- "Can't keep your kid safe on campus?" What does that even mean?
- Maine not being out of stay-at-home is legit. But institutions should be working with their state gov'ts on this.
- Social distancing practices have not prevented the elderly and sick from dying of Covid, as we know from looking at retirement community data across the country. But all of you should take a look at your state's models for predicting illness and death and overwhelmed hospitals and so forth. Has reality matched the predictions? Ours was 52,000 dead ASSUMING social distancing and we are currently at 300 dead and 100 in the ICU. Mayo Clinic furloughed healthcare workers. Is THAT consistent with massive illness and death?
- "Comfortable" isn't the criteria. What is the RIGHT thing to do here?
- What is the actual best scientific advice at this point? Has the CDC told colleges and universities that they shouldn't open in the fall? See my earlier comment about the prediction models and what has panned out in many (if not all) states.
- Remember: Social distancing was to flatten the curve, NOT to prevent the spread. Since the virus is a lot more widespread than orginally thought and the prediction models were a lot more pessimistic than has panned out, what is the REASON for staying shut? Has anyone asked these institutions? It's a legitimate question.
Per the CDC a goal of social distancing is to prevent the spread. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/social-distancing.html
Adding that in some states the curve hasnāt flattened, nor have cases/hospitalizations/deaths peaked, including Illinois where we have been shelter in place for a long time.
- I don't know whether colleges will be "OK." But aren't we all just going along with assumptions made that "everyone knows" even if at least some of them seem to contradict the reality that's panning out? "We are staying home because everyone knows we should be staying home" is not a demonstration of critical thinking on this topic.
- We won't have a vaccine probably ever. There has been NO vaccine for any Coronavirus. Ever.
- What's the argument against letting the illness continue to spread since it's doing that anyway? What's the argument against just getting it over with? Or is that not a legitimate line of thinking - and if not, why not?
- Maybe I read that too quicky, but "reduce" the spread is not the same thing as "prevent" the spread. To reduce the spread - absolutely, that's a goal of social distancing (although it hasn't helped a lot of the elderly).
- What's the average age of the dead? Anyone know?
^ @Mwfan1921 - I have two kids living in Chicago so am aware of what JB Pritzker has implemented. Where has the curve NOT flattened? (keep in mind that āflattenedā does not mean āflatā) Can you show me actual vs predicted data where the actual was worse? Which state?
@JBStillFlying this will be the last time I respond to you on this but we have no idea what August will be like. Models are just models. High schools here are also planning for online fall just in case.
Schools like Bowdoin have kids from all over the world and all 50 states. Right now no one is traveling. Will all of those people have to quarantine once they get to Maine? Where would that happen? Will a school not let certain students return if they are from a place thatās a hot spot in August? Itās ridiculous to be like ; Hey! School is on! Come on down!
I think your issue is more about being against all of these stay at home orders and not one college saying they are going to be prudent in their decision about returning to campus.
Thanks for that tip.
I will let others debate with you.
- For the record, I believe stay at home made sense given what we knew about the virus at the time the orders were implemented. Whether it continues to make sense now that we have data is a different issue.
- Shutting down the economy for a few weeks in the absence of data is unprecedented. Did it make sense in retrospect? Probably not. However, we shut down as a nation and given a national consensus on the issue. There was no - or very little (can't recall any, really) outcry or even disagreement.
- Presupposing someone's "issue" is a lack of critical thinking. I'm going off the data. What is YOUR take on the data?
@JBStillFlying not sure why my Bowdoin post got you all riled up. Just reporting what we heard. Iām not going to get into a debate about how the government is handling the crisis. If you want to debate on that stuff, there are other threads for that. Moving onā¦
@JBStillFlying You asked āDo we actually know of a campus that has been impacted?ā
Iām not sure what you meant by impacted. Did any students die? I donāt think so. However, Vanderbilt had one of the earliest spring breaks and ended up with over 100 students (not sure exact numbers, likely more) who tested positive. Iām sure those students spread it to many more. They quickly shut down the university a couple of days after spring break, so Iām sure the spread among students would have been much higher the longer campus stayed open. Iām not debating anything, just answering your question.
@elena13 - Many have contracted the virus. Itās a lot more widespread than originally thought. Perhaps this is news to this forum. 15-20% of the population currently is thought to be infected and that number matches studies in other countries as well as the āCruise Ship Experimentsā (inadvertent as they were). Data!
@homerdog not riled up. My kids are benefitting from Covid-19! they do well with an online format and have continued to. Itās no big deal to any of the three (who are kind of hermitāy anyway). Their grades will be super high this quarter (no P/F). No one has had a job or internship cancelled. Itās business as usual for them. Itās actually YOUR kids and everyone elseās Iām worried about. They will bear the brunt of this with lost economic and educational opportunity. We have to weigh costs and benefits here. There are significant costs to shutting everything down - it has real impacts and affects real lives, just as Covid is doing. Which is worse? Which path is the one of least harm? Are those questions being critically examined, or is every institution just afraid to take the first step for fear of liability and public criticism?
