@GKUnion I mostly agree with you, but I don’t see how they’ll avoid large outbreaks - the one thing we have learned is that small spaces are exactly conducive to that. Just like last week in Seoul, or any retirement home. Also, college-age kids tend to often get asymptomatic/very mild cases, which are the most likely super-spreaders by definition.
@GKUnion i still think some overnight summer camps could be a way for us to all see what it’s going to be like. The story I saw put seven kids in a cabin instead of ten. It was small. Still had bunk beds pushed right up against each other. Yes, they will try to keep the kids outside as much as they can but it could rain! Those days will be spend inside I assume. So “dorms” and cafeterias are a summer camp thing as are a whole slew of teenage camp counselors.
Overnight summer camps for under-12s aren’t a good model for dorms, I don’t think, because under-12s seem not to spread in the same way older kids spread.
I don’t know why small clusters wouldn’t turn into large outbreaks, in a dorm.
@suzyQ7 Amherst has not cancelled study abroad for fall yet and is, for now, leaving the decision up to individual programs.
Smith College, however, has cancelled all their study abroad programs for fall.
So we think that the thousands of students who remained on UCSD campus were locked in singles and just going out (with masks) to pick up food for the last two months? No way. Maybe there weren’t giant keg parties but I’m sure people got together. That’s way too many students for us to think they all stayed to themselves. Maybe some of them even worked part time at places that remained open to make some money. The tests were self administered but the students sat at a table and had someone direct them and watch them take the swab. Wouldn’t you expect to see some of those kids be positive and asymptomatic?
There are other campuses where kids stayed and parents here have reported going to pick up their undergrad’s stuff out of dorms and seen parties in houses just off campus. So lots of campuses had kids sticking around from March-May. I don’t believe we’ve seen any outbreaks from those campuses this spring.
We’ve got some time here. Ten weeks or so until some kids go back. Let’s see what happens in that time.
I would just like to note that in this case, it comes in handy to be attending a small liberal arts college.
@homerdog , Elon announced a couple of weeks ago that they can now schedule private tours for prospective students. I know your D isn’t interested in Elon, but it’s worth checking with her other schools about visits, esp Wake is in the same area and same size.
Re summer camps…there is one upstate NY premium performing arts camp that really put out positive messaging about opening for summer including very detailed, diligent plans (no international staff, quarantining all staff for 2 weeks before opening, testing of all staff and campers, no off-camp outings, etc). It really sounded like it was going to happen…until it didn’t…they pulled the plug on the summer earlier this week.
My son’s J term (January) study abroad to Italy was already cancelled. From what I hear, some fall programs are still up in the air, students enrolled in them were encouraged to also register for classes, and it seems as if the students are looking to line up housing in the (likely) case their program doesn’t happen.
Strongly disagree; surgical masks have been shown to reduce spread by about 75%. Some students will definitely get it though. Colleges are adjusting their models so social distancing is possible. And colleges are not shutting down and doing distance learning again because they can’t afford it. They will develop a contingency plan for when (and it is a question of when, not if) COVID-19 comes to campus. They may temporarily pivot to online classes and shut down campus events temporarily, but they won’t send all home. The reason they had to shut down and move to distance learning this semester was largely because they had no plan; think about how fast the situation escalated back in March.
^^UCSD is on the quarter system, so parents picked up their kids at the end of March. Spring was all online.
UC’s recruit a lot of poor kids, so most don’t have the means to stick around.’
The campus estimates that they had 5,000 (of the 40,000) students remaining. Of that, I would guess that the vast majority are grad students. Grad students do have singles or apartments or live off campus. If the campus labs are closed, grad students have no reason to go to campus. They can just stay home like the rest of us, only venturing out to the grocery store.
Will they socialize, sure, but they are not 19-year olds playing beer pong. They can get a group dinner and still SD.
And note, they had a disappointing response to the voluntary request. Anyone who thought that they had symptoms and had visa issues, would be smart to stay away.
Possible, but not what this article says:
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/uc-san-diego-introduces-covid-19-testing-program-campus
Makes me wonder if the nasal swabs were self-administered correctly?
If it was a home grown test, wonder how reliable it was? Why am I skeptical that it was accurate if there were zero positive?
It also said that students were afraid to come forward out of fear of losing housing if testing positive.
I saw a video that UCSD put out and they showed the process. Students went into a building, filled out info, sat down with someone who was trained who watched them do the test and then the student handed over the swab.
