Seems like there’s a direct correlation between masking requirement and vaccination rates.
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Good for NOLA. Covid has blown up there and the privates are taking matters into their own hands.
Actually a quick google search shows there are quite a few in the South with mask mandates.
My kid’s school has a 94% vaccination rate. Presumably that 6% includes international kids who will get a shot when they arrive a week early. Masks mandatory for now. All kids will get tested on arrival and at 14 days. They will then decide whether to continue with masks or not. So, take a baseline read, see if it grows or fizzles out. I think it’s a reasonable approach.
I just spent 55 hours stranded in airports last weekend. I think we will all get a “booster” from this variant based on what I saw. Lots of sick people travelling. I think breakthrough infections are much higher than reported and most are low or no symptoms. The vaccines are working just as they should. I, for one, would rather get exposed to this virus while my vaccination response is at its highest (currently 4 months post shot with the J&J).
My son likes the cloth masks from Athleta, which are easy to breathe in. He doesn’t like the smell of the disposables. I bought lots of extras when they were on sale, pre-Delta…
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Wow, even Auburn and Southern Miss. Good for UAB!
My Southwest/Southern school D20 is tired of masks and remote work. I tell her it’s for the greater good. She’s fully vaxxed now and got Covid in the spring while eating at a restaurant.
ugh. Yes for the greater good but college is a bad time to have to deal with a pandemic. I still highly recommend taking a break from college if things go south and classes go remote. Neither of our kids will be going to college in the spring if classes are remote. I think the chance of that is super slim but just wanted to say that going to remote class is not for the greater good. That affects each student’s education.
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Administrators balance legal ramifications, kids/F&S health and economics.
Speaking of economics, how did the CA schools, Northeast privates, etc. and other super restrictive universities make out with admissions for 2021-22? Fewer people were able to visit and applicants saw what many might have called draconian measures in the 2020-21 school year – no dorms, etc.
Most schools in the NE that handled Covid well had an increase in apps. Covid protocols were definitely part of our calculus when D was making her decision.
I am holding my breath for classes to be in person and for these kids to have a normal college experience. My husband and I also are going on vacation to Europe to visit family and friends.
However, I expect that there will be infections in the dorms, and, hopefully, a proper level of response is found to keep the learning in person. The statement below cannot be true based on our experience.
The confusion about efficacy was generated by a recent report of “breakthrough” cases –fully vaccinated individuals who were still diagnosed as infected with SARS-CoV-2. Note these events are uncommon – of 165 million fully vaccinated individuals, there have been less than 200,000 breakthrough cases. Do the math – that’s less than 0.12%.
MD here. To all the posters asking, “Why should my kid have to mask up when they are fully vaccinated?”
Three main reasons:
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Childrens’ hospitals in the hotspots are full, which was never seen with the previous waves. Houston (which has a HUGE and excellent Children’s hospital) is having to airlift kids outside the state since there are no pediatric hospital beds left in Tx. Many if not most of these kids are too young to be vaccinated.
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As other posters have said, the vaccine is less protective against mild illness with the delta variant than the originally thought. New data out of Israel and from well-studied outbreaks such as the one in P’town this summer show that lots of fully vaccinated people are getting infected, even if they are only mildly affected or even asymptomatic.
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Yes, the vaccine provides excellent protection against hospitalization and death. However, there is more and more data showing that even mild and potentially asymptomatic COVID-19 can cause long-term health problems, including heart and lung damage, memory problems, loss of IQ points, etc.
So as much as I would love for us to be able to go back to normal, my fully immunized teens will remain masked in indoor spaces, whether it’s mandated or not. This is for their own protection but also for the 50 million children in this county who are too young to be immunized and for whom the long-term effects of COVID-19 are largely unknown and quite scary.
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So what did you think of the CDC saying back in May that unvaccinated people could be maskless? They knew that infections would happen and be asymptomatic or mild.
And what’s your opinion on a small liberal arts school that is 99 percent vaccinated on campus in a town that is also 99 percent vaccinated for the 12 and up crowd? I guess you’d say to err on the side of caution. The current CDC guidance is still for vaccinated people to mask in counties where Covid is at their definition of moderate spread or worse. Some of these colleges masking are in low Covid counties. Have your kids gone to college yet? What’s your opinion on masking most places but not for dining and not for dorms. Is masking sometimes worth it if it protects the (vaccinated) professors who might be going home to young children?
Might I remind members of the forum rules: “College Confidential forums exist to discuss college admission and other topics of interest. It is not a place for contentious debate. If you find yourself repeating talking points, it might be time to step away and do something else… If a thread starts to get heated, it might be closed or heavily moderated.”
Please do not turn this thread into COVID-central; we have other threads for that.
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Stats are stats but when your family member gets it who is vaccinated, has no visible high risk, and is way younger than 60, the stats are meh.
People who are vaccinated are still carriers. Some vaccinated won’t get it from the carrier but others who are vaccinated may get it. It’s just the reality.
And @Picklenut6 kudos to your your daughter for being cautious and getting that negative test. I don’t blame her. Here’s to all the kids going on campus and here’s to minimal disruption. They’ve earned some normalcy.
To be more precise, infected vaccinated people can spread virus….and relatively few vaccinated people get a breakthrough infection. We don’t know all the details yet…for how long they can spread it, or even if they all can spread it (eg asymptomatic cases). Time will tell, and indoor masking makes sense based on what we know today.
So I rolled my eyes repeatedly when people were buying mattress toppers - but guess what I did last night - bought one! Next will be the microwave but will try to hold off & see how far down the kitchen is from his dorm room.
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If you were rolling your eyes I assume you haven’t seen a dorm mattress lately 
They are essentially a vinyl slab, no give whatsoever. Your kid will thank you!
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Exactly - I’ve never seen one and I was thinking how bad can they be? But then I started actually believing you all that they must be like hard bricks! So thank you Parents thread - or my son should thank you all!!
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To be mindful of @skieurope’s warning, I will limit my answers accordingly.
The dining hall question is a good one. It’s obviously impossible to eat with a mask on, and I hope that we don’t have to return what several schools resorted to last year, which was delivering boxed meals to students in their dorm rooms. I didn’t have college student last year, but had close friends who did, and it sounded like an absolutely miserable experience.
Which is precisely why having students mask when they easily can (i.e., in class) seems like a very small price to pay in order to maximize the chance of ‘college’ returning to as close to normal as possible next year (in-person classes, sports and ECs back, etc).
There is no way to completely eliminate the risk of transmission other than go back into full lockdown, which is what we are all hoping to avoid.
So on a population level, decreasing the transmission risk with the least-disruptive means possible (i.e, universal masking whenever feasible, even for those fully immunized) to get the pandemic under control and minimize the risk of creating an even worse, potentially vaccine-resistant variant makes good public-health sense.
And on the individual level, viral load (the # of viral particles inhaled) is very closely correlated with severity of illness. So if my own kids are going to be exposed and infected, I want them to have their exposure attenuated and and risk of illness minimized by having their viral load as low as possible, which means wearing a mask as often as they can.
I hope that all makes sense and didn’t violate the TOS. I promise to step off my COVID-19 soapbox now :).
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Ha! I offered to order one for my son today and he said no thank you, that he likes a firm mattress. Honestly, I ordered sheets and towels and I think that might be enough…
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hopefully you were smarter than me - bought the fancy one on sale - love a sale - had it shipped to our house and then decided what in the heck was i thinking to bring that as part of checked luggage - ended up shipping by USPS regular package rate for $82 ! There went my savings and the some 
They better sleep well !!!