@Twoin18 that sounds like a plan on paper but I’m not convinced our government can get that going. Where are these tests? Here in Illinois, I know people who just last week are still waiting five days for one. This testing had better scale up pretty quickly in time for colleges to make a decision by June or July.
I’m just so annoyed that there’s no leadership on this. At least tell us what the plan is and then update the country on how it’s going. We get none of that. We are all guessing by piecing together articles written by scientists or journalists interviewing scientists.
I hope so too. If it’s true that such a high percentage of people are asymptomatic or have mild cases, the death rate is likely lower, perhaps significantly so, than we think right now. Hopefully this data will become more clear over the next couple of months.
IMO if the death rate is 1% or lower there will be great pressure to open things up.
@homerdog I’m more worried that the incentives for government officials are skewed. They will get criticized for deaths caused by opening up too soon, but not as much for the economic losses caused by closing down too long.
@flprepaidmom Everyone keeps posting the same info from BU. Many schools are considering different options including a Jan start. It’s just that BU actually published that they are considering that option.
I have doubts about two things: (1) the timeframe for the several current studies on drug treatment combos before there are resulting clinical recommendations (especially re glacially-paced FDA or CDC actions) and (2) the paucity of data on complication rates across the board but especially for those in high-risk groups, due to the lack of testing of asymptomatic/low symptomatic individuals (a detailed study of the cruise ship may be instructive, though I imagine that health data may not have been collected on the non-sick people).
I was encouraged to see recent news articles recognizing observations on the hypoxia problem vs ventilators unhelpful. Better understanding of the disease process will hopefully lead to availability of treatments sooner with existing drugs. Label schmabel.
Are you talking about BU? Some, maybe many, other schools also have the January start for two semesters as one potential alternative in their lists of possible scenarios.
@Twoin18 Interesting article. I just have a hard time believing that (1) all communities can be organized enough to pull that off and (2) that every citizen will agree to it. It’s a logistical nightmare.
I was deciding between Lehigh, U Rochester, Tufts, Northeastern…leaning toward Lehigh…closest to home as well as other reasons…Got the TO from Cornell…which may not be a bad idea right now.
The scale will be very significant, these two examples both have more than 100 people doing track and trace per 1M population and are just getting started. Maybe 50K or more people are needed countrywide.
Public health departments have been quite successful with track and trace for STDs for years. This is a lot less embarrassing so compliance should be much higher.
Has anyone read any articles that compare current overall deaths in a given country or location by month in 2020 to a prior year? The most recent info I saw for the US was that we lost about 7700 per month in 2017. Given that many of those dying from the coronavirus were elderly and had complications from other ailments, it would be interesting to see the high-level impact this virus is having.
When colleges switch from quarter/trimester (three 10-week terms per academic year) to semester (two 15-week terms per academic year) or the other way around, it typically takes years of planning and converting every course to the different length term (sometimes, this may involve combining previously separate courses, or splitting one course into two courses).
Quarter/trimester calendars appear to be less attractive than semester calendars to most colleges, probably due to greater amounts of overhead (have to do class scheduling, class registration, other pre-term administrative work/time, final exams, grade collection and post-term administrative work/time more often).
I’m curious how colleges are going to modify communal living in the dorms - number of kids/room, shared bathrooms, dining commons, etc. as well as campus rec facilities (ie.gyms). What about the students living off campus who are (in theory) responsible for cleaning their own apartments? How will student health services need to be ramped up or adjusted?
Perhaps they won’t adjust any of that. They really do not currently for regular outbreaks of influenza. If the mortality rate compared to COVID ends up similar for age groups under 65, I don’t see why they would.
It’s also a function of the infection rate. If the infection rate of COVID-19 is much greater than that of seasonal flu, then even an equal mortality rate will result in a much greater number of deaths from COVID-19.