The problem that I find with websites listing total positives on campus is that in most case they just a cumulative number. It doesn’t help to know that a lot of people caught it back in the spring Tell me how many caught it in the last two weeks and whether or not they were actually on campus. That is much more relevant to determine level of risk. How prevalent the virus is in the local area and how well the school is doing to contain it?
Of course any numbers now are going to lacking because most schools don’t have students back, and even those that do have a fraction of what will be there in the fall, and also, most employees are still working from home.
Elon has a Dashboard to track cases. They have reported the following to date:
COVID-19 case reports:
July 21, 2020: Undergraduate student, on-campus housing
July 11, 2020: Three undergraduate students, one in on-campus housing and two in off-campus housing
June 27, 2020: Staff member
June 24, 2020: Staff member
June 18, 2020: Staff member
June 13, 2020: Undergraduate student, on-campus housing
May 29, 2020: Undergraduate student, on-campus housing
How much off campus housing does Elon have? We visited back when D16 was looking at schools and I remember that it was a real tiny town with nothing much there. I would assume that most students are in on campus housing. Maybe grad students are off campus?
Exactly, I’m tired of it, even for state numbers. March and April are gone and meaningless right now. It’s a different world…we need real time information by town by day. For schools, we need real time information by school or college. The rest is just noise.
@suzyQ7 I feel like we never get real numbers. Our town does report new cases and breaks them out between nursing home and non-nursing home. Super local numbers like this I do believe but, once I move to all-state numbers, I just don’t know what to believe.
There’s a woman in our town who signed up for a test because she was in close proximity to someone who was positive. She got to the testing site, it was super crowded and she decided to just go home. And then she didn’t quarantine and has been out and about but the worst part of this story is that she just received a report mailed to her house saying she’s positive and she didn’t even have a test done! Like what? The story is circulating around here. I don’t think it’s a fake story since I’m just one person removed from this woman and the person who told me has no reason to make it up.
Now, our conservative neighborhood thinks that the state of Illinois is making up positive cases to get Biden elected which is a bit ridiculous in Illinois because Illinois is always a blue state. Makes a lot of people question virus counts in all states. And many people think the death count is high because deaths are counted as a virus death if the person had the virus but died of something else. The whole thing is so unorganized so who knows.
Anyway, bringing this back to high school, most people here want school open with 100% of kids back. Masks ok. Football & soccer & volleyball just got moved to spring. Swimming, golf, tennis, and XC are a go for fall. Hybrid classes are the decision for now. School starts in two weeks. But SO much chatter about fake counting and parents using that info to fight for 100% in-person school.
Adding to say: Many people here also think that case counts will magically go down if Biden is elected in Nov because there will no longer be a reason to fake them. They even go as far to say as things might get back to normal then since we will see a big drop off in numbers. I’m not saying that’s right but that’s the mindset of a decent number of people here…and these people are highly educated people - doctors, lawyers, leaders in the business world.
@homerdog Ditto here - friend of a friend (actually maybe more than one, come to think of it), but I haven’t seen this issue widely discussed. There may be some sort of presumption based on making the appt, but it’s upsetting because it leads to inaccurate numbers. (When the percent positive is in the single digits, why would there be a presumption of positive based merely on making an appt? Not seeing the logic.) Here too, schools seem to be relying on the % testing positive for decision-making in a fairly narrow range, so it really does matter.
Yikes. Why aren’t the papers reporting that? I need to reach out to some of my friends at local Chicago news stations and ask! I had no idea it was happening in other states as well.
Exactly. We don’t know how the survey question was posed. Obviously the universities/colleges were not told how the numbers were being used, or why would UConn come out with a clarification.
NYT knows exactly what it is doing. It is being intellectually dishonest for them to just say “oh we are just publishing what the schools reported in a survey”, when the headlines, angle of the story, etc is exactly the result they intend for the public to take away. I’ll stop here since one can easily veer off topic.
If schools/universities/counties/parents/students can use this data to inform their policies and decisions, then it could be useful. Doesn’t seem so just now. Maybe for UT.
Lehigh finally announcing their decision regarding the fall:
Since we announced our intention in mid-June to open our campus for the Fall semester, we have closely monitored local and national rates of COVID-19 infection, consulted with numerous health professionals and implemented significant measures to make our campus as safe as possible. The number of states considered high-risk with large COVID-19 case numbers continues to grow; many are areas where our students currently live, greatly impacting our quarantining capacity for those returning to campus. Access to testing has become more limited as resources are diverted to hotspots.
