For those (like us) still on the fence about encouraging their student to defer for a year: the Dean’s office confirmed that if a student contracts Covid-19 and has to take a medical leave–a far from inconceivable scenario–the student will forfeit that term’s tuition, room, and board, and will therefore have to pay for another quarter.
^ That sounds like standard medical leave policy. Other schools have withdrawal dates but you have to forfeit semester tuition at one point. So UC doesn’t sound like it’s outside of SOP for universities (except that perhaps with the quarter system you end up forfeiting “less” than you would with a semester system). It sux. But the parents I know who had to help their kid withdraw due to a medical emergency had reimbursement from the university as really the last issue on their mind.
Most that age who contract would be asymptomatic or exhibit mild flu-like symptoms that last for several days, and will be able to follow their coursework via remote. This happened to my oldest in Chicago last spring. She came down with symptomatic Covid (caught the virus from riding CTA to her job most likely) and was able to work from home. She felt mildly crappy for about 10 days but was able to keep up with a full workload and get plenty of rest. She was very diligent and monitored her symptoms twice a day to ensure that her fever didn’t get worse or oxygen levels drop (the first sign of respiratory distress). She knew to get to the ER immediately the second everything started to worsen, which fortunately didn’t happen.
My guess is that discussing your situation with your instructors will be the best path forward for anyone quarantined with symptomatic Covid. Anyone who is nervous or knows they are in a high-risk group should consider staying remote from home or taking a leave.
For the rest, be prepared and bring along items to boost your immune system and micro-manage your symptoms, including while in isolation. This is a highly infectious disease and despite your best efforts you might catch it. Here is what our family does/has at our disposal:
- Daily doses of D3, Vitamin C and Zinc.
- Zicam nasal swabs or Zicam nasal spray for use at first sign of a cold.
- Infrared thermometer to measure temperature.
- Oximeter to measure oxygen levels.
You can get an oximeter for $30 at a reputable medical supply store:
https://accumed.com/pulse-oximeters.html
You can get one a Walmart for $10 but I would trust Accumed a bit more:
CVS and even Amazon will have good quality ones. $30 is about right. I wouldn’t go lower.
That may well be standard medical leave policy, but it certainly strikes me as odd that the University would treat a medical leave owing to Covid-19 as no different from a leave for any other reason when all the University’s statements and policies related to Covid-19 effectively (and correctly) acknowledge that these are far from normal circumstances, and that under these unusual circumstances a student’s risk of contracting a highly communicable and potentially debilitating disease requiring medical leave is greatly increased.
Frankly, I’m not worried about my kid dying of Covid. But, based on anecdotal evidence, I am certainly worried that he will (1) catch it and (2) be pretty sick for a few weeks–too sick to carry on with academic work.
Essentially, the University’s position is to proceed as usual regarding its response to medical leave, although, in fact, the risks that a student will have to withdraw—and that a student’s family will therefore forfeit a term’s worth of tuition—are unusually high.
We opted for tuition insurance for this reason. They refund 75% of tuition and room and board if your student has a medical withdrawal.
These stats are based on averages and so don’t necessarily apply in the individual case, but it’s still helpful to post them for some perspective. Right now, a 15-24 year old is slightly more likely to die from flu than from Covid. Those probabilities will correlate with relative risk of hospitalization and withdraw from school. Now, the flu has a vaccine which is usually available prior to the start of the UC academic year. Covid doesn’t yet have a widely available vaccine. Another strike against is that it might be more contagious than flu for all we know. Offsetting these factors is that the university is being very vigilant, as @Mom2Melcs has pointed out, and that makes sense given the news coverage and lack of vaccine.
Thanks, Darcy. What insurance plan did you opt for? I looked into that and it seems that there are only two companies that UChicago students can use–Liberty Mutual and GradGuard (A.G.Dewar only works with certain schools, and UChicago isn’t one of them). Liberty Mutual explicitly excludes epidemics, including Covid-19. GradGuard also explicitly excludes epidemics, including Covid-19. For now, GradGuard is taking the position that it will cover Covid-19 cases for current policyholders, even though Covid is excluded. GradGuard says this is an “accommodation” that its is making now and only “until further notice”–that is, it takes the position that, since epidemics, including Covid-19 are excluded from its coverage, it can withdraw that accommodation at anytime for any reason. So it’s really not insurance for Covid-19. See: https://gradguard.com/static/files/Tuition-COVID-19-Coverage-Alert.pdf. Have I missed an insurance provider?
JB–absolutely agree that the evidence strongly suggests that the chances of the young dying from Covid are extremely slight. From those healthy young adults I know who’ve contracted Covid, however, it seems that they can get quite sick (like a bad flu)–I know one young investment banker who missed almost four weeks of work (she’s now back to her hale and hearty self). If a college student missed tree weeks of a 9.5 week term, I think he/she would have to take a medical leave–no realistic way to make up all that work.
^ This is a personal judgement thing. Theoretically, missing class this fall would be different than, say, last fall simply because last fall was 100% in person. This fall you would be able to keep up at least partly via remote unless you happen to get really ill like your investment banker acquaintance (my daughter was mildly ill and it lingered but she was able to do her projects via remote and still get plenty of rest because she didn’t need to spend time commuting or shopping and so forth.) It’s not clear how or why the virus hits some worse than others. The latest I’m reading is that it might have to do with how much of the virus and/or what size aerosol particles you end up inhaling. The more the virus can get diluted in aerosol form, the better; conversely, the degree of exposure, all else equal, might increase the risk of symptomatic Covid. I know that our medical and dental care professionals are wearing both face shields and masks at work. While the face shield alone isn’t as effective as the mask according to a study I read, the face shield used with the mask is probably a very effective prevention measurement. I liken it to wearing your seat belt and having airbags.
Of course, one of the best ways to get symptomatic Covid would be to attend a typical college party where people are crowded together, not wearing masks, probably talking loudly or even shouting and laughing, spewing aerosols all over one another and probably sharing beverages on top of that. One of my kids has a co-worker who did this just a few weeks ago, and of course got infected and was symptomatic and out for two weeks. My D was tested and fortunately the results were negative even though she worked with this person in very close proximity indoors for several hours at a time before the latter started feeling sick. Both were required to wear masks at work and I strongly suspect that this helped.
Not sure if it’s applicable to IL but here in MN if you have flu-like symptoms and test negative, you are still not supposed to show up for or return to class until the greater of either 10 days or three days following the disappearance of symptoms has passed. My high schooler’s principal is currently quarantined at home even though she tested negative. She wasn’t allowed to enter her (public) school building (nor was she attempting to - she was sharing with us what level of health protection measures were in place). During a normal year, it’s pretty common to have the same bug just rip through a house or dorm. This year might be different, of course, as the protocols will protect against more than just coronavirus infection. But in any event, if IL has a similar health order, then it’s possible that students catching something else will still end up quarantined and doing remote learning until their symptoms pass.