Wow, that’s some poor reporting by the NYT.
It was the same at Princeton. 45 of the 48 cases were employees at home at the time. The NY Times has a very clear agenda on this, which obscures its reporting.
Thank you for clarifying. Lets see if NYT will do the right thing.
You said it better than me. Definitely an agenda. Take what they publish with more than a shaker of salt to maintain your own sanity.
Don’t hold your breath.
I was very disappointed by that article. The U I work at is also listed and none of the cases happened through school contact. All were students and/or workers at home.
This makes sense because Texas as a state is a mess. Rice reports that of their 59 cases, 43 were staff, 3 faculty and 15 students. Only 1 was possibility an on campus transmission.
Vassar held another town hall last night with more information about quarantine, where and how it will take place. They are constantly consulting with their local health department, the governor, and other NY colleges to assist with planning and make sure they are following guidelines and have enough space for quarantine rooms. The county has continued to see a very low number of cases.
President Bradley talked about the model they are trying that has been successful in some camps in Maine and Mass. as well as the approach used in New Zealand. They want to identify any cases prior to arrival and shortly after arrival, use quarantine where needed, and then basically lock down the campus for 12 weeks. The number of people (other than students) will be strictly limited and faculty/staff will need to complete health assessments every day or campus access will be turned off.
Vassar is trying to find ways for students to socialize outside when possible and they are working on a lot of programs to connect students, especially freshmen. They also emphasized a number of times that they have worked all summer to make the academic experience meaningful and that the remote learning will not be less than the in-person experience. All classes that are hybrid or in person will have options for remote learning.
I hope the model works, but at this point, not much would surprise me.
Haverford has said that 80% of students have chosen to come back to campus, which means that 20% are either choosing to learn from home or deferring. Students also still have until a week before school starts to defer or give notice of remote learning, so the number could go up- I know at least one of my daughter’s friends just hasn’t let them know yet.
https://www.texastribune.org/2020/07/30/ut-austin-coronavirus-cases/
re the Times article.
"Robert Kelchen, a higher education professor at Seton Hall University who has been studying university responses to COVID-19, said he has not seen anything similar to UT’s reporting system.
“It’s hard to say if they’re unique, but it’s certainly unusual to be this transparent this early,” Kelchen said. “One of the reasons UT looks so bad is that a lot of universities have refused to release that information or haven’t done that kind of testing.”
…
It’s in a school’s best interest to self-report “because they get to put those numbers into context,” Kelchen said. “Otherwise, you’ll get people trying to get information through other means, or they’ll have things go through the rumor mill.”
He said ultimately, all schools will have to answer these same questions.
“Colleges are going to have to be transparent. … If they aren’t transparent, then students, faculty and staff aren’t going to trust the college, and there will be a pretty significant backlash,” Kelchen said."
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/07/30/covid-19-roundup-nyt-counts-campus-cases-college-staff-worries-more-fall-changes
“about 270 public and private colleges and universities from which The New York Times solicited and received data,”
“The New York Times surveyed all American public four-year colleges plus private institutions that compete in Division I sports or belong to the Association of American Universities, an exclusive group of research universities. The survey includes data for 270 institutions, but the Times notes that some of the nearly 1,000 institutions it contacted declined to provide data or did not respond.”
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They got the data by survey. You don’t like that they didn’t parse the data as to how and where they were infected? Is that right?
Really, it is going to look much much worse than this, and the unis providing a data page of their own get to at least tell their own story. UT has already said they are not providing testing and will have football at 50% stadium capacity, no wait, maybe 25% capacity.... hold that thought?
Uni data will be the new hospital data, there will be an ArcGIS for every school at some point.
UT is reporting the numbers they know about. What I’m hearing is that because they are charging $88 for their tests, the kids are going other places to get tested. Doubt those positives are getting included, no telling what the numbers really are.
There are multiple news stories about how schools are managing tuition refunds. Most schools will not provide a refund for medical withdrawals including if our students get sick with COVID-19 - but this story indicates that tuition insurance can provide a refund when schools may not.
https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2020/07/23/coronavirus-pandemic-college-students-parents-tuition-insurance/
I think many of the tuition insurance plans require the student to get covid themselves and not their roommate, a parent, or that the school closes because of covid. If the student gets covid and misses a week of school, will that student want to withdraw or perhaps just switch to all online classes?
https://joinpack.app/number-of-confirmed-coronavirus-cases-on-different-college-campuses
So I have a friend at NYT and he sent me this as another example of cases on college campuses being reported. This matches NYT.
NYT and this source above are just reporting the numbers that the schools themselves report.
@Syballa, it is not a question of “parsing the data” but whether the data has much meaning for future decision making. For example, I am confident the Princeton numbers are accurate, and that indeed 45 of its employees did indeed test positive. The same is likely true for Goldman Sachs employees, Verizon employees, and any other large employer in the state of NJ, none of whom were on-site at the time of diagnosis. The Times is suggesting that somehow these schools were particularly dangerous, when the data actually shows that residents of those states (regardless of their employer, if they were off-site) were indeed likely to contract the virus at a time of great contagion in the Spring.
Moreover, many of these schools own and run hospitals, which obviously had far greater rates of contagion among employees. The numbers are highly relevant if one is attempting to assess insurance risk and premium rates, as they are all employees of the university and thus likely covered by its health care plan. The numbers aren’t so relevant if one is trying to assess risk to students, as many on this forum are doing.
Texas is a mess but check out this Covid dashboard for UT Austin…
https://coronavirus.utexas.edu/
461 CUMULATIVE positives… 1 the week of 7/26/20 and the majority back in June. Total positivity rate since March 1 is 5.1%.
So take these results with a grain of salt too.
Science is pure. Results presented by humans are not immune to bias…pun definitely intended…
Agree. And were these positives from the spring? How is that relevant at all right now. No one knew what was going on in the spring.