I agree with @saillakeerie that it’s surprising the Broad Institute could be or is stockpiling supplies when many areas of the country are struggling with testing. Continuing college education is definitely worthwhile but providing for a residential college experience is a “first world problem” in many respects and it seems there will be a large amount of testing reserved for the college population in many parts of the country.
My son’s school doesn’t require testing and we are not having him tested unless he displays symptoms. He is doing a 3 week self-quarantine and has a single room. Testing is only one point in time… what matters most are the individual decisions students make. His schedule is hybrid and I am comfortable with the school’s physical distancing, mask wearing and cleaning policies/procedures. It’s as simple as that. (I’m bracing myself for many of you to say that is being simple-minded.)
My son’s school is asking students to quarantine 8 days before arriving for classes. He’ll be living off campus. He’ll drive down 12 days before classes start and spend a few days with his Grandparents before driving the final 60 miles to school. He’ll move in 2 days before his roommates and immediately begin working on the ambulance for the Rescue Squad. He will be at his apartment, just off campus, eight days before classes begin.
@vpa2019 wrote:
And,if there were a national policy that mandated residential colleges close down for the duration while perhaps helping them to retool for some other purposes (as was done during WWII), I would be all for it. But, there isn’t.
@RosePetal35 first, worry everyone for all the typos. Wish we could edit.
Anyway. S is an incoming student at Berklee College of Music in Boston. I thought they had a good hybrid plan with testing thru the Broad Institute and dorms at 70% capacity, but I guess it was just too difficult or costly or risky, or all of the above. I’m betting they won’t open campus until fall 2021 …and hoping that I don’t look back at this post and think I was overly optimistic lol.
Neither have my kids except for the occasional solo walk. Where would they be going? There’s nowhere to go and everything has been closed.
@homerdog It is no big deal to her at all. She doesn’t get why students have been out flouting the rules/guidelines and spreading the virus. She’s had a 10 week (virtual) internship that has kept her busy. They had plenty of virtual social activities for interns. She is in constant contact with her friends. They talk every day and they have regular game and movie nights. She has read a lot. And we do fun things at home. It’s no sweat!
How about continue your education with online college classes? An option which I do not believe was available during WWII.
We are having D tested Monday. We leave to take her back to school Saturday. Her school is 1200 miles away and they get tested before they can move in. We won’t bother taking her if she’s positive. She might as well isolate at home and then go to school.
I agree with @saillakeerie - Is it right that colleges are able to access such a wealth of testing capacity when the general public where I live in a hot spot has to wait 7-10 days for a test result? These are some of the most exorbitantly overpriced and selective schools who cater to the wealthy and elite. That’s who gets testing? The exceptional kids of wealthy & elite people? Are these colleges at all interested in the public good? This question of access to testing is over and above the fundamental problem that some colleges are still planning to bring students to congregate on campuses. Reasonable people can be very skeptical that the safety precautions and distancing rules will stick with young people in a college setting.
I’d be for that, too. The point is,there is no such national policy and colleges have been left to decide how use their (often vast) resources to their own advantage.
Count me in the disgusted group that otherwise healthy and privileged young adults with minimal risk will get twice weekly testing but our essential workers and first responders do not.
Actually, the state colleges around here are also using Broad Institute. I’d wager the majority of the students who go to our state schools are neither wealthy nor elite, and the schools have acceptance rates over 70% and are relatively inexpensive.
That being said, I too feel essential workers should be tested twice weekly, regardless of where they work/reside.
Just goes to show you how quickly the tide of public opinion can change. Back in May and June when residential colleges were rolling out their plans, no one thought the country would be where it is today in August of 2020, with infection rates outside the NE pretty much out of control. For widespread testing and contact tracing to have any efficacy at all, the country has to get its arms around the infection rate.
@gwnorth @saillakeerie I assume you are both somewhere that was really hard hit. But aren’t things open even in NYC? People are going to parks, no? Ordering a Starbucks online and picking it up outside? I didn’t realize anyone was still living in a shut down.
Many people in the country are out and about and not breaking rules. Here in Illinois, we are “allowed” to go to the gym, eat at restaurants inside or outside, certainly allowed to meet friends for walks.
It is foreseeable that the NE infection rate will skyrocket once all of the students arrive from all corners of the country, despite protective measures. We’ve seen it already in athletic training on campuses over the summer. In the meantime, colleges will continue to act more and more like an oligarchy of their own.
Not to add to the anger about college students having testing reserved for them, but D just got another update from Amherst: they will be getting the take-home tests on August 7, not August 5, and those from at-risk states (basically everywhere outside the Northeast besides Hawaii) have to take a second take-home test within 72 hours of arrival. And that’s in addition to the 3-5 day quarantine to get two consecutive test results back once arriving on-campus. Those who test positive on the first take-home test (the ONLY take-home one for those in low-risk states) will have to wait to come to campus until they are COVID negative. Those who test positive on the second take-home test will be allowed to come to campus, but will move into a quarantine/isolation dorm/hotel until they are COVID negative. So that makes 3 COVID tests for those from low-risk states, 4 from high-risk states. Seems excessive to me.
The Broad Institute is not testing students at college right now, because students aren’t at college right now. They’re doing 10,000 tests a day, a tiny number in the context of testing.
When they ramp up to do the college testing they’ve contracted to do, that number will go way up. So my question is, how will they have the supplies they’ll need to do these tests, when other testing locations are already suffering shortages?
There are two possible answers here, neither of which reflects well on them.
People here are suggesting that they’ve already stockpiled all the supplies they’ll need to handle their testing for the next four months for the college students they’ve contracted to test. In other words, when other people, people in need of prompt results, are waiting 7 days or more for their test results because of supply shortages, Broad has hoarded what it needs for these privileged students. Broad, then, is keeping people from learning they’re positive, and thus isolating and keeping from infecting others, because Broad wants to make sure to be able to test college students in November. Yeah, great plan, promote more disease spread now in order to test for it later.
But that might not be true. The other possibility is that they don’t have the supplies, and don’t have a good reason to believe they’ll be able to get them and deliver what they’ve promised.
So they’re either hogging supplies that are needed by others now, or they’re promising what they have no reason to believe they can deliver.
Maybe we should blame the government for not having a strategy and not colleges and companies working with them who planned this testing scenario months ago. In some states, I think testing is still plentiful. Should those states rise to the occasion and somehow help the states that are having testing problems? Testing is hyper-local and that’s seems to be the only option right now. I did see a post on the other CC thread about some new investment in more testing that should help all states. I hope that’s true and everyone will be able to be tested whenever they want. The post mentioned a big increase in all kinds of tests, including rapid ones, as early as Sept.
The Broad Institute is affiliated with MIT and Harvard so it makes sense that it is helping with testing for those schools and other NE colleges.