There is also more and more evidence that people were dying of CV as early as February but that the deaths were being attributed to pneumonia or even flu. I don’t see how any of this is good news. All it does is underscore how woefully inadequate the government’s response was and continues to be. Those failures continue to make it extremely difficult for colleges to plan or to develop a coherent strategy.
It is good news because it indicates that we may be closer to the herd immunity than initially thought.
If we get the antibody test up and running, I think we will also find that the “unknown virus” that my kid and many of his friends were diagnosed with last February was actually covid19. This may be valuable information for the colleges when evaluating their plans for the fall.
Just in case there are any college administrators looking at this, my 3 comments:
1- love the idea of breaking the Fall semester down into 2 segments. First segment has more kids on-line, fewer on campus. Buys time in hopes of trial anti-virals working and available.
2- dorms should only have 1 kid per room for at least the first segment of Fall semester. Select kids allowed back on campus based on their need for campus facilities. For example, kids taking a science lab would be among those let back on campus.
3- you can’t just send sick kids home. The parents are in a much higher risk group. You have to have arrangements in place for kids to be treated there.
We naturally focus on the safety of our kids. Colleges also have to consider the safety of their faculty and staff. Besides their wellbeing, some of them are almost irreplaceable. We aren’t talking about professor emeriti in their 70s or beyond, but those who are in the prime of their careers. They aren’t just teachers. They are pioneers in their fields. Do we as a nation want them to risk their lives?
How are schools going to accomplish this, and who would pay for it? This illness makes people exhausted. They need a lot of hydration and they have to be encouraged to eat to keep their strength up. Who’s going to take them food and drinks throughout the day? People can appear to be doing okay then decline rapidly. Colleges aren’t hospitals and they aren’t staffed like one.
Roommates shouldn’t be expected to play nursemaid for their roommates and friends. It’s not what they’re at college for and it puts their health at risk. We also don’t know the psychological burden that might be caused if their classmate dies under their care.
Staff members shouldn’t be expected to do it either. Colleges don’t have the money or staff to take care of each student who becomes ill. Each college may have a nurse or two on staff, but they work in the student health center. They don’t make rounds to the dorm rooms. So who would be treating all the students who get sick?
Any faculty should be given a chance to change careers (i.e. go back into private sector), transition to online faculty etc. Shielding from human contact for a prolonged period (one year in March) doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. Healthcare workers are continuing their professions. They want to shelter in place and close colleges through January of 2021…I can see that possibility, but not further. You cannot close down institutions for years due to the lack of a vaccine. Given the data, controlled risks and looking at the data needs to overrule closing down society like this. All in my opinion of course!
I would have to find the articles but I think they think it was here much earlier then January. Just read an article that said 60-70 % of people could be asymptomatic. I think we are going to see more reports like this. Antibody tests will just let someone know that you had it and are exposed. We still don’t know if it means you would build an immunity to the virus yet. People would hope so but don’t think tests are not conclusive yet since it’s so new… That is the problem.
Great ideas but were do you put the other 2 kids in a 3 bed dorm room?
I’m not understanding why faculty and staff of a college are different than any other group when it comes time to return to work… There are millions of other workers in the primes of their careers too…some in non-essential jobs right now who are unable to earn money. Corporate leaders. Physicians of many specialties not involved in treating covid-19 patients. K-12 teachers.
Sometimes on CC we forget that most colleges are not primarily residential, nor staffed by tenure/tenure track faculty. The reality is that a small minority of college students live on campus, and that a minority of professors have tenure, or are on tenure track jobs…40% of all faculty are part-time adjuncts, while grad students make up another 20% or so.
Hmmm would any college be so bold to have less kids in the classroom but still have the professor live in zoom on a screen. Still teaching live just not in the same room as the students???
Would people complain at this?
I think the reality at the high cost residential colleges that many families on CC strive for is that they have to maintain their brand. Parents are already complaining at the thought of a semester being done online. If colleges open too soon and they start losing faculty to extended illness or death, who’s going to teach? Are parents who are paying ~$60k/year going to be happy with a staff of adjuncts? Hiring visitors and tenured faculty takes months. I’ve never encountered an industry that takes so long to fill a position. If they have to fill many at once, that’s going to be a real challenge. Faculty whose departments are already short staffed due to the death(s) of colleagues will be the ones responsible for interviewing their replacements. If I were an administrator, I’d be careful too.
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- A rapid test to screen students b4 returning to a dorm. Since testing is still log jammed, will colleges be able to get their hands on rapid tests? Plus, colleges will need to have sufficient tests and contact tracing (ideally an app) on hand to handle any outbreak quickly.
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I don’t understand how having a test helps.
So you have one student who tests negative, was social distancing all through March and April, was always healthy. You have a second student who tests positive for antibodies who never had any symptoms. Third student had full on Covid for 14+ days.
Which student gets to go to school? Is the student who tests negative punished for remaining healthy (probably because of social distancing)? What if he takes the test on Monday and by Friday has been exposed because he traveled through airports to get to college? If the country has also implemented a contact tracing system, what happens if it shows he’s been to 4 hot spots but still tests negative for covid?
