I received an e-mail from Vanderbilt saying one of their students who was studying abroad has coronavirus but did not return to Nashville and is recovering at home. I talked to S19 and he said the kid is a friend from fall semester who was in Italy and is now home in the Chicago area. I’m guessing he will bounce back quickly but hoping he didn’t spread it to many others.
H1N1 was a strain of the flu, and therefore a lot more was known about transmission, the apparatus was already in place to quickly modify existing flu shots, there was a lot more known about transmission, and it had been detected early in the USA, so more was known earlier. More was know about transmission of flu, and the H1N1 virus was already known. Moreover, the response by the Federal government to the H1N1 virus pandemic was swift and widespread.
The CDC is no longer able to respond this way, because of lack of funding and governmental support. There have been cuts to the CDC and other units whose job it was to deal with such crises, such as the global-health-security unit of the NSC. The units of the CDC that monitored emerging pandemics in China were cut from lack of funding.
Nothing contributes to panic like mixed conflicting messages from top experts and from the government. The messages by all the parts of the federal government and the various experts during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic were all the same. However, people are now getting conflicting messages about the danger of coronavirus from different elements of government and from medical experts.
D19 coming home early for extended Spring Break as classes have been cancelled for this week. Not required to leave campus, but she chose to come home. Tough situation for administration.
My son plans to fly back home with United Airline next Saturday for spring break to see his grandparent who recently was diagnosed with cancer. I am now worried about two things…
(1) There is a risk my son may pass Coronavirus to his ill grandparent if he catches somewhere at airport / on plane unknowingly (hopefully, no Coronavirus at dorm). His grandparent still wants to see him.
(2) United may chancel his flights with a new maximum 25-hour delay policy for no-refunds. His return flight is Saturday night red-eye, arriving Sunday early morning at dorm. If United cancels his flight but put him on Sunday red-eye flight, he will go to classroom from airport directly. Or United may make him stop over 2-3 airports instead of non-stop flights I purchased in mid-March. We have no choice with United’s new “refund” policy.
“H1N1 was a strain of the flu, and therefore a lot more was known about transmission, the apparatus was already in place to quickly modify existing flu shots, there was a lot more known about transmission, and it had been detected early in the USA, so more was known earlier. More was know about transmission of flu, and the H1N1 virus was already known. Moreover, the response by the Federal government to the H1N1 virus pandemic was swift and widespread.”
- H1N1 vaccine wasn't widely available until Dec 2009. Our community was one of the ones hit hard in Oct. 2009 because no vaccine had been made available despite numerous requests. A kid nearby actually died. My kids' school had scores of children who were seriously ill; in many cases, their entire families were down for days. The perception at the time was that the Fed. gov't didn't have a clue as to how to get a simple vaccine distributed throughout the country.
Here are the stats per wiki:
“On February 12, 2010, the CDC released updated estimate figures for swine flu, reporting that, in total, 57 million Americans had been sickened, 257,000 had been hospitalised and 11,690 people had died (including 1,180 children) due to swine flu from April through to mid-January.”
Coronavirus isn’t tracking anywhere near those numbers in the US. Obviously it’s a highly contagious virus and already in the community in many parts of the country. If your respiratory or immune system is already compromised, you should stay away from crowds, follow the common sense guidelines that apply to any flu season, and have a plan to get to the ER pronto at the first signs of illness. However, the vast majority of the country won’t be impacted health-wise in the least, will not be “locked down” and will, at some point, wake up to the fact that they needlessly purchased way too much TP, hand sanitizer and bottled water. And seriously - bottled water?
With the spring break trip canceled just hours before it started, we ended up not being able to feasibly bring D home, so she stayed on campus. It’s pretty empty and she’s fairly bored, but at least team training starts on the river today for those who decided to stay (or had no choice) on campus.
D19 arrives home on Friday for spring break. She’s flying southwest (fortuitously, as one of the rare direct routes available) so it should be easy to change return flights if necessary. @JeJeJe , sorry to hear that you have added stress in all this worrying about United’s polices, ugh. When did they implement these new policies?
I don’t think it’s looking good for any college kids who are currently home on break. Princeton just announced that kids should stay home after break. All classes online until April 5th. I feel like it was just going to take one school to do this and many will follow. I guess time will tell.