Given current conditions, we have determined we must limit the number of undergraduate students living in on-campus housing and will invite only first-year students and students with extenuating reasons of personal or academic hardship back on campus for the Fall. Students coming from states designated as “hot spots” by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania must self-quarantine for 14 days, either in Pennsylvania or another location not listed by the Commonwealth just prior to arriving on campus. The same is expected of those returning to our off-campus community. New international students traveling from other countries are encouraged not to travel to campus at this time.
All students will be assigned to single rooms and Gryphons will be assigned to each. we will limit access to campus facilities, including residence halls, and students will have access to academic facilities only as needed for their academic programs. University libraries, the University Center and athletic facilities will operate under strict health and safety protocols, including potentially limited access. Access to these facilities may be further restricted later in the semester if conditions warrant.
We want to be clear that first-year students who choose to reside on campus will have an experience unlike any in the past. Extracurricular and social opportunities will be extremely limited. Students whose living circumstances allow them to learn remotely should strongly consider doing so and wait until we can open campus more fully. Students living off campus will similarly find access to campus very limited.
10%tuition discount if student takes all classes remotely.
It is interesting that people don't like the number, that NYT is just being sensationalist (well, duh) but the reality is if these numbers are eye catching from before say, Texas was on fire, WTH do you think daily data will look like in Sept?
NYT did a survey, the colleges answered the questions, NYT gave the results. If nothing else, this is notice to the universities that they better get their data on, because the parents are coming at you. The NYT are the least of your worries, a couple of apoplectic RIce full freight parents with a twitter trigger finger, and it will all be on the Daily mail LOL.
We are going to be looking at “the great contagion” round 2 in August. For any big public, tens and tens of thousands of people are going to turn up, mill around, bump into each other, breathe a lot, go eat, sweat, in one move in period. Possibly in one day.
In the tens of thousands of tests that are done every day, does a mistake occasionally get made? Are the results sent to the wrong address? Of course there are going to be slip ups, with such a scale of testing.
Are the numbers real? No, but not in the way your neighbors might be thinking. They are likely a 2-10 fold undercount of the true number of Covid positive people. For deaths, one just has to look at the excess mortality figures - they are way higher this year. This excess mortality is due to Covid. Also, this excess mortality is world-wide. So if it’s a conspiracy, it’s a pretty amazing one.
To bring it back to schools, if there is infection in the community, there will be infection in the schools, and in colleges. The real question is how many cases a college can accommodate.
Yeah. These are conservative folks I’m talking about but, if kids go back to school with this hybrid plan as planned, and cases of those kids spike then there won’t be any denying that cases are increasing. They are likely to fight if school closes, though, and say that kids don’t have bad cases and won’t spread to teachers if everyone is wearing masks. Time will tell. As for excess mortality? They would say those folks had underlying conditions and the healthy people should be able to go to school and eat in restaurants, etc.
I watched a town hall health and safety meeting hosted by the administration of GKUniversity recently. They said they are working hand in hand with the DOH and that any confirmed cases would be reported in the city/county numbers, nothing would be university specific.
Is the NYT going to issue a correcting/clarifying statement that the cases were not contracted on campus? For UConn or Princeton?
Eyecatching is an excellent characterization of this. Though I thought the NYT held itself out as an elite top flight organization, far superior to the Enquirers, etc. At least the Enquirer is honest in its intentions.
The sad part is that many still hold the NYT in high esteem, and the article has been quoted and republished by other news organizations, affording it the credibility it does not deserve.
The good part for humanity is that there are still some with critical thinking skills and questioned what is being disseminated, esp after some universities came out with clarifications! That should raise anyone’s eyebrows as to how the “survey” was presented to the institutions and the purpose of this “data.”
The other alarming issue is that people/organizations are influenced and making decisions based on these half truth articles that they are being bombarded with. Subconsciously influenced.
Lastly, I think middle schoolers, but certainly by the time the student graduates from high school, they are taught “correlation does not equal causation.” It would be good us adults to remember that too. LOL!
Maybe the data will be better in September when herd immunity (or close to) achieved given that the numbers are what they are now. :neutral:
It has nothing to do with " not liking the numbers", @ syballa, it has to do with critical thinking skills. I would expect a high school statistics class to be able to identify the flaw in the Times reporting.
The one thing we can agree upon is that the numbers will increase by September. For UTAustin, for example, the 287 students testing positive either in the past or now represent .5 percent of the student population at that campus. I would expect far more have it assymptomatically, but have not tested. If that percentage scares one, online learning is always an option.