I think I get your point, but I don’t think it means that the 5% are “essentially unprotected despite having been vaccinated.” Rather, I think I means that vaccinated people are 20 times less likely to get symptomatic covid than those who aren’t vaccinated. And the protection is much greater against severe cases. (COVID-19 vaccines: What does 95% efficacy actually mean? | Live Science)
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You are correct of course. It was wrong for me to use the percentage against the count.
The percentage describes a likelihood. A more appropriate example would have been that using two dice, the likelihood to get a 2 - 11 is about 10 times that of rolling a 12.
Still, occasionally someone will roll a 12 - and one needs to look for no cheat or other causes than simple probability.
My key point was: This young men’s tragic death might have no other reason than, despite an average 20 times lesser probability, he happened to be the occasional person where the overall average did not apply.
He must of been an extreme outlier, since those with previous COVID-19 infection and vaccination (as he did) usually have the strongest immune response against future COVID-19 exposures.
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It is now allowed by CDC and every major hospital or health system is on boarding the policy or already did last week. As long as mild symptoms and wear a sealed n95, you can come back. There are literally no other options–too many have this and hospitals and clinics would have to shut down. It is no joke in health care right now. Everyone is understaffed. Omicron is very mild in fully vaccinated people, thankfully, and many feel completely fine to work. Healthcare workers have this option if they are in crisis staffing mode which I presume almost everyone is by this point.
HOWEVER, college students are not part of the surge at hospitals nor part of the understaffed issue(unless they are healthcare workers on the side).
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Outlier or not, he’s dead now, and it may well have helped him not to have had school policies that essentially bathed him in virus.
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He got the virus in Aug before school started
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Well, this is quite interesting.
After a year of attempting to play hardball with staff & faculty re covid, admin here are backing down. Mask and vax are still optional here, and classes are largely in-person. But there are outs built in all over the place now.
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It’s quite easy to get permission to go remote if you’re not a classroom instructor and in reality your job could be done from anywhere, which is a lot of staff jobs.
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If you teach, you can take your class online if you get sick but are well enough to teach from home, or a substantial number of the students are sick. There are admin hoops, but gone are the “get in there” directives.
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While you can’t make a student wear a mask during office hours, you can shift to virtual office hours whenever you want.
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I’m not seeing anymore the clinging to some tiny number of class sessions instructors are allowed to shift to online.
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There’s some sort of inching towards offering courses dual-mode, with instructors encouraged to record online instruction as well for students who aren’t coming in. I expect this will start getting some investment.
I sense a sea change, and I wonder if admin are tumbling to the fact that while they’re still going to be running a residental rah-rah university, they’re also going to be running an online university, and that in some measure, if they don’t figure it out, learn to compete online, and differentiate the markets, the online will cannibalize the residential.
New meaning of “endemic”.
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IHE on remote’s being here to stay, and forces driving it:
It is possible the initial infection damaged his heart and/or lungs, i.e., it weakened his ability to fight new infection- not strengthened it
Just barely. Just barely.
UMD not requiring.stufents to upload testing results before return to campus. Goes with honor system.
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Interesting that high school students are doing walk-out protests over in-person instruction.
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Hard to dismiss their concerns. OTOH, I expect there are many HSers who have grown fond of doing virtual class in PJs! I’ve also heard students say they prefer virtual school because they don’t get bullied that way 
and some like it because it’s easier to cheat on tests 
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and they can sleep in later. No getting ready for school, taking the bus or driving, etc
The petri dish is real though. I’m sure some kids are concerned. It is different than fall. Kids and teachers still out in crazy numbers at our school. With vaccinated kids (two doses, no booster) allowed to go to school when someone in their household has Covid, I definitely think it’s spreading in schools now. Kids aren’t great at keeping their masks on correctly 100 percent of the time. I only have 15 students and only see 2/3 at a time but maybe half of them now have someone in their family with Covid and I’ve spending way more time that usual trying to stay farther away from them and reminding them about their masks.
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In our HS it’s all about wanting to be home for finals in the coming weeks. Not a peep, but suddenly wanting the ability to go remote for a few weeks. Wonder why? Some of them even have their parents whining on FB that finals are unfair right now, because of the stress of Covid.
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I posted that on the college forum because I think it relates to the college situation, both the petri dish analogy and the relative comfort with virtual learning.
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The reality is there are students that want virtual and students that want in-person. There are teachers/professors that want virtual and those that want in-person. There are different ideas about how to approach this and when we look we can find examples of each.
For my students, virtual is not the preferred method. In fact it is detrimental to their learning on several levels. For other students virtual is a much preferred method. Frankly students looking at colleges for the coming year should absolutely take the college’s Covid reaction into consideration when deciding. At this point Covid is here to stay in one form or another.
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My HS senior told me that cheating was rampant last year - including among the honors/AP kids. In fact he has shared that cheating is pretty common, in general, in HS. He has observed that for many kids (especially the high performers) the emphasis is on performance/getting the “A” as opposed to learning. Sad, but not surprising considering the prestige obsession and the amount of work they get compared to the old days.
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S21 had the same experience junior/senior years when much was remote. D19 who’s at a LAC said cheating was rampant during the 2020-21 when most classes were remote only.
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