When my kids went back to college, they walked through two international airports (layover) and then took an airport shuttle (sitting next to folks arriving after walking around in yet more airports) to campus. Lots of exposure. Not the same as going back to your neighborhood elementary or high school.
I wonder too. There was a Swedish K-12 school, one school with all grades, where many of the high school teachers, but few of the teachers of younger grades, got infected. Infuriatingly, they didn’t test the kids, but the event suggests that the older kids might have become infected and infected others, but the younger kids didn’t infect others.
The virus is sneaky. It’s much more clustery than published reports were initially saying, I assume because scientists didn’t realize how much of the spread was from superspreading events. There is going to be much more of a nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, VOOM, reaction than we (or I, anyway) initially expected. You might open up 50 high schools, and 49 of them have no cases, and then suddenly the 50th has 112. You wouldn’t want to assume from the first 49 that opening high schools is safe, only to discover that high schools can be sites of superspreading when the 50th explodes.
Once you get a lot of cases, the Law of Large Numbers applies, and the contagion increases exponentially, but with small numbers of cases, you have a lot of extinctions and a few superspreading events. (This is also what happened on the West Coast.)
They’re not doing anything. For one, it’s unclear if Americans will be even allowed into many countries. Europeans are starting to open up a bit – only to each other (EU.) I know New Zealand and Australia have discussed allowing Americans only with a mandatory 2-week quarantine.
Some American students are able to do virtual international internships arranged either by their campus or independent companies.
Alh, your kids experience is not the norm. Our High school outbreak was caused by parents travelling and spreading it to their own kids, who then spread it to the rest of the class. K12 schools here have over a thousand students, who live with at least 1 other family member and usually more, so the exposure is greater than for many colleges.
Sure, absolutely… but are those parents doing travel now? No one I know is doing business or pleasure travel.
We are talking about next fall.
Perhaps I’m wrong to worry about this.
eta… My kids are long graduated. Their companies have them WFH till at least Sept. Usually they do business travel, but all cancelled for foreseeable future.
husbands employer has cancelled all travel till at least next spring.
@twogirls Everyone wants their child to respect the rules and get a 4.0 ( very few do). That’s the point. If folks want to believe college kids are going to wear masks on a regular basis, that’s fine. I just prefer to recognize the likely reality rather than dreaming of what might be. It’s a different approach.
And as for fear, well I think you’d find that many don’t think Covid is as big a risk as when it was being reported with a much higher death rate and lots of spread. Maybe there will be huge fear again. But I’m in a state with one of the top 5 rates of cases and people are not wearing masks and haven’t been for some time. And many are wearing them in stores ( often if asked). And many are really getting out. You can disagree that’s fine. I’m just reporting based on what I have SEEN people do rather than what folks on this thread HOPE students do and it’s vastly different.
Here it’s the new normal not the Spring shelter in place and the world is ending type scenario. Better IMO as this pandemic is likely to last at least another year.
If UCSD says that the majority classes are in person, but big classes are online, then you would expect that for most students, most of their classes would be online. That’s because while most classes are in person, most class seats are in the big classes, not the small classes.
Suppose you have four classes:
Jews in Medieval France, 25 seats, in person
Algebraic Combinatorics, 25 seats, in person
Modern Korean Literature in Translation from Colonial Period, 25 seats, in person
Intro to Biology, 300 seats, online
The majority of courses are small, but the majority of the people who sign up for one of these courses are taking the class online.
Also, lower level courses and courses in popular majors will be larger. So a frosh/soph biology, CS, or psychology major will likely have all or mostly big classes, but a junior/senior in nuclear engineering or Native American studies taking courses in his/her major will likely find mostly small classes.
Not one positive test
But there could be one 3 days later.
I still think that colleges with kids coming on campus from all over the country and internationally should have kids isolate in their rooms when they first get back to campus. I just read today that Germany thinks 1 week isolation is sufficient rather than 2.
I would like to hear from those posters who are worried about big outbreaks. What do you think about that UCSD report on testing? I’m sure those students were not social distancing for the last two months. This is a tiny bit of good news, no?
@GKUnion there could be a positive three days later? Sure. But those kids have been on campus and not ONE is positive as of the day they took the test. Anyone who doesn’t see hope there is just super pessimistic.
Many colleges are planning on testing all students on arrival.
I live in the tri-state area. My kids are right there in the epicenter. I have friends who are ER doctors in NYC …I have heard horror stories and know many people who have had this virus. There are people in my town who have passed away. People here are wearing masks.
