I’m not very worried about my college student dying from COVID. I understand the science and the numbers.
I am very worried about the expense of sending them to college only to have the college closed in October because the virus spread among the students is endangering vulnerable students, faculty, or residents.
@AlwaysMoving i assume then that you have an incoming freshman? Everyone here with current college students sent our kids back to school in Jan and brought them back in March. It sucked but we all figured it out. Of course we don’t want to do that again but what’s the choice? Keeping them home.
Yes. I think what so many people fear is deja vu! We want the past 2-3 months to have done some good. It would be very disheartening to see March history repeat itself in October.
I dont think October will repeat what happened in March, in sending everyone home. Making all classes online yes, but I think they will allow more kids to stay in the dorm this time that choose to. (versus a few internationals and those without homes last time). It will become even more restrictive though. Unless the Governors of those states mandate it. My sons school was hoping to keep the kids on campus and just have online learning, but then because it was the first time we did a SIP /SAH everything, there was fear . The numbers looked bad. Kids even with apartments went home. This also happened during Spring break when the kids were not at school or were about to leave for spring break. So i think some will go home if everything goes back to SIP, and some stay with limited services.
As @homerdog notes, the alternative is keeping your kids home. Every college leader I have heard speak has stated there will inevitably be COVID on their campus this fall, it is just a question of when. If that bothers you greatly ( after checking the data for this age group), then one should attend college remotely.
Roycroft made this comment:
Are you equally worried about influenza, since that has a higher fatality rate for this age group? Or alcohol/drug overdoses, suicide, or sexual assault, which are far more likely on campus?
in response to this post:
And say what you will about the odds being small and most kids barely getting sick…the fact is that a small percentage of college-age kids will get sick and a percentage of those will die. It may not be your kid, or my kid, but it will be someone’s kid. And that thought terrifies me.
I think what roycroft meant is that there are and will continue to be (sadly) college kids that die for many reasons, i.e., car accident, drug overdose, cancer, suicide, etc. But none of those terrify people so much that they consider not sending their child away, even though the odds of a college student dying from one of those reasons is more likely than them dying of COVID.
At least that’s how I understood it.
If there’s an outbreak in a large school, I don’t see how the school would be able to isolate confirmed and suspected cases on or near campus. Smaller schools, especially those with access to additional nearby lodging facilities, are more likely to be able to handle outbreaks. It’s also much harder to prevent or track an outbreak in a larger school.
Thank you @tavern girl, you explained it much better than I did.
In the last flu season, 187 kids died from flu, including 25 who were already vaccinated. The vaccine has never been close to perfect, or even 80% effective. Flu actually is a risk to college students, but we do not panic when an outbreak is announced at school and demand closure.
Last fall, 9 students at USC alone died from suicide, accidents or drugs. Parents did not pull their kids home or close the school. Sadly, such events are not all that rare at any college.
We all want to keep our kids safe, but it would help if we assessed risk by the actual data of the likelihood of something happening and not our fears of it.
To my worried friends on CC. Heightened emotions is real in times like these. If your really thinking about this more then usual. More then your family members. More then your friends
If it’s keeping you up thinking about it. If your constantly on CC talking about it (?lol)…
There are many places to get online counseling to get some of your questions answered.
I say this as a friend.
Is anyone else wondering about supply chains in the fall if there is a second wave? How schools will have enough cleaning supplies, hand sanitizers, as well as off-campus students?
Toilet paper is still a rare sight in stock locally. Hand sanitizer and Clorox wipes? Almost like winning the lottery.
I am already thinking about supply chains in terms of how to get enough hand sanitizer, disinfecting wipes, etc. to send off to school with my D20. She is in an incredibly high risk category for her age group and chances of her getting to have an on-campus experience are low, but we are trying not to rule it out just yet. Ultimately, it will come down to what her specialists allow and how comfortable we are as a family with taking that kind of risk.
It’s pretty emotionally challenging to have an incoming freshman this year who does have special health needs. While it may seem like the answer is just to keep her home without question, she has the same hopes and desires that healthy kids have of getting to move out and make new friends. She worked SO HARD for a full ride scholarship, and she made it happen. So while I’m a researcher at a state university and I understand the data and and and, when it comes down to it, it is an incredibly hard and painful decision to have to make.
I am so disappointed for ALL college kids that they don’t get to just go out there and have the time of their lives while pushing themselves academically. It sucks for incoming freshmen, for the class of 2019 who were just starting to spread their wings, for the juniors expecting exciting internships, and obviously for the seniors whose last months on campus were abruptly cut short.
I just coordinated a large-scale survey that went to the students in the program in which I work. I looked over the data on Friday, and in one quick glance it was easy to see that there will be absolutely no way to make everyone happy in the fall semester. Compromise, patience, and understanding are going to be key during the entire 2020-2021 academic year, no matter what universities decide to do.
For flu, students and others can get a vaccine. Alcohol or other drug overdoses, suicide, and sexual assault do not just happen passively when you sit near someone in class or at a dining hall.
Will he be trying to avoid getting infected by social distancing, or does he believe that it is inevitable that he will be infected before a vaccine is available? If the latter, would he prefer to get it over with in the summer and go back to campus with immunity, protecting himself from any inconvenience of being sick during the school year and protecting any vulnerable faculty, staff, and community members at his campus by not being a potential vector?
Colleges get all of that through the commercial supply chains rather than the household supply chains. Students living off campus get all of that through the household supply chains. If stay-home or business closure orders occur in the fall, expect there to be plentiful supply in the commercial supply chains but shortages in the household supply chains.
I may be starting to change my mind on this , all along I said closed campus on line is the safe choice and the easier choice , but since this is a business and 85% of schools need the dorm money and want to avoid the online , full tuition war, schools would open come hell or high water, but with the cost of testing, gloves , masks, sick dorms. perhaps being sued the math may be swinging to staying closed on campus for most schools. It seems a fair amount of schools have a lower yield, Udel is down 700 kids, U of SC is down 10% IIRC, schools gave back a ton of money when dorms closed in the spring, I am not sure it makes $ sense to open campus, it may still happen esp in the big football schools but not sure it makes sense for Lac and maybe 75% of schools that will open, including where my freshmen son is planning to go in sept. In NJ where I live we have been hit pretty hard , I think only NY has more deaths we just past 11,000 I am hearing rumors all state schools will be online with the possible exception or our state flagship Rutgers and if that is the case they are open just for football. Just rumors but pretty good sources.
In Rutgers case they could argue since RU has a hospital and medical school they could handle the cases w/o putting a burden on the already overwhelmed health system in NJ. I do not think any other Nj state school could make that claim.
I think this is a great point and not discuss too much hear, how do colleges backfill spots if teachers get sick, I doubt it would shut down a college but it could mess up some kids whose classes would be cancelled.
@melvin123 , SO your plan and I am not mocking you is a closed campus for kids , but I assume teachers can come and go and food delivery can come on campus?? and what are a bunch of college kids gonna do with 2 weeks on their own , no classes in good weather?? Your closed campus seems to have a lot of holes in it. What do you do with the kids off campus, leave them there, have them move on campus? If campus opens it will be like a small city opening people will come and go, maybe not in past years numbers but kids and adults will come and go.
This is just wrong, I work for a CPG company and supply chains do not work like that, there will be shortages because there will be bottlenecks and in realty these 2 chains , business and household do not match up well, for an example colleges buy milk in much larger containers than a supermarket, farms that sell to colleges now are pouring milk into the ground bc they do not have the correct size to seal it to markets where consumers would buy it. I still do not see all these schools having enough masks, testing… for fall.
That’s exactly what I was saying.