@katliamom At smaller schools, all kids will be tested upon arrival. Most of us don’t have many details on how testing will work after that. Some have suggested testing the sewage, or testing all kids weekly. I do think some wealthy, smaller schools could pull that off. And, at least at Bowdoin, the kids don’t wander far. Maybe to Target or to Freeport to shop. I don’t think many make it down to Portland. I think it’s likely they could be asked to stay near campus and the kids would do it. It won’t be a big change from what’s normal for them.
It’s hard for this “school in the fall” thread to make a lot of sense when we are talking about plans from so many different schools in different parts of the country and different sizes.
@homerdog The chances of a masked student catching COVID during passing period is likely to be minimal, assuming the period of contact is transitory and the students don’t stop to chat for a prolonged period. Once they’re in the classroom, for an hour at a time, there is need for multiple safeguards like social distancing + masks + state of the art air circulation system. At least that’s my understanding.
My prediction for the fall (best case scenario) is that course delivery will fluctuate between remote, hybrid, and small group F2F according to the number of given cases at any one time. If there’s a small outbreak, there would be a shift to remote classes and pickup food delivery. If the outbreak dies down, reopen F2F learning. This will get old fast and may encourage more compliance with the rules. So even if there is a rogue super spreader fraternity party, if most of the kids are following the rule most of the time, the spread should be easier to track, trace, and contain.
State and local regulations limiting group size will also come into play. However, I can’t see those applying to dorms as they consist of many small “households,” typically of 1-5 people depending on single room, suite-style dorm, on campus apartment, etc. So your gloomy scenario of kids alone in their dorm rooms, eating boxed meals, and zooming in to class will probably happen some of the time. In that case, I can’t imagine that students would not find ways to socialize beyond those confines.
There will always be rule breakers and rule followers. While one can’t control what rule breakers do, as an individual, following the rules individually will increase your chances of a good outcome. Finally, FWIW, in my area, young people seem to be on board with mask wearing, even outside. Then again, I’m not seeing their Instagram posts!
S19’s take on this from 30 minutes ago- if kids show up and are tested and there are no cases and if the college is tracking temperatures and testing everyone weekly and kids wear masks to class and in campus buildings then how will anyone be getting the virus? He and his friends think it’s likely that they will be asked to not leave Brunswick and they are cool with that.
Wouldn’t the college be able to let up on a few restrictions little by little? We don’t know the starting point of the restrictions since we haven’t seen the plan yet but let’s just say he thinks he and his friends will do what it takes to keep cases to zero. He’s not seeing why they couldn’t loosen up a few things if the virus isn’t spreading on campus one month in. Doesn’t see where kids would be getting the virus from at that point.
Only 16 cases in the last month in all of Maine. We still have nine or ten weeks before kids go back.
Far more disconcerting, I also found the info below on the Fort Benning website. It sounds, quite frankly, like an attempt to sweep the number of covid cases under the rug under the guise of national security, and could very well explain why this outbreak (and others like it on other bases) aren’t getting any press.
"To comply with a recent policy change directed by the Department of Defense, the Maneuver Center of Excellence and Fort Benning is joining other military installations and will no longer post numbers of positive cases of COVID-19. The MCoE leaders want all members of the community to understand this change and remain confident that we will continue to communicate transparently with you, and in full cooperation with local health officials. When we do have positive cases, we will immediately initiate tracing interviews and notify anyone who has been in contact. The leadership team will coordinate extensive sanitizing and cleaning of the areas that personnel may have worked or visited. The numbers of those effected by COVID-19 will be reported both through the Army or respective military services chain of command and represented in the daily update provided by DoD, as well as in statistics reported by local health officials.
The number one priority is the health & safety of our community. You can be assured we are taking proactive measures to protect our force. Remember, our best defense is to stay home if able, practice social distancing and wash your hands. We ask that you help squelch rumors. We are in the middle of a Public Health Emergency. This can affect anyone. It’s important to stay calm, help each other & tend to those who may be in quarantine or isolation. We are in this together. One Force, One Fight.
And to bring this around to the topic at hand, my guess is that what happened at Fort Benning is very likely to happen on college campuses as well – even with their best efforts at testing and isolation, the virus spread rampantly in a period of 22 days. Maybe there’s not as much physical exertion or yelling in a dorm as their is during army training, but there’s certainly dense congregate living and a likely lack of social distancing. Ugh.