The outbreak in South Korea resulted in what, 80 new cases in a day? Can I say, big deal? This virus is not going away. Yes, there will be outbreaks, but because of testing and tracking, we will be able to squash the spread locally where the outbreak is found, not eradicate the virus. It’s almost better if we keep getting cases throughout the summer so that we don’t get this expectation that it’s gone, and the first time we have an outbreak, everyone freaks out and shuts everything down. Korea closed the schools because of an outbreak at a distribution center facility. I just don’t think that’s going to happen here… But the Koreans got used to no covid positives, so the government freaked out and closed schools a few days after they reopened (by the way, numbers are back down to 30s and 40s a day).
Colleges will have Covid positive students… They need a deep testing/tracking/mitigation strategy in order to be able to stop the spread.
I just read something about Israel opening up schools and their cases rising and it seems that the it is happening more from the High schools, so it seems like Elementary schools are not big spreaders. This makes me think in K-12 land that K-5 is more likely to go back to school then MS/HS. But this also seems like college students do have the capacity to spread.
BTW on the party here in Atlanta, I heard from a friend that the parents and kid who throw the party has already suspected the kid might have Covid and threw the party anyway. So there is that, and yes, i do believe that once all the kids are on campus , after the first few weeks, there will be cases. Dorms will be set aside for quarantine. how full will that dorm yet? do all the sick kids then hang with each other until they test negative. That is interesting. If a family all are positive, are there issues with them hanging together. do they cause a higher virus load? Also I wonder if kids who test positive for antibodies, or have recovered would be the ones working food service for this dorm.
just thinking out loud
Interesting. This got me thinking and I went to the course list for my D’s school (they did registration a long time ago) and searched the fall schedule by online courses. Not many came up. Except for quite a few master lever CS classes, there were maybe 4.
Even liberal arts colleges can have large classes. Harvey Mudd’s introductory CS course has 200 students. Or they may have to ration space in classes to keep sizes down, as Swarthmore does with CS courses.
Also, to accommodate social distancing in the classroom, LACs (like other colleges) may have to put classes in larger rooms than they otherwise need (e.g. put a 25 student class in a room that used to be used for a class of 100). LACs (like other colleges) are unlikely to have such a surplus of classroom space.
I don’t know anything about viruses - how long would someone test positive, start to finish, approximately?
Food to the “quarantine dorm” would have to be delivered, of course. Probably left outdoors.
Since there seems to be an almost consensus that superspreader events in college dorms are inevitable, does it make sense for all (except medically vulnerable) students going to residential college in the fall variolate (intentionally infect, like pox parties in the past) themselves during the summer so that they will have recovered and become immune, thus becoming the immune herd when they go back to campus? Of course, they should responsibly self-isolate (except for others who want to variolate) while infected during the summer. But if an immune herd moves into the college dorms, that will help protect faculty, staff, and others in the community from infection. Or is the COVID-19 hazard even to young college students (those who are not medically vulnerable) still too great or unknown for this to be an acceptable risk to take?
In the various COVID-19 threads, some posters talked up trying to get to herd immunity, but none of them seemed to advocate variolation (even if limited to lower risk people) or announced that they were variolating themselves as a way to get there.
@ucbalumnus While they definitely are a handful of very large classes (I am a chemistry major, so gen chem has about 100 people), most classes (even those that people want to take) tend to be very small. Our intro to Econ class is split into five sections, so each section only has thirty people. Many of the humanities classes and even most of the STEM classes are very small.
While both semesters of general chemistry, both semesters of organic chemistry, and both semesters of introductory bio (but not physics) are very large, virtually every other class is capped at <= 40 students (the less-advanced section of physics is capped at 48, the more advanced section is capped at 24). Only the really hot, big-ticket Intro humanities class have a cap or an enrollment close to 40 students. This next semester, I suspect those classes will be split into two or more sections if it means keeping them in-person. It is much easier at LACs than large universities.
@ucbalumnus Bowdoin talked about having just 10-15 per class so they can meet in classrooms that fit 30-35. They don’t have many classrooms to keep 30 students socially distanced. Making the class list will be complicated. Like I’ve said before, half of the classes will be remote. That leaves every student with two classes that will be in person. I think that’s the only way they would have enough hours in the day to have such small classes with limited classrooms. This plan isn’t for sure yet. It was discussed a bit at the last town hall. We will get final decision in about two weeks.
So I don’t know if it’s necessarily easier for a small school. They will maybe have a larger percent of classes in person. Classes will be particularly small for those. I still think it’s very complicated to pull this off. That’s why they didn’t bother with registration in April. The class offerings are being customized to whatever the plan will be.