Can you guys please move the Covid and masking conversation to the appropriate thread like the moderator recommended last night? I really don’t want to see this thread closed down or put in slow mode because some people are fixated on mask mandates. There is plenty of other stuff to discuss here with many of our kids leaving in the next few weeks.
This would be a better thread even tho the subject has already been going in circles there.
My son said he didn’t want a comforter, but I got one anyway. Hopefully he ends up using it.
He just started drinking coffee so now I have to get him a Keurig.
Did anyone end up trying those laundry detergent sheets?
I don’t want to go back and forth like yesterday either but Covid protocols on our kids’ campuses are likely the most important thing to discuss. I’m not thinking about bedding or soap. Maybe it’s because some of you don’t have older kids who lived through Covid college last year? I don’t know. I won’t bring it up anymore.
Were they testing everyone regularly? Just curious. If they were only testing symptomatic people who voluntarily were tested then they were missing a lot of cases (my son went to a large university where all on campus students were tested weekly, so they knew who had it even if they had no symptoms). Also, I had 2 in college last year, 3 this coming year, and I teach at a university, so I’ve been paying attention to what colleges do with this for a little while now. There’s so much variation.
Yes bowdoin texted everyone two times per week.
To be clear on concept, I did not say that you cannot discuss COVID in context. However, the conversation yesterday was way too debate-y on mask mandates and vaccinations.
“My kid’s college has a mask mandate and I am not sure how I feel about it” is fine. “Should my kid’s college mandate masks?” is not.
And the crux of my note was if a user is posting 15 posts an hour, it is time to grab a cup of coffee 
or an ice cream 
I had two kids in college last year and will have two in college this year so I am plenty affected by COVID WRT college campuses.
@picklenut, I wear multiple masks in certain situations, too (fully vaxed, but don’t have full efficacy due to underlying condition). Completely understand why your D is taking extra precautions after exposure.
I have heard that some colleges are allowing faculty to decide if they want to teach in-person or not. Some of these are colleges that have been advertising to students that they will have in-person classes in the fall. I’m interested in hearing from anyone who has first hand knowledge of such situations.
Our college has recently issued a CYA statement about how they will continue to monitor and may need to take further measures etc. Meanwhile, they have eliminated quarantine and isolation spaces for students. And continue to advertise that they will offer all in-person instruction.
I suspect that they will collect the money (due later this month) and then start making announcements after that.
I’d like to say one thing about each and every one of our posts. We all see college through the lens of our kids’ experiences. I understand that my kids’ experiences are different than some others. So, yes, my comments are always made through the vantage point of a parent with kids at rural LACs in the northeast. I get that there are dozens of other types of colleges out there. Sometimes we all talk past each other because one student’s experience has almost nothing to do with another’s at a different school. For an example, do I think there should be masking at a big state school in an area with low vaccination rates? Yes. When I was complaining about masks, I was doing so in regard to my kids’ schools. I assume all of your opinions are also colored by where your kids will be this fall. After all, this is a thread about the class of 2021 and their college journeys.
Kids at Colgate will have a different experience (both Covid and otherwise) from kids at Bowdoin, or FSU, or Miami Ohio, or UIUC, or Purdue, or UCLA. I never said our kids’ colleges are better than anyone else’s but twice now I’ve read posts on the “say it here bc you can’t say it anywhere else” thread that might be pointed at me. If that’s true then those posters are not understanding that, of course, our kids’ schools color my lens every time I post.
We like the KF94 (Korean) masks. The ones we’ve tried have been adjustable - common style of the KF94 is to have a loop you can pull or loosen on each side to adjust…still, we have found it works well for us to get two different brands for the different size/shaped heads in our house since some run bigger and some smaller.
We purchase them from Be Healthy Usa dot Net FAQs – Be Healthy. There’s usually a coupon code and free shipping. I believe this business is an importer of Korean products - the masks come in a reasonable amount of time as they ship from NJ not Korea. My understanding is that the filtration is similar to that of a KN95 or N95 but they don’t have headloops like an N95 (just go over the ears, so the fit isn’t quite as snug as that of an N95).
They are not washable but are pretty sturdy (just be careful not to rip them when pulling the loops to adjust - as long as you’re reasonable careful, there shouldn’t be a problem…I think we’ve ripped 1 out of probably 50 or more that our household has used).
Before my D21 made her final college decision in late April, I communicated with 2 of the universities that she was considering (both large publics) - both had said that they intended to resume in-person instruction, but chatter on each college’s FB parent page from current parents seemed to indicate many fall 2021 courses that sophomores thru seniors were registering for, were not showing as in-person.
Both are out-of-state tuition for us, and as many here would agree, it’s hard to justify paying oos tuition for dorm-bed instruction (or worse, home instruction). Both colleges (different states) advised that they unable to “force” (legally or otherwise) professors back into the classroom (and many are tenured, so termination is complicated). The most they could do was “strongly encourage” a return to in-person learning, and one of the colleges indicated that they were working on financial incentives to get professors back in-person (money talks 
)
At some point we had to make a decision and then hope for the best. When freshman orientation/registration rolled around in July, the in-person issue was the #1 question from parents. Department heads, the Director of Student & Family Services, the Dean of Students (bless all their hearts) could only reiterate that the university wholeheartedly supports a return to in-person learning and they were confident that more and more classes would switch from remote to in-person or at least a hybrid mix. Students were encouraged to search for in-person versions of the courses they wanted to take.