We did - as a country - agreed to take some pretty drastic measures w/o the benefit of data. Now that the data is suggesting that might not have been necessary, it might be time to change course. Thatās my opinion, and Iām happy to know of evidence to the contrary. Please - share it!
@JBStillFlying Our kids are just fine. Thanks. And I trust Bowdoin to do well by S19. Glad to know your kids have super high grades?
I canāt do anything about what the government is doing. Believe me, I have opinions on it and Iāve been spending way too much time reading everything I can get my hands on. Testing hasnāt ramped up yet. Thatās just one thing a college would need to be confident in before declaring it will be open. All kinds of problems with diagnostic and antibody tests right now. Do I think colleges could be open in the fall? Well, only if a whole bunch of things fall into place and the biggest one is likely testing.
^ Homerdog at #19831 - masks are an easier remedy than testing. Testing āramping upā takes two parties and product. Product at least in some areas is available. Parties willing to test - available. Those willing to be tested - not available. Thatās the holdup at least in some communities.
Should Bowdoin require the anti-body test and masks and then provide accommodations for large-scale classes (a-synch. or via zoom or other online option) that would go a long way. Just a thought. They know best, but what WE donāt know is whether our institutions are motivated out of a sense of prudence or fear of making a move. If the latter, then this can go on a LOOONG time before things get really bad like the food chains are disrupted. Actually, thatās starting to happen already :neutral:
I think that some schools are saying they will be back on campus to retain their students (meaning their revenue). Schools with larger endowments have the ability to delay decisions a bit more. I donāt see the harm in waiting six more weeks to make a decision.
Being nimble will be easier for smaller schools and Bowdoin could very well do some of the things that @JBStillFlying is suggesting. Iām sure they are planning as many details as possible but itās likely difficult to do that when no school will know what their state government will allow in August or if there will be testing available. And yes to masks and no to any sporting and music events and likely a no for hanging in the cafeteria with friends which is a big part of what S19ās socializing looks like. Kids will have to decide if going back to a scenario like that is what they want or if they want to roll the dice and wait a semester in hopes that January might bring some social distancing measures to an end.
No matter what, colleges and students will be making plans without perfect info since they need time to plan for fall.
@JBStillFlying, I honestly donāt get what your issue is.
Weāre dealing with a new virus that human beings have no immunity to, that transmits very easily person to person, that has a high (for viral illnesses) mortality rate, has pretty severe effects on many people even when it doesnāt kill them, may or may not (we simply donāt know!) be able to re-infect someone who has already been infected, and for which there is no established treatment protocol.
Basically, whether you believe it or not, itās a big deal.
Therefore, since colleges are places where large numbers of people come together in close proximity, and in many cases where large numbers of people come together from geographically disparate areas, it is simply prudent (to put it mildly) for colleges to exercise caution in their planning for the fall semester. (I mean, even testing students for it presents a problemānot only do the tests we have offer a small but worrying level of incorrect results, we donāt know whether reinfections are possible even in the presence of antibodies.)
Why youāre insisting that such caution is misplaced, I honestly donāt get.
Can we please keep the debating off this thread? This conversation can be taken to the Campus in the Fall thread.
^ Agree with @4kids4us - my concern is educational and economic impact on the Class of '23 (ie those who graduated from high school 2019). Whether caution is āmisplacedā is off-topic. Iāll remind everyone of the average age of those ill and deceased and the statistics for how the college-age crowd has been impacted by Covid-19, and move on.
Important to remember: College-age kids arenāt the only ones on college campuses.
Faculty, staff, and administrators are part of any given campus population, too, and (with the exception of some of the staff) they arenāt 20somethings. (Actually, nationallyānot at colleges that get love on CC, of course, but in higher education overallāeven the students arenāt generally in their upper teens/early twenties.)
- Lack of clarity from the state gov't is likely a huge reason for not being able to plan for an open. Revenue is important, of course, because it allows schools to retain their FA policies and pay their employees (including food service and res life, janitorial, etc) among other functions. Colleges won't be able to exist for long w/o revenues. Those smaller, less select LAC's (not Bowdoin and peers) that are financially strapped to begin with may well end up closing as a result.
- A lot will depend on projections of the virus in the fall. Swine Flu tapered over the summer of 2009 and then really again hit beginning in Sept (that's when our state had major breakouts). Covid lasts longer than Swine Flu as we know from our oldest who was diagnosed and quarantined in March (caught it riding the super-packed CTA in Chicago . . ). Two weeks isn't just a time to become non-contagious; symptoms last nearly that long. However, at least institutions have that history to work off of (including how illness might have impacted their student body). Covid, unlike Swine Flu, isn't felling the young.
OK, here is the thing - people recover from COVID 19. So you just need to reduce the spread so that the rate of infection is slower than the rate of recovery.
So itās not about reducing the spread to zero. Itās about reducing the effective spread to zero.
And yes, itās helped. The percent of people who have been infected per population is still pretty low, considering the fact that, as far as we know, nobody has immunity, so everybody can be infected.
The curve HAS flattened. The number of cases in Chicago has gone from doubling every 2 days to doubling every 15 days. That is very definitely flattening the curve.