that vulnerable staff and faculty members who aren’t comfortable what is being asked of them should find new employment, maybe it isn’t such a bad idea for your family to apply the same logic and find a different school?
No one wants the restrictions and everyone wants normalcy. But we are all adults here, so we should know that these are unprecedented times and we really have no idea what around the corner with this thing. You are an attorney so you are familiar with force majeure. That said, if you’ve lost faith in your kids’ college, perhaps you can find a school that better suits fits with your ideals.
Great idea. If families believe that periodic tests, temporary grab-and-go lunches, and online classes during a huge, unprecedented wave of cases turn a college into “a fancy prison,” then by all means send your kids somewhere colleges take a more laissez faire, what-we-don’t-know-won’t-hurt-us approach to covid management. If nothing you know about goes wrong then you’ll likely be much happier, as will the schools you spurn.
And I am sure other applicants to Stanford and the like will not mind you if you look elsewhere. If the movement catches on, maybe UCLA’s application pool will drop to under 100,000. Then again, some people would prefer their kids to attend colleges that take what they believe to be reasonable precautions, so maybe applications will increase even more.
@homerdog, I’ve already explained how this does and doesn’t work. People can persist in fantasies about bench players that don’t exist in academia if they want, but unfortunately that does not make those players appear. K12 and higher ed are several different animals. (Just one example of why your solution doesn’t go: TAs are often unionized with weekly hour maxes, and for good reason. You cannot just swap them in and out like that. They’re not subs.) You’re now getting other people who happen to know explaining to you why what you want doesn’t happen. Sometimes shaking the candy machine doesn’t make candy fall out.
It’s hard to believe that a class wouldn’t survive for a week while a professor had to quarantine because of covid. I imagine the vast majority of these same professors did some form of online instruction for these same classes in the past year and a half. I imagine those taped lectures, online components could be rolled out for a week to the students. The reality is we’re going to have some disruptions, just like we always have if a professor was out with the flu for a week. I think basic accomodations can be made.
As for students, they might certainly miss a week of instruction. We’ve seen plenty of that in the last year and a half too though. We know what it looks like and hopefully have learned lessons about how to deal with it.
Yes, there will be disruptions. Those same disruptions could come up whether classes are online or in-person. It seems prudent to be prepared for them.
