Who says they are for profit? Not me. I said they are businesses, and most will go out of businesses if there are no in residence students for an extended period of time. Everyone is riding on some special magic happening in January when all will be good, but this could go on for months and months or years. Testing at schools should be a priority after essential health care but before professional sports and other for profits - IF we had the ability to prioritize testing that way - which we do not because no national testing strategy.
Yes, if necessary.
Yes. Are there parents who wouldn’t pick up a child who needed to leave?
Since most positive cases in this age range are assymptomatic, I expect most infected college students at UNC would drive themselves home. Maybe they would stay near campus if the parents were older or high risk, but I expect a lot would go home. All the high school students I know who were infected remained in the family home, though I guess parents could have rented other places for them, none did so. I expect all those infected young campers in Georgia (ages 6-13?) were picked up by their parents and taken home.
I find it interesting to see a list because I wonder if they will have the capacity to test all those colleges plus the testing they are doing for the state. It was noted upthread that their daily high capacity was about 8000/day. If they have capacity for much more than that, why haven’t they been doing more for the state? Or is it very easy to get a test/fast results in MA?
“Needed” is the tough part. It’s a really really bad idea to bring home a kid that is positive when you have family members that have underlying conditions. Even without the underlying conditions, most spread comes from family members, so it’s a bad idea to bring home an Covid positive person if there is another option. That said, I would if my child was feeling really sick, but that’s because we have the ability to really isolate in another part of the house. The car ride would be tough - both wearing multiple masks, goggles, gloves and windows open and distancing as much as possible. My kid is only 1.5 hours away. Most young people have very light symptoms, YMMV.
@roycroftmom Freshman are not allowed to have cars at UNC. Freshman are the ones predominantly living in dorms.
Here is the UNC dashboard mentioned above. Very useful info.
I am not sure how isolation differs from quarantine on the dashboard, but it appears that three are in isolation and four in quarantine. The remainder must be in off-campus housing?
It’s very easy to get a test in Mass. If you go to Broads site, the daily testing is not even at capacity now, so they have capacity. It’s just really hard to contract with new labs when you are in a hotspot and have procurement with your current labs. There is no magic way, without federal testing strategy, to spread this out across the country quickly.
If my kid were ill with this virus, there is no way I’d leave him at school.
I agree 100%. I wouldn’t go pick up an asymptomatic or mildly sick child unless all of the quarantine spaces at the school were unavailable. I wouldn’t hesitate to pick up a very sick child if needed. And I would do the same, all windows open, have her sit in the way back with a mask!
My student lives in off campus housing 4 bedroom apartment with 2 bathrooms. If she is positive and feeling ok she will self isolate to her own bedroom and ride it out. They will need to make a plan to have a sick bathroom. If she became too ill to care for herself of course we would get her. We have two parents - one in early 50’s and one with 2 underlying health conditions and 3 kids which will be in person in K-12 schools…hopefully. She lives on the 13th floor of an apartment building and plans to use the gym, elevators, etc. I reached out to the other parents in an attempt to all chip in and purchase a medical grade HEPA filter air purifier for the shared living space for the girls since there are 4 of them…crickets. : ) As of now at UMD I do not believe we are expecting any testing for OFF campus students–only On Campus but that has not been fully clarified. I am expecting she will get Covid. I am hoping it will be mild.
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That’s only true if the rest of the greater community have access to the same level of testing.
As long as the following groups in a college town also have a guarantee of Biweekly tests with timely results then I am ok with healthy asymptotic 18-22s without other risk factors having them:
The elderly over 60 and anyone that lives with them
Anyone with preexisting health conditions that puts them at a higher risk plus anyone that lives with them.
Key workers including those in grocery stores, public transport, health and social care, police, fire, custodians plus anyone that lives with them.
Anyone in cramped housing situations that doesn’t allow for social distancing between reasonable groups of “ families”.
The homeless
Any other face to face employees who can’t work from home eg factory workers, tradesmen plus anyone that lives with them.
Actually, someone just mentioned an even better idea. Hubby and I would drive out in 2 cars and have D drive herself home, with us trailing closely behind. Hopefully we won’t need to do that.
We live 5 hours from our son’s campus. This is what I’d plan to do if he is not too sick to drive home. If he is too sick to drive himself, then I would be nervous to be in a car for five hours with him, even if both masked. In that case, I would most likely get a suite at the nearby Residence Inn. We’ve stayed there before and the suite has two separate bedrooms and bathrooms along with a kitchen/living room, and I would stay there too to take care of him. Fortunately we are in a position that we can afford to do this if necessary.
