@collegemom3717 Do you or your gradschoolkids have an opinion or knowledge of the prevalence of Covid cases among grad students vs undergrads. I have a D in grad school at Penn who assumes that there’s a lot more cases among the undergrads. Her only “evidence” (a term I’m using very loosely), however, was the fact that one of her professors wore a regular, disposable mask to her graduate level class but swapped it for an N95 at the end of class, explaining that he was heading off to teach an undergrad class.
Undergrad cohort is bigger, majority lives in communal dorms, parties/socializes frequently and class size is often bigger. Higher exposure leads to easier spread and higher odds for infection.
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Agree with @1Rubin. Also the testing rules are different for grad students who are not in classrooms- they get tested less frequently- so asymptomatic / super mild cases aren’t being captured in the data. Gradschoolkid noted that “On a small sample size, I haven’t heard of anyone I know getting it, and none of our emails have been to the grad school or grad students” which suggests that it is heavily UG students.
Several universities in Canada have announced that instruction will be online until the end of January or February. Canada has a far lower case count than the northern US.
Queen’s transitions to remote delivery for January-February 2022 | Queen’s Fall 2021 Safe Return to Campus (queensu.ca)
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I think what is true at Cornell may not be true at all other schools. Some schools have more graduate students than undergrads. Some schools have more Covid cases among graduate students than among undergrads (probably because most graduate students live off-campus and interact more with the surrounding communities, while undergrads live mostly on campus at these colleges and subject to more testing and restrictions).
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Agree. At my child’s school (many similarities to Cornell), almost all of the larger surges this past fall were among the grad students, presumably because they were tested less frequently (2-3x per week for undergrads vs. 1x per week for grad students), and the undergrads were socializing primarily within the bubble of their fully-vaxxed and mandatorily tested peers, whereas grad students did less testing and more interactions with people outside the hazy “bubble”. So i wouldn’t automatically assume undergrads are more “dangerous” than grad students (as this professor seems to be implying), but of course it’s possible at any given school the outbreak could begin in either population and perhaps at Cornell it really hasn’t hit the grad students yet.
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A number of colleges going online or instituting other measures. Tufts, Princeton, NYU, Middlebury.
OK on the grad vs undergrad question, I searched on the Penn website and found that they do break down their positivity rate by population. Current positivity rate among undergrads is 1.48 and among grad students is .92 and among facult/postdocs/staff is 1.36. COVID-19 Dashboard | Coronavirus. Also grad students are subject to the same testing requirements as undergrads. Penn Cares Testing Program | Coronavirus Penn has more grad/professional students (13K) than undergrad (10K). Unlike some other universities, Penn has all its professional schools located on the same campus as the undergrads. So when Penn reports stats on grad students they are including those in the professional schools.
Yes, the grad/professional distinction is an important one. Professional programs like law schools have courses with dozens of students, whereas graduate courses for PhD students are virtually always quite small.
Additionally – and this is purely anecdotal – law and business students tend to be noticeably more gregarious than PhD students in my experience.
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Most of the universities in Ontario have now announced delayed return to in-person for 2nd semester. The majority had been mostly remote for 1st semester with a plan to return to in-person for 2nd semester. The transition period is generally anywhere from 1 to 3 weeks with Queen’s being the outlier at 2 months (because they are currently having a huge outbreak as is Kingston, the city it’s located in).
Harvard just cancelled January term and said that they haven’t decided yet whether spring term will be in person or not. Faculty / Staff / Students were all notified in one campus-wide email.
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Absolutely true. Been watching the Harvard PG cohorts over the last 2 years. In terms of gregariousness (and disdain for rules, with concomitant infections rates) it is HBS > HLS >> HKS
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Here’s one student’s take on the current situation at Cornell:
I.e. the number of positive tests is greater than the planned capacity that the school’s COVID-19 protocols can handle (administrative capacity, quarantine / isolation housing, etc.). No surprise that the protocols are now failing.
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I’m sure that’s going to happen everywhere where they do surveillance testing. No school will have enough isolation spots.
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The challenge is how to handle the pressure on the system when growth rates are exponential (see the chart above).
The Irish government is so concerned about the rate of growth in infections that they have just tightened restrictions. In addition to masks being required inside all public buildings, and vax certs required for bars/restaurants/events, from Monday:
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bars and restaurants must close by 8pm, with a max of 6 people/table, and one person in the party has to give verified contact info for contact tracing;
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cinemas, theatres and arenas (indoor and open air) are limited to 50% occupancy;
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weddings are capped at 100 people and must end at midnight.
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you can’t have people from more than 3 other households in your home.
You can imagine how happy people are at having these restrictions put in going into Christmas week!
How do you police how many people are in a private home?
Probably something that may only be found after the fact. For example, someone hosts people from many households and has a superspreader event, and the contact tracing points back to the many household gathering.
The other possibility is if someone like politicians are involved, their political opponents may try to spy on them and catch them in a scandal for breaking the rules or something.
@sdl0625, a reporter at the announcement asked that exact question; the minister said he was confident that people would respect the policy 
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@ucbalumnus, re: politicians, over the way the current UK leadership sets a fine example of that, but they doesn’t even need the opposition to spy on them- they get themselves caught breaking the rules!
Also, heard a new word on the radio: permademic…
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My daughter is at a different school but experiencing some of the problems described by this student’s article. Two of D’s suitemates have tested positive, as have numerous friends and classmates within their dorm. Because of the disruption, D is finding it very difficult to write her final term paper and study for her last final (now remote).
Even if Covid is mild within this cohort, it still is tremendously disruptive, especially during finals.