I understand that test helps experts for the projections of movement of the disease, but for an individual it doesn’t do much. You can be negative one minute and be exposed and positive the next.
Also, who chooses which student gets to go to college if the schools only want 1/2 on campus? The ones who can afford to pay for a single dorm? At one daughter’s school, that was about 50% more per semester; at other’s school, there were 4 kids in a suite so they had their own rooms but not their own bathrooms or living rooms.
I’ve been thinking about what my kid’s school needs to do to get back open. I’ll freely acknowledge that I am seeing it through the lens that applies to our situation and may not apply to others. Kid is going to be a sophomore at a large public university. He has already selected his dorm for next year and registered for all his classes. I think undoing all the classes and dorms, and redoing them in some other format would be a huge lift for a school this large, so reorganizing the semester into two quarters as some are discussing will just not work. They also just don’t have the dorm space to give every kid a single and which kid do you kick out?
Most classes at this school are M/W or Tu/Th and larger lecture classes have smaller break out sessions with TAs. I think that any class over some threshold (20, 25?) will have to be split in two, with half the class attending in person on the first day and half attending in person on the second, to allow for some distancing. All classes will have to be recorded. On the day you don’t go, you can watch the class live or recorded. All the break out sessions still happen. Students will need to wear masks in class. Office hours will be held in small classrooms instead of offices so that teachers can socially distant from students and masks will be required.
As for the dorms, at any sign of illness kids are moved out of the dorm and into a separate facility until they test negative. Since all upperclassman at this school have already selected their housing, this means the school will have to leave a freshman dorm empty or maybe rent out a local hotel to use for this purpose. I want to say that they will test everyone before allowing them to move in but I just don’t think this will happen. I don’t believe that testing will be that readily available for years (I’m a bit of a pessimist on this) and I just don’t see them staying closed that long. I know that people are contagious before they show symptoms but I don’t see how you get around this. I think at some point you just hope that herd immunity is sufficient.
Yes. People would complain about anything.
I think many of us (including me!!) have been using their nervous energy to create options for residential life on campus this fall but, if kids return to campus, it’s not going to be all that different. Colleges aren’t going to put one student per room. They aren’t going to be able to have all kids social distance in class sitting six feet apart. They aren’t going to set up infirmaries. They aren’t going to only allow some kids back on campus. (Could you imagine the backlash on that?) There are so many road blocks to all of our ideas.
If kids go back, it will be because the majority of America has gone back to a fairly new normal. Will there be plexiglass at the cafeteria check out? Yes. Will sports be affected? Likely - big time. Will large events be cancelled? Yep. Will there be more hand sanitizer stations around campus? Probably. Will campuses cancel fall breaks and have kids stay in class that week to keep kids from traveling? Maybe, because that’s an easy option.
I’ve been guilty of trying to find creative options but I’m really starting to think that’s a waste of time. At this point, I think either kids will be back in time or they will go back late or there will be online class. Those are the main options.
Every life is obviously precious, but some are more irreplaceable. The loss of some faculty members could setback years of researches and developments in some critical areas that our nation needs. Their talents are the few advantages we still enjoy as a nation.
This is true of many other members of our society too. A great deal of important research is not done by faculty members, or even at colleges/universities.
I expect some of the faculty members you are referring to haven’t seen the inside of a smallish classroom in a very long time.
With that, I don’t want to get in trouble for debating, so that’s my last comment about this.
There are very few such people, even fewer who teach undergrads. The same superstars can be found in other fields-gifted military leaders, remarkable code breakers at NSA-I expect they are all back at work already, or will be soon.
ER doctors I know think colleges should reopen this fall, and that there is no reason to think any conditions will be different in January at all. The antibody test used at this point appears highly unreliable with many false negatives.
I totally agree that no single person is more valuable than another. My comments were only to explain why some colleges may hesitate to commit right now to fully opening on time in the fall. I think the options are to open on time, open a few weeks late, or do a semester online and open in January.
Since we do not know how long antibodies give immunity an antibody test seems irrelevant for schools for this upcoming fall. Similarly with rapid covid19 tests- I do not see schools having the access they need to them to test (and retest) every student, staff, and faculty member.
We all want the same thing- our children to get the college experience on campus while not being in danger (or putting others in danger). Sadly I do not see that happening for the fall.
Classes are scheduled, dorms assigned, and with hospitals lacking proper PPE I do not see it as feasible that schools will be getting their hand on it so a quarantine location with care given to students seems unlikely or downright risky.
Removing an ill student from campus could be almost impossible due to logistics and keeping them on campus puts others at risk. Schools simply are not set up for any of this. Most of them are, however, set up now for some sort of remote delivery (how well this is done will vary wildly).
It is far easier to simply stick with the status quo or as close as they can get. It will likely be either online or on-campus as close to normal as they can (maybe minus sporting events and attempting to keep the parties from happening). However most colleges are not about to gamble their enrollment numbers by being honest that online is likely- so the standard refrain is ‘we are planning for students to be on campus in the fall’ which is true. They are just also planning for them not to be.