No one is testing the kids headed in droves to the beach in packs, so I’m not sure we’d know if any of them have it or had it. The kids I know who have returned to colleges were required to be tested at/before arrival. The ones I know that have been tested again after arriving to school did so because 1) the school required it as part of their ongoing testing or 2) they were a contact of someone with Covid and thus re-tested. For the latter situation, they would not have a reason to have been tested again otherwise because they were not sick (this is only three students). Going to the beach or anywhere outside is safer than going to a fraternity house or indoor party. But our numbers in SoCal and my town started going up across the board once the beaches fully reopened in June. What has improved noticeably in the last 6 weeks is consistent protocol around them. Mask signs everywhere in town (not just stores, but on the sidewalks). You will likely be stopped by police dept volunteers if you are on a sidewalk within 6’ of others without a mask in our town and you will not make it in the door of any retail/grocery/drug store without a mask. Stores actively monitor their capacities and limit the # of people entering. Patrol at the top of crowded beach stairways and one way entrance/exits on different beach blocks. No indoor dining at all, no indoor bars and good spacing at outdoor eating areas. So basically, it’s keep your covid to yourself for the noncompliant groups. Could they spread it beyond themselves? Sure, but our town’s # have dropped down to almost nothing again, and the positives are linked to…you guessed it, young people’s parties. Again, I truly think more young people have had it than we know about. But if no one is asking them to get tested, they don’t.
I don’t know about your area, but in my state, 15-24 is the age range with the highest number of positives for every week since they started providing “in the last week” numbers in July, and residential colleges didn’t start until this week. Teenagers are plague rats and lick their friends.
I agree, but there are a lot of factors that we haven’