I agree with you that college students might not wear masks and practice social distancing when they return to school. Some will, but many will not. IMO if students do not wear masks and practice social distancing…they should be prepared to handle the consequences. One of those consequences is that their school might close…hopefully that won’t happen.
Behaviors have consequences. Students should not return to school thinking things will be normal.
Not one worried about big outbreaks, but to me, the UCSD report is, ‘not surprising’. It was good practice to see if their hospital can process the swabs*.
It’s a self-selected sample of asymptomatic, mostly older students. Greek houses are closed. Dorms are essentially closed. And yes, they probably were socially distancing pretty well. The young 'ens went home back in March. The students remaining on campus are mostly internationals and grad students. Very easy to SD, as the older students are more mature.
*btw: these are self-administered swabs, so no/little QC.
Wouldn’t a dorm at a residential college be similar to a nursing home or ship in terms of spread of the virus?
Of course, the vulnerability of the people is different in each case. A nursing home’s residents tend to be older with pre-existing health conditions. A cruise ship’s passengers can vary, but many have older passenger cohorts. A Navy ship’s crew may be the closest comparison group by age and health, although Navy personnel are mostly male (versus college students being somewhat more female), and some Navy personnel are significantly older than most college students (about a fifth of enlisted Navy personnel are 35 or older, as are about half of Navy officers).
The aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt had about 1,156 crew test positive for COVID-19, out of about 5,000 total. About 60% of those who tested positive had no symptoms, but seven crew members were hospitalized, and one (41-year-old male) crew member has died.
However, a college dorm outbreak poses an additional risk to the surrounding community, since potentially unknowingly contagious college students will be continuously interacting with others, unlike those on a ship.
Elon reported its first positive case of a student. Not sure how many students are still on campus - they have until 5/31 to move out of campus housing.
“The university has been informed of a laboratory-confirmed case of COVID-19 in an undergraduate student living on-campus. The individual has been in isolation and staff in the Student Health Services and the Office of the Dean of Students are supporting the student, working with the Alamance County Health Department on contact tracing, and will be supporting any students, faculty, or staff who may have been in close contact with the student.”
While they have not formally announced their plan, it appears they are planning a return to campus.
They formed a task force whose provided recommendations on 5/27 but it has not yet been shared with the students. They also noted they are collaborating with other schools in the area including Duke, Wake Forest, and Davidson.
I’d like to know how much isolation the students now at UCSD have done, compared to the undergraduates who will be showing up in the fall.
I also think the important issue is not a snapshot, but what will happen when the first positive case inevitably shows up. I’m particularly interested in the transmission dynamics in a dorm. It seems like undergraduate life at college (assuming little social distancing and little masking) would be an ideal way to spread covid.
Absolutely agree.
Bit of background about me- father of D20, international student due to start at Brandais in the fall. Of course for us the main issue at the moment is the impossibility of getting a student Visa sorted until our local US Embassy reopens.
I don’t mind my DD starting in the fall- she’s 18 and if the college is open and she can make it, she’ll be there. She’s resilient and healthy with no issues, and used to living far from home in a campus, so no problem there.
I believe schools will re-open (mainly for their own financial reasons, and for the economy’s sake). And they’ll adopt all the measures we’ve seen outlined. And I believe students will mostly comply and be well behaved in most schools.
But it won’t make a iota of difference.
Most schools will be hit by a superspreader or 2 come Oct/Nov, and Covid will spread like wildfire. The nature of colleges makes social distancing impossible in practice- just like on a ship.
So we might make it Thanksgiving if we’re lucky (sincerely doubt it) and that will be it for the year. Schools shut, distance learning. Again.
I can’t see any vaccine coming online until at least summer 2021, if that. Difficult times.
@homerdog Keep in mind that these students were probably conservative in their actions while the entire country sheltered for months in the face of massive uncertainties about the virus. Come August I have to believe most of the country will be well into the reopening plan. Back to school will be significantly different than the last two months. I’m not all doom & gloom. I’m looking forward to summer and the prospect of normalizing to the greatest extent possible.
Once on campus I don’t believe there will be large outbreaks, but I’m fairly certain there will be small clusters. I hope to see students back in classes to one degree, or another. The world will be a daunting place to adapt to over the next year. The question is, how far can we safely push the envelope in EVERYTHING that we do outside of our homes? Students will be the first group that ventures beyond what we, as parents, are comfortable with. We’ll need to wait and see if repopulating campuses goes as planned, or goes awry.
@suzyQ7 Testing all students when they arrive is easier with 2,000 students than 40,000. I still don’t believe schools can test everyone often enough to actually make a difference on campus over the course of the semester.