That said, we had a community outbreak here among teens - none of them were that sick. All either had mild cold symptoms, only had loss of taste/smell or were completely asymptomatic. I Fingers crossed that if there is a campus outbreak, hopefully most will experience similar mild symptoms.
Without question or hesitation. Same with neices and nephews in college. Or siblings if they couldn’t care for themselves at home. And certainly with my father and in-laws. Don’t think I am unique in that regard.
As the person who started what you call “privilege bashing” I will respond. Wasn’t my intention at all. If you look back, you will see I asked what would happen if the promissed testing and/or turnaround time for results (something providing comfort to many parents in this thread) doens’t materialize (question about Broad capacity was meant to highlight that as a potential issue and because it was the testing service so many colleges discussed here are using). Since the beginning of the pandemic testing has been overpromised and underdelivered. So I don’t think it is at all out of the question (and may actually be likely) that whatever testing regimen is promised doesn’t materialize. Interestingly no one answered that question (that I recall in any event). Telling to me that the privilege bashing angle was the response. Though I don’t expect some people here will see it as telling at all. Perspective goes a long way. Just lacking here in many instances. I try to keep it myself. I have a daugther going back for her senior year at a state college. Hope its in person/residential college experience that is planned at this point. But if its not, I totally get that a whole lot more people have things much worse than she does. Lots of great things in her life and she will do well (even if her last 1.5 years of colllege are next to nothing like what she planned/hoped).
Colleges are not unique in this regard. There are many businesses going out of business right now and many that have already gone out of business. State and local governments are struggling. No real surprise that many on a college forum would pick colleges as priority #2 (after healthcare workers). Confident that if you went to forums dedicated to other interests/industries, #2 priority would be their interest/industry. Many here talk about national testing strategies. If we had one and it didn’t prioritize colleges like many here believe they should, I wonder how many people here would suddenly be against national mandates/dictates.
I told my son that would be our solution also, but we live less than an hour from his school. Alternatively if he is not feeling up to driving, I could seat him in the third row and drive with the windows open.
He would be banished to the basement for quarantine, which is not as bad as it sounds as there are windows and a full bath there.
Wake Forest real world update:
DS 24 has been assigned a single in a double occupancy room. 65% of residential students are in singles. Some freshmen were allowed to choose roommates in rooms that school, in consultation with medical school and others, deemed safe for double occupancy. Move in scheduled, two hour time window, maximum two persons to help. All parent orientation online, we’ll move him in and leave. 14 day quarantine required for students prior to coming to campus.
All freshmen are on campus and were given housing priority. WFU has a three year on-campus housing requirement, has rented apartments off campus with shuttle service provided to accomodate shortage.
D21 was unable to get on-campus housing, will live in a privately owned student apartment community with three friends. All have private bedrooms. She will be able to stay in Winston-Salem after Thanksgiving when all study moves online. She returns from business internship August 8, will quarantine upon return.
Both will return Covid-19 test provided by school.
Classes for both are a mixture of in-person, blended, and online.
All food service locations reconfigured to allow for social distancing, food delivery options offered as well.
WFU has also leased a 200 room hotel near campus for quarantine. Students required to self test temperature, etc. daily, report results on phone app. They have also created and staffed an Employee Health Service to provide health resources for faculty and staff.
I’ve said I would be in favor of a national plan. Twice in two consecutive posts. But, I can also hear the weeping and wailing should any wealthy, nonprofit college accept CARES act money, if they have to shut down as a result.
I didn’t say colleges, I said ** schools.** In my opinion, K-8 should be a top priority in our nation after essential healthcare/food supply etc workers. Since only the federal government could make these priorities, it’s now a free for all, by design. Every business for themselves… so complaining about lab businesses being “allowed” to provide tests to one business over another is futile. Clearly Broad knows exactly how many tests they need to do for each school they contracted with. It’s not a variable number they needed to work towards - it’s a set capacity (x students x days a week for X weeks). The list is getting smaller as colleges change their plans, so we will see what happens. I doubt they will have issues meeting their promises because they have been preparing for months.
Edited to add - their site says they can do 35k tests per day and are currently doing 9k. They are doing at risk local community testing with the state. My educated guess is they are not getting overflow testing from hard hit states because procurement to new labs is difficult and slow. Again, no federal help. Or maybe hard hit states don’t trust labs run by Harvard and MIT.