The difference is that we have both vaccines and effective treatments for the flu. We have neither for Covid-19. Our healthcare system (and those of other countries) can effectively manage the flu. Even with social distancing, hospitals were overwhelmed. Take away the social distancing and do you think there won’t be a resurgence? I’m all for getting the economy going again, but this is not the flu we’re dealing with. Why do people keep saying that?
We can’t all stay home until a vaccine is made. The virus seems to have the biggest impact on elderly and those with underlying medical conditions.
Those that are at risk should stay isolated.
IMHO the rest of us need to get back to work and school.
Not having an economy is worse than having an epidemic.
I think this is a great opportunity for universities to lead the way and provide online learning to the masses. MIT already has https://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm their online classroom.
If access and equity is truly the driver of the universities embracing an online curriculum could help many people attend school via doing it online, and with in person testing centers they could prove they know the material.
Students wouldn’t get the traditional college experience, but students would be able to learn at institutions that were previously out of reach.
Just a thought.
Now this story has been picked up by major news outlets. For example, CNN.com tonight has as one of its lead stories “Universities begin considering canceling in person classes until 2021.” Unfortunately, in person fall classes look more and more unlikely with BU’s potential plan of starting in January 2021 and skipping fall semester altogether the best of bad choices for many colleges and universities. I believe many current college students would take leaves of absence if campuses were closed and classes online for another semester or possibly the entire 2020-21 academic year.
@Lila Bear - I hope you do realize that if we hadn’t shut the economy down we might have lost up to 1.6 million American people to COVID? The average flu death total is 20k to 50k a year.
Agree we can’t wait for a vaccine to start to open things up – but it’s dangerous to go back to this ‘it’s no worse than the flu’ talk when clearly this is a MUCH more deadly and contagious disease. The reason the numbers aren’t through the roof everywhere is because we did shut businesses and put out stay-at-home orders.
We will have to balance saving lives and getting things going again. It will be difficult b/c there are no perfect solutions. The federal government’s debacle in handling this means it will be state by state decision making and tough choices.
At least states can adapt to local conditions. Germany had a far different experience than Italy. North Carolina’s virus outbreak looks nothing like New Jersey’s.
If schools remain online in the fall students will flock back to their off campus apartments. I can only imagine the parties.
@GKUnion – I bet college towns will limit gatherings to 25 or fewer (maybe even 10) for just this reason. Or at least they will if there is evidence of community spread.
@roycroftmom but, if students start traveling all across the US to go back to college, won’t there be new hot spots when the virus spreads from one state to another? I know posters are going to say “most” kids go to school near home but many, many colleges have kids from all over the US.
My son goes to school 7 states away. He’ll be back at his apartment in the fall, online or not.
I’m surprised no one has suggested that distancing could be improved by getting just the 2020-21 freshman class to defer and then you’d only have 3/4 of the normal number of students on campus for next year with more of them in smaller upper level classes. You could go back to normal the following year and just teach a double sized freshman class (two years of high school graduates) plus existing juniors and seniors (next year’s sophomores and juniors). A different mix of classes would need to be offered for three more years and there are some other complications (eg big upper level classes in a couple of years’ time) but not something that should be too hard to deal with.
Having said that I don’t think it’s a fair or likely option to be adopted.
@GKUnion that seems to be a very popular choice and I get it.
For colleges that are mostly residential, something will have to give. The kids have to live in dorms. It’s not just small LACs that have the majority of kids on campus. Many mid-sized universities have a majority of students in dorms. On S19’s dorm floor alone, something like ten or eleven states are represented. Ought to be interesting if they go back!
@twoin18 where does a “double-sized” freshman class live?
In the dorms/apartments freed up by next year’s college seniors who still graduate on time. It does create some complications for colleges that normally guarantee on campus accommodation for freshmen and then expect upperclassmen to move off campus.
There are partial solutions along these lines which might actually happen at colleges that aren’t in a financial crisis, encouraging but not mandating deferrals to shrink the class size next year, and then having extra freshmen the following year to bring the total number of students back up to normal. There is an issue of the “extra” class in four years time but there’s quite a bit of time to plan for that.
The problem is that not a single college knows for a fact that they will allow students back on campus for classes next fall or even online. So how do we know which ones will be open or not to commit?
Under your plan, there will be a lot of dead people. Yes, it affects elderly and those with underlying conditions most. Why is a 25-year-old with asthma not worthy? Even if that 25-year-old isolates, he has family members who are going out to work and coming home to him.
All models are wrong, but some are useful.
As stated by Dr. Birx:
“DR. DEBORAH BRIX: I’m sure you have seen the recent report out of the U.K. about them adjusting completely their needs. This is really quite important. If you remember, that was the report that says there would be 500,000 deaths in the U.K. and 2.2 million deaths in the United States. They’ve adjusted that number in the U.K. to 20,000. Half a million to 20,000. We are looking at that in great detail to understand that adjustment.”
Too much fear, uncertainty, and doubt is creating more hysteria than is necessary.
Statistics have shown that 80% of COVID-19 patients experience “mild” symptoms.
I am not saying that it isn’t a concern, but I don’t think we need to shutdown the economy for the next 12 to 18 months as they look for a vaccine.
People that are elderly, have pre-existing conditions should isolate. The rest of us need to calm down, take a deep breath, and go back to work and school.
This isn’t like we are storming the beaches of Normandy… that required real bravery.
Colleges don’t even know what the states will allow them to do. That’s why not much has been said. Behind the scenes they are planning all sorts of scenarios, I’m sure.
But then the other 20% will overburden the hospitals.
Right now, China is reporting mostly closed cases with few active cases. Of the closed cases, about 4% were fatal.
Of course, the numbers from China are probably understated in including only known COVID-19 cases and deaths, even though there were likely many more who got sick or died without being diagnosed with COVID-19 (as suggested by how busy funeral homes in Wuhan were). People are skeptical of the numbers from China for this reason, but the same reason applies to numbers of cases and deaths in other places, including the US (e.g. fire departments are responding to unusually high numbers of service calls involving cardiac arrests in people who were sometimes, but often not, diagnosed with COVID-19).
The lack of good numbers means that most people, including college administrators trying to plan the next few terms, are making poorly informed guesses or have to consider a wide range of possible virus characteristics and the necessary actions for each level of virulence within the range.
Let’s keep to the topic of fall 2020 on campus issues, please.