@elena13 since you have one at Vanderbilt, I will ask you your opinion - do you think they will go test optional? I’m familiar with Vandy because my sister graduated from there and we live fairly close by, and my observation is that grades/rigor and test scores are very important at Vandy. To me it seems it would be unlikely to change…
I guess you can look at it this way, once you quarantined for 14 days, you will not have to do it again and won’t be subject to regular testing and isolation the rest of the school year. Some colleges will house sick students in the same housing buildings so they will not be alone and will likely have “staff professionals” help assist them. Students will adapt and get through this relatively unscathed is my prediction. Lastly, with all of the testing, contact tracing, and social distancing I would be surprised if even 10% of the student body gets this illness this academic year. Small LACs will fair much better than very large universities like ASU, Texas A&M, and University of Michigan.
This is not the case…students who are deemed to have been in close contact with someone who was infected have to be quarantined because they have been exposed. Not all of those quarantined will end up infected.
If they don’t get sick, they can be quarantined again. This could be a problem especially if hotspots develop.
Is that true, though, if you didn’t actually get sick? Suppose Sarah has contact with infected student Tom, gets quarantined for 14 days (maybe 7 will be more likely?). Sarah never gets sick or tests positive and is eventually released. Two weeks later she spends the afternoon with infected student Noelle. Is she going back into quarantine?
cross-posted
I agree that the threat of quarantine may cause some students to underreport. However, I guess I’m an optimist and hoping that there will be a bit of peer and professor pressure to offset it a bit. Classes will be small, coughs will be heard!
My S19’s school (Elon) has posted a daily self health assessment that the students are told to do. I didn’t read carefully enough to see if these have to be actually submitted anywhere. It has instructions on what to do if you have certain symptoms, most being to start with a call to the health care center. I also haven’t looked into whether violations of the covid protocols will be covered in the honor code. I do know that each student will have a mandatory online training session this summer on covid protocols.
As for off campus quarantine: When I was in college 30 years ago, my roommates in my off campus apt came down with chickenpox. They were told to quarantine, and they did it (in our apt…after verifying that the other roommates including me had already had chickenpox). It was a larger school (IU) so I don’t know that anyone in authority was actually checking. Of course this wasn’t exactly similar to covid because they were allowed to be around people who had chickenpox, so they had us roommates and could have other chickenpoxxed-as-children people over. But they were told to quarantine and they did…they didn’t leave the apt for however long it took.
Not necessarily. Some will be quarantined because they were exposed but never test positive. They could walk out of quarantine and immediately be exposed again.
There could be more than one strain. Some people take a month to test negative after testing positive.
14 days is the suspected incubation period. It is not a magic ‘safe’ number.
@sylvan8798 Then Sarah gets quarantined twice. This was why earlier posts detailed how it would be important to keep infected (positive students) away from those that had contact with an infected student.
Good point and I think that could be a big problem. In theory, a student could be placed in 14 day quarantine, multiple times (e.g. 4 times) a semester or 8 weeks! I really hope that the administration is very selective in who they quarantine when only “exposed” to an infected person. Will be interesting to see how different colleges implement their “contact tracing” protocols and procedures. If they are too strict, they may be isolating way too many students and if their procedures are too liberal, they may be faced with a bigger chance of an outbreak on campus.
Anyone know when the vaccine will be ready? lol
@SCgirl1 - I really don’t know, but as long as there are opportunities to take standardized tests this Aug/Sep/Oct, I don’t think Vanderbilt will go test optional.
School in the fall is sounding more and more like Shawshank U…
@twoinanddone makes a great point about people taking a long time to test negative. My nephew tested positive mid April and he still has not had a negative test and has been tested 3 times since the initial positive.
As a parent I would want to know what the school does in that scenario. Will kids that test positive be allowed to end isolation at day 14 or do they have to test negative first?
This is stupid and will be counterproductive - they should be tested if exposed, and quarantined for a few days only while waiting for results. I know, they may not get picked up on test, but if not, it means they are not very contagious.
@Aguadecoco i wonder if we will get the details from colleges on how this quarantine and isolation will work exactly. So far, most schools are pretty nebulous. We should all be asking very specific questions before the kids go back.
Both my kids colleges have converted to hybrid model, giving flexibility of remote for students for any reason at any time. So they are going back no matter what. If they end up in endless (non-tested) quarantine, they can just come home and quarantine at home and finish the semester. They are within driving distance.
From what I’m reading about Massachusetts and their testing goals, I feel good that both their schools will be testing like crazy, so I don’t foresee silly 14 day quarantines just for being partially exposed to a positive. We need to use testing, not 14 day quarantines, to find positives.
I’m wondering how this self screening will work- my D has a cough, every day a little one from post nasal drip and acid reflux. She has meds for both but it’s just always there. Would she have to self screen out of classes everyday even if she’s negative and hasn’t been exposed? What about kids with the common cold? I feel like coughs and sniffles are just normal parts of life before this and now are viewed differently.
As I noted upthread some time ago, the speed and certainty with which universities announce their intention to fully reopen campuses appear to be in inverse proportion to the strength of their brand and financial position.
It’s not so much that the scientists and academics are not paying attention to science, it’s that the harsh reality is such that for most higher education institutions the decision not to open the campus this fall is tantamount to closing their doors permanently - and that forces the administration’s hand to bet the farm.
Durham County has had 2k confirmed cases, so 1,600 (10% of students) would be quite high.
I am pretty sure Oxford, Duke and Vanderbilt would survive if they wanted to keep students away for a year. So would the unbelievably rich UT system. Instead, They wish to open for students on campus, @TheVulcan . Sone schools see it as essential to their mission.
Maybe. But Vanderbilt was concerned enough to admit 39% more students over the year before - from a smaller pool of applicants.
^I mean, I’ve read MIT’s internal deliberations, and they, too, are concerned about large number of students taking gap years if classes are online. I can only imagine what goes through the heads of administration at other colleges.