My D is lucky to be in a small-ish major and all of her classes are in-person (small class sizes) except one large class that was always hybrid even before Covid. Per the parent page chatter, it appears that most students across all majors have at least one or more in-person classes (although since Delta has ramped up, there are reports in the last weeks of some in-person switching back to remote.) My D has checked several times and hers are still in-person. Her university requires all students to be vaccinated but stopped short of extending that requirement to professors & staff.
It’s a tough situation but one that many large universities are facing. I have no experience with small (less than 1,000 student), private colleges are doing. Not sure whether they can legally force professors into the classrooms either or whether they have more resources to make professors feel comfortable coming back. Certainly having much less students on campus is a factor.
We’ll just have to take it day by day, week by week and be thankful that at least she is able to be on campus (masking indoors for now). My worst fear is having to move her back home in a month like the freshman had to do last year. Hopefully requiring the vaccine will result in a minimum of serious cases and this upcoming semester will be a positive one.
I know Delta is newish but Colleges have been a bit slow to announce plans imho. I did notice ours waiting until after deposits were made to issue the mandate. They also waited to announce protocols until after tuition was due. It will be interesting to see what colleges do once school begins.
My S was also admitted to UC Santa Cruz. I went to the admitted student info session and it was clear that they were extremely conservative about reopening classrooms and housing and I strongly suspected the faculty was running that show. So the door was open to a freshman being 100% remote. Unlike housing, there is no financial incentive to hold more classes in person. So of course they later loosened the housing up but someone posted that her D only has one class in person.
It’s caveat emptor in this environment. I wonder if the schools with good Covid management will be rewarded with more apps this year. That definitely influenced the decision for my S.
@homerdog, a reply to your question: I have leukemia and am on daily oral chemo. Fortunately, it doesn’t immunocompromise me much (numbers are on the low side of normal, but didn’t need to take precautions in the Before Times). My chemo causes pulmonary hypertension and excess fluid, and I have permanent heart damage from a previous chemo med, so Covid is an extremely dangerous proposition for me.
However, I did NOT get full efficacy from the vaccine. Am in a research study thru my onc to see if that’s due to chemo, disease mechanisms or other cause.
I haven’t stopped wearing masks. No indoor restaurants, been in a grocery store twice. I double mask when appropriate. My sons vaccinated, tested, double masked and isolated to be able to come visit (it’s been two years since we were together – one lives cross-country, the other in Eastern Europe).
So, yeah. Not everyone who’s vulnerable is immunocompromised. Nor are they paranoid. Nor are their loved ones. If a young person wants to wear a mask so she can be on campus this fall, sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
I’m a fan and we use KF94. Korea tends to have strict standards and testing protocol so if it’s from Korea, you are especially in good hands. I find that they fit better around our faces. However, the front may be close to the mouth so the kids may not like it? The KF94’s that we have come in individually sealed packs so I can throw them in my bag and not worried about them getting dirty.
I’m sending KF94 and KN95 (Costco had them for $25 for 100 and if you buy 5, you get $25 off). I’m not a fan of washable ones because…reference how frequent we think they will wash their sheets :). I know this will seem wasteful and landfill-ish to use disposable, but this is just the one time we don’t have a current sustainable solution that matches well with my kids’ practices and habits.
We still have a bunch of 3-layer mask from when masks were in short supply but I just use those for when we are outdoors or I’ll double mask with them.
I wished we had standardized testing on masks sold. I feel bad for kids under 12 because I don’t know if any masks that have been FDA certified.
~10 out of 300-400 at our church we’re wearing masks today. My DW said it’ll be tough to get people to wear masks until it’s mandated.
Hope our students have a great year despite how restrictive, or not, their colleges are.
What do you think about long covid from breakthrough cases? There are a lot of people now 6+ months post-2nd dose, and the Israelis have shown that vaccine efficacy decreases after 6 months from 2nd dose. That is what I am concerned about. I am more than 6 months past my 2nd dose of Moderna. I do NOT want to get covid (unless I knew it would be very mild AND I would not get long covid). There are a lot of people like me. So it’s not just about protecting the ones who can’t get vaccinated, which is what the messaging would have us believe.
It’s important to remember that the pfizer vaccine is likely to drop the “experimental” tag around the first of September. After that we will see a lot more mandates both for students and staff. Whatever a schools policy for the MMR vaccine will be their policy for the COVID vaccine.
I’ve wondered about this-- if Pfizer gets full approval, does that mean entities will require Pfizer specifically? And if someone has already gotten Moderna or J&J how does that work? OR is it that they can require a Covid vaccine since one of the options available to students/whoever is one that is fully FDA approved? I’m guessing the latter now that I think about it, but I wasn’t sure how it all applied. (I’m asking this in the conext of more universities requiring the vaccine in the near future)
Just packed the big duffel bag for D with a few things we didn’t ship, she is printing off bunches of family/friend/dog pictures to bring with her, I’m think all that is left to do here is pack up her clothes. 
I am so excited for her but it’s hard to not be sad at the same time.
Can’t remember where I left off on the roommate situation but she finally got her name and they have been texting back and forth for a few days. Seems like a very good fit on paper, fingers crossed they like each other in real life! They are going to FaceTime tonight for the first time.
D has been planning her last days trying to make sure to spend time with each friend/boyfriend/siblings. I keep grabbing her every free minute to ask dumb stuff like do you want an air purifier (CA fires have caused bad air in CO), which hair dryer should I order and where are your hiking boots? 