I don’t know anything about UNC housing but if there are a lot of singles with private baths, maybe they don’t need a ton more quarantine space?
Purdue has 400 beds set aside but told students in singles they can isolate in their rooms and have meals delivered there.
@homerdog: do they really believe the entire world got shut down and/or sick as a sort of ploy? Do they think Sweden decided to have 7 times the number of dead people compared to other Scandinavian countries just to make a point about lockdowns (ie., they work) or that Italians, British, or French citizens enjoy fines and did it for fun? I really don’t understand this in a developed, educated country.
All kids should be taught the concept of exponential growth. It clearly needs to be taught since so few people seem to understand it.
Right now it’s difficult to calculate doubling time but it looks like many schools reopening will be right when the doubling time requires a shutdown (ie., number of local cases doubling over 3 days or less). The same issues as in March remain, made even more urgent and dire with school openings.
Are you calculating doubling times in your county and kids’ college county? (I realize it’s hard because some of the data is unreliable but I don’t really know how else to plan ahead).
I don’t think it’s a workable idea to keep infected (or potentially infected kids) confined 24-7 to their rooms with healthy kids in the same building.
I guess they believe there is a virus but that the case low is very low here.
Also, many believe that the rate of death due directly to the virus is exaggerated and that the deaths are almost all elderly and people with underlying conditions. Many also believe that it’s not a zero sum game. Kids are more depressed at home and are falling behind and getting someone to watch them during the day is hard for working parents. So there are risks going to school and catching the virus but there are other issues as well. Plus, most people here don’t know anyone who got really sick or died. The people pushing back would say it’s a very contagious disease and people will catch it but it won’t be serious for the vast majority. And, yes, they think the cases are exaggerated for political purpose.
So, when it comes to schools opening, they want them open with masks. They aren’t asking to break the rules, just want as much in-person school as possible. They think the virus is overblown since so few will get really sick and what the kids are giving up doesn’t make sense.
Isn’t that what happens in studios and small apartments all over the world?
D quarantined for 2 weeks in her studio apartment in GA before starting work. It would be no different at school.
Echinacea is one I’ve heard of and the one that I use sometimes is garlic. When I was in college I took garlic capsules every night and never had a cold for more than 2 days.
@momofsenior1 UNC says that double rooms with hall baths are one of their most common room types. They also have suites, but that would still be sharing a bathroom. They say that single rooms still have to share a bathroom with other people.
85 beds for isolation 63 for quarantine They already have a few kids in these beds. Their positivity rate has been 10.9% when very few people have been there.
Northeastern is planning on doing most of their testing on campus in their own health department approved labs while also having a contract with Broad. Maybe other universities also have in house testing capacity.
As far as hand sanitizer goes, I use it mostly to protect others from me. I use sanitizer after I get out of my car and before I go into the store for example. Or, after I look at my shopping list. I’d rather not touch the dispensers outside stores just in case I miss a spot. Then, when I get home, I sanitize before entering the house and then do a thorough soap and water wash.
My family has also done very little outside the home since March. We can reserve lanes at the outdoor pool at our gym, so we do that. I would go to outdoor classes if available but they are still not offered. We are in Texas so the rates have never dropped to a low enough level for a long enough period of time that is seemed prudent for my kids to get summer jobs or for us to attend social events.
Bentley University (Waltham, MA - just outside Boston) is also using Broad Institute.
Screening tests are required upon arrival to campus. All residential students will be tested weekly thereafter.
JAMA just released an article related to testing of a college campus a size of 5,000. The ideal would be testing every 2 days. Spending the tests in this age group which is driving the virus and compliance with guidelines in low-coupled with dorm life makes sense. Attack at the source. That way you decrease the spread to dorm, University community, household community, etc. This was all a hypothetical and a projection on how often testing would need to take place and also what kind of testing (saliva vs shallow nasal) etc.
Almost 85% of UNC students are in-state-likely they will just have a short drive home if they test positive and isolate there instead.
That makes sense I guess? But who is picking them up and driving home with a positive virus case in the car? I’ve seen this option thrown out there for other state schools too. Would you all pick up your son or daughter and drive them home?
No, that’s different. Students are young and single. They interact with each other much more than adults living in apartments with their neighbors. Moreover, isolating infected adults in their own small apartments isn’t a very good idea to begin with.
@1NJParent I don’t know about other schools, but in a July 2 town hall at Amherst, they made it very clear that in their opinion, sending kids home in the event of an on-campus outbreak or in the event they hypothetically run out of beds is a bad idea. According to them, kicking kids out in the event of an outbreak of would put parents and the kids’ communities in danger; this was different back in March, when the default assumption was that everyone on-campus was negative and most people in the country didn’t have it, but cases were going to go through the roof soon and colleges didn’t have the resources to mitigate the spread of the virus. They said, as with any other point in the semester, kids who feel uncomfortable staying on-campus can opt to switch to remote learning and head home (however they would not be allowed to return to campus), but they wouldn’t be sending people home unless they were forced to. They said if an outbreak got really bad, they would probably opt for shelter-in-place.
North Carolina is a pretty big state…many do not have a short drive home. One of my D’s first year suite mates lived in NC…and had an 8 hour drive. Who will be in the car for so many hours with the infected student?
I don’t understand the point of listing out all colleges using Broad. Broad is just one lab, there are thousands of colleges across the country - so what does it matter? Is it so we can do some more specific privilege bashing?
Colleges are businesses and without a national testing strategy all businesses are doing what they need to do in order to do business safely. Should we bash retail stores for buying up all the plexiglass? Colleges need students in residence in order to stay in business. I for one really believed we would have plentiful testing in this country by now, but instead we are still arguing over effectiveness of masks. So sad.
Infected essential workers don’t need plexiglass, they need testing with timely results.
@suzyQ7 Colleges & Universities are not for-profit businesses. Since these institutions are public and private nonprofit charitable enterprises,their endowments are not taxed and the assets grow free of taxes. If they wish to operate as for profit enterprises, they should not also receive beneficial tax treatment of a nonprofit. There was once a day when colleges served a greater purpose than profit.
@suzyQ7 I agree. Is someone saying Broad Institute should drop testing for these colleges and use their capacity in some other way? Why is Broad being targeted as misusing their capabilities and who is judging? I say time to move on from that. College kids do need to be tested if they are going back for the health and safety of the college’s greater community. I’m sure that all of the people who live in those towns are pretty glad to hear that the kids coming back to school will be tested often.
This is the reason why I have told my mom to stay at home the next couple of weeks. We have NC State, UNC and Duke all within 30 minutes of us. The kids going back home isn’t exactly comforting. If you bring a kid home, the rest of the family should isolate as well. I’m just glad K-12 is staying online in the beginning- too many siblings go to all of those schools.