I know some did, but when I say sick, I mean, none actually had symptoms and got sick from what I heard through the grapevine. The only ones I know who did test were negative. But guidance here from local health dept at the time was unless one had symptoms, there was no need for testing, just quarantine for 14 days. At the time, we had a local clinic who provided rapid tests in addition to PCR tests. Some kids tested positive during the initial rapid test, later confirmed by PCR results. Others who tested negative with the rapid test were still told to quarantine if they had been in contact with any of the positive kids. It caused such an uproar, there was a three hour wait at the testing clinic (only location here who did rapid tests) and by day 2, they ran out of rapid tests.
I always thought the 14 days of isolation sounded just awful. I wouldn’t want to do that in my own house. I would need anxiety meds for that. I know that some of you here stayed inside for months and months but I seriously cannot imagine. And definitely not as a young college freshman who doesn’t have many friends yet tor “virtual” support. If we had a son or daughter who was going back to a school where this might happen, we would seriously consider not sending them. S19 could be in this situation for spring if sophomores are allowed on campus but we will hopefully have more to go on by then - how many cases did the college have in the spring? How did kids feel about their isolation if they had to do it? How long on average were buds in isolation? All of that.
@homerdog I’ve mentioned here before that my daughter stayed in her off campus apartment when her campus closed in the spring. She has worked, masked, the entire time and lives in a “hot spot.” Aside from errands, socially she has only seen her roommates and her boyfriend. My daughter has never been tested, but both of her roommates have as well as her boyfriend (not from known exposure - her boyfriend was having surgery, her roommate was sick at one point and her other roommate I think for work). Assuming your son and his roommates aren’t hanging out socially with anyone else, and always wear masks outside the house, they will most likely be fine, esp given the low numbers in Maine. I was a little freaked out in the beginning, with her being so far from home and with so much unknown back then, but I know she is super careful. Her college friends all went home and her campus just reverted to all online a couple of weeks ago, so most aren’t coming back for now.
My son’s college started bringing back kids from “restricted states” on 8/1 to quarantine. Today, the kids who arrived on 8/1 were released from quarantine and allowed to go to their campus dorms (they had been housed in an off campus dorm). The family on one girl, a freshman, posted a video to the parents’ FB page that their daughter sent them. She was happy to be in her new room, and seemed very excited for her suitemates to arrive next week. I’m sure it was tough, especially for some kids, but she seemed to have made it through with flying colors.
Article that has some good points about issues arising with a child who contracts COVID away from home.
Cardinal fang, I believe this was referring to people who already tested positive, but then need to recover with two negative tests, so they shouldn’t be infectious at that point. That’s how I read it, anyway. ETA, actually, re-reading it, I cant tell. It looked like they were referring to “cases”, but also refers to quarantine vs isolation, which is confusing, but I still think it is referring to people who are in recovery but can’t leave the special housing until they demonstrate back-to-back negative tests. Let’s hope!
@nywestie D just got a piece of information sent out to all CA’s that may provide a potential reason why Amherst decided not to fill vacancies, beyond the basic reason of de-densifying. When they released their plan, Amherst indicated that they would have three residence halls set aside for isolation/quarantine; according to Res Life, there are now SIX residence halls set aside for isolation/quarantine: Humphries, Chapman, Tyler, Plimpton, Marsh, and the Jenkins Suites. As far as D knows, this is in addition to all 49 of the Boltwood Inn’s (the hotel owned by Amherst College) rooms, and an unidentified local hotel which Amherst has reserved 80 rooms from.
That could explain why Amherst didn’t want to fill vacancies; it allowed for much more quarantine/isolation space on top of de-densifying the campus without preventing more students from coming to campus.