@homerdog Unless they are quarantined for a bit when arriving (to make sure they didn’t become exposed on the way to campus) that will not work. Students who have been exposed right before move in will not test positive right away and will virus shed before symptoms appear.
Of course that’s the case. We also don’t know IF schools will in fact be able to test their students. Given how difficult testing remains in many parts of the country, it’s a safe assumption that some of these promises to test students regularly are, shall we put it, aspirational We also don’t know how communities will be faring with this virus by the fall. It’s exploding in several areas now which had a small number of cases 2-3 months ago. What if we experience a significant second wave fueled in part by premature reopenings and dumb people refusing to wear masks or social distancing? We don’t know how many professors at each of these schools would be considered “at risk.” We don’t know what would happen if a community objects to a school’s reopening. We don’t know how small, remote LACs would handle a significant outbreak.
We don’t know key crucial pieces of this puzzle, but that hasn’t stopped posters speculating and criticizing for almost 350 CC pages :))
Yes, and the Fort Benning article indicated that those recruits were tested upon arrival, monitored for 14 days, and they still ended up with 142 new positive cases. So in spite of testing on arrival, the virus managed to come from somewhere – obviously, there had to be exposure that hadn’t shown up on tests yet or was brought in by someone else that that recruit group interacted with. That’s why I find this outbreak so scary – they did everything “right” as far as testing on arrival and still ended up with a large outbreak in less than 1 month.
Bates has announced that they are bringing the students back to campus this fall.
Bates’s President said that peers in the NESCAC are planning the same.
There seems to be a misunderstanding here. Suppose I get exposed to someone at the grocery store, and breathe in a snootful of virus. That virus is taking up residence, first in my nose, and it’ll start moving around. I’m infected.
But if I get tested on the way home from the grocery store, I’ll test negative, even though I’m infected. It’ll take a few days (three or four, I think) for me to test positive, even though I am in fact infected.
So, the kids show up at college. One of them had a big party just before she left, where she was infected. She’s tested. She tests negative, but in fact she’s positive. Two days later she becomes infectious. She infects her roommate, her best friend, her boyfriend, and her four study partners.
The same problem occurs with Fort Benning:
They didn’t quarantine contacts! Isolating individuals who test positive is not enough to stop an outbreak. Why do they not know this?
For Harvard, I was thinking it might be 2 classes at a time, leaving the Seniors for Spring. So maybe Frosh and Soph fall, then Juniors and Seniors Spring. Regardless, all classes will be remote.
Harvard College would return a moderate number of undergraduate students (~2,000-2,500 or roughly 40% of students) to live in residence on campus in fall 2020. Students described in Pathway 1, and ** one or two natural cohorts of students (i.e., first-year students, sophomores, juniors, or seniors) would have the opportunity to return.** This pathway allows more students to be accommodated within the existing capacity of Harvard’s dorms and Houses, in line with the current density guidelines as outlined by public health officials, and with capacity retained for isolation needs. To be viable, this pathway requires that Harvard be able to execute moderate-volume, high-cadence testing capacity, delivering as many as 3,000 tests every two to three days that can be collected in sites across campus. This pathway presents a low risk of infection and community spread. Having a larger cohort of students on campus allows Harvard to pilot COVID-adapted, campus-based practices and programming. If successful and as the public health situation evolves, this pathway could potentially be scaled up, as described in Pathway 3, or if necessary, scaled down to Pathway 1.
Pathway 1 are about 600 students (Only students who lack the necessary conditions for learning in their home environment or require access to campus-based resources to maintain their academic continuity would have the opportunity to return.) - but they can be from any class. Not sure why the bolded above (my bold) was worded the way it was ‘one or two natural cohorts of students’.
We also don’t know how communities will be faring with this virus by the fall. It’s exploding in several areas now which had a small number of cases 2-3 months ago. What if we experience a significant second wave fueled in part by premature reopenings and dumb people refusing to wear masks or social distancing? We don’t know how many professors at each of these schools would be considered “at risk.” We don’t know what would happen if a community objects to a school’s reopening. We don’t know how small, remote LACs would handle a significant outbreak.