@homerdog yeah I’m half expecting that D19 will be home a bit longer than expected
@JeJeJe So sorry to hear about the added stress. D19 flew home on a packed United flight a couple of days ago and I don’t recall hearing/seeing anything about the 25-hour delay policy. When did they announce it? United did send a well-crafted email outlining their cleaning and air quality procedures as well as offering the option to change D’s flight at no cost. Hopefully, your child will have an uneventful flight home.
Too bad about your D’s trip, @milgymfam. D19’s school has planned a full slate of free events for students who are unable/unwilling to travel over break. Her RAs have also planned dorm events and field trips for students staying on campus. Is your D’s school doing something similar?
From chatting with D19, it sounds like it was business as usual when she left on Saturday. Many of her friends still went on their international spring break trips (it was mostly the students traveling domestically who cancelled plans) and the CVS near campus still had hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes in stock. Her RA and faculty fellow-in-residence did review the dorm quarantine procedure with students should it come to that.
I am shocked that so many schools are cancelling classes. I hope D19 and your children don’t have any issues returning to school after break.
@mountainsoul, no there is really nothing going on. Dorms are open, but the dining center and library and gym are closed. Most students have left. The school’s low income program has luckily provided her with free meals for the week.
On hand sanitizers etc. we are totally out of stock locally, but my family members from the east coast that just spent a week with us said the airport stores were well stocked with sanitizers and wipes.
I always tried to avoid United Airlines but another non-stop flight were $1100+ for round tickets…I wasn’t going to have my son back home for spring break but his grandparent’s illness made me not to worry about Coronavirus outbreak back in mid-February.
S19 was able to be home this past weekend for the tail end of spring break. He had a full week starting at the beach, heading back to Nashville, helping with tornado clean up and then home for a couple of days. He took the megabus back yesterday morning and everything seems to be normal on campus at this point.
D17 has a two-week spring break so I’m waiting to see what happens with her trip back to NY after the break. Interesting times.
On spring break trip w S19, no computer, but glad to have everyone’s updates via phone.
Clemson just announced a potential positive…
D19’s college is switching to remote lessons (basically testing while onsite) from Wednesday this week, spring break as usual next week, remote thereafter till at least 27 March.
In other news the IRS flagged to D19 someone trying to submit a fraudulent return using her details. Poor D was on the phone to the IRS for about 2 hours (half of that on hold) to sort it out. Good to know whatever systems they have work.
We were already going to be traveling with D19 next week and now I guess we’ll just bring her home with us afterward, since her classes will all be on-line. It’s a bummer; she was so excited when dance rehearsals started up again after the break and now the performances have been canceled (well, at least one, probably the other, too). She was loving most of her classes and there’s really no way to duplicate that experience on-line (for her labs, they’re saying they may just send them videos of other people doing the experiments!). But it’s probably the responsible decision for the school to make. And if she’d gotten sick far away from us that would have been awful.
This is all really becoming nerve-wracking. So far, Denison is carrying on as usual and the school has also been sending detailed information about what they are doing. Since we are in Asia, S19 was not planning to come back for Spring Break in any event, but now I’m starting to wonder whether he’ll even be able to come back for the summer. We have a trip scheduled for late next month and have been planning to pick him up on the way home. So far, there are no restrictions that would prevent us from going, but of course the situation is evolving from day to day. Trying to push that into the back of my mind for the moment. My more immediate concern is whether the school will go forward with an out-of-state trip by the track team that he’s really been looking forward to. They are supposed to leave tomorrow evening, and there’s been no bad news so far, so I’ve got my fingers crossed. Once we get past this meet, I will start to worry about the rest of the outdoor track season, and then after that I will worry about the summer - the school does say they are working on contingency plans in case students who live overseas aren’t able to go home. Ohio did announce its first three confirmed cases today, but they are up in northern Ohio.
Vandy just suspended classes for the rest of the week and is resorting to online/distance learning until at least March 30th, with the caveat that they will reevaluate to see if they will need to extend the distance learning until the end of the school year.
@PurplePlum - yeah that’s a bummer. Only one day of classes after spring break and now the rest of the week canceled. I know they are doing the best they can and this is an evolving situation, but I’m wondering how effective the quarantine will be with the kids living and eating together. I’m definitely feeling badly for all the graduating seniors now that so many important events will be canceled.