I completely agree this is terrifying. But I have been trying to find the answer to this question and haven’t succeeded yet—did any of these studies perform the same heart MRIs on patients who did not have COVID? You know how in autopsies, they always find a lot of people who have undetected cancers, etc that didn’t kill them? I am just wondering if maybe a lot of people have heart inflammation but never get tested as they have no symptoms, so maybe we would see this in all sorts of people if we went looking for it? Or maybe not all people, but all people who have had some sort of virus or flu or other illness, and maybe it is common and abates after a while, and it’s something that has never been on our radar until we decided to look for the impact on COVID patients? I am not saying that I have seen this to be the case, I am looking to learn if these studies used control groups of non-Covid patients, and I haven’t found the answer to that. If they did use control groups and this type of inflammation is only found in Covid patients/recoverers, I will find it quite scary indeed, in particular as it relates to school in the fall, because we are talking about populations that typically are asymptomatic but could suffer these long-term affects.
The German study had both a healthy control group and a risk-factor-adjusted control group. The theory that most people have these abnormal heart results was soundly rejected. The recovered covid patients had these abnormal results in large numbers and the control groups didn’t.
I think I know what you mean, @homerdog. “Hogwarts-like” takes on a completely different connotation when it means being alone and without wi-fi for 14 days.
Ha! Right! I assume they would have wifi of course but, still, it would be really lonely. And not going outside stinks. I need to go outside! If I were isolated for Covid at home, I could at least sit in my backyard I assume.
Following new orders from public health officials, Harvey Mudd College announced Friday that it would reverse its plans to bring students back to campus for in-person classes.
Mudd will move entirely online this fall, joining the rest of the undergraduate Claremont Colleges after nearly three weeks of standing as the only 5C planning to hold in-person class. The announcement comes less than a week before students were set to move in.
@ElonMomMD How many days from move-in?
^^The contrast between NESCAC and the Claremonts could not be starker. And, purely a matter of spread in the surrounding communities.
@RosePetal35
Less than a week before move in.
And it’s odd because it’s CA that has the weather where students and faculty could be outside all of the time!
@circuitrider True. All the Claremonts will be fully remote, while all of the NESCACs are bringing at least some of their students back. 9 of 11 NESCACs (Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Conn College, Trinity, Hamilton, Tufts, Wesleyan, and Williams) are inviting all their students back, Amherst is inviting roughly 2/3 of their students back (and will have a slight majority of students on-campus), and Bowdoin is inviting roughly 1/3 of their students back. All NESCACs will have some form of in-person classes (First-Year Seminars only at Bowdoin, and a mix of in-person/hybrid and remote classes at all the other NESCACs) for students on-campus. So far, none of the NESCACs have reversed their initial reopening plans.
@vpa2019 I know it’s less than a week; I just was curious what the exact number of days was until the start of move-in
I moved my son into his off campus apartment at Pitt today. Oakland (the section of Pittsburgh where Pitt is) was very busy. Lots of people who looked like students on the streets. Everyone was wearing masks and trying to distance on the sidewalks but it was crowded city sidewalks so there is only so much you can do. I think it’s been about a week since the first kids moved into dorms and to the best of my knowledge the school has not released any information on numbers tested, percent positives, etc.
One of my sons classes has now converted to online only. The curious thing is that this is the one small class he had. The other 4 (100-150 students) are still scheduled in person.
@homerdog
Here is Yale’s plan for all returning students, even those who reside in CT.
Negative test from home before moving to campus. Test upon arrival and quarantine in own room for 24-36 hours awaiting test result. Assuming negative, remainder of 14 day quarantine is spent within student’s residential college. Students are free to use common spaces indoors and out, although I think the emphasis will be on outdoors while the weather is nice. Each residential college has its own dining hall, so students will pick up meals there and carry out. Each college is approximately the width of a city block and then perhaps half the length, and offers a lot of green space, some with smaller courtyards off the main courtyard.
The university is expecting 40% of the usual density on campus, so there may be 100-160 students in each residential college.
While not ideal by any means, not quite the same as a 14 day quarantine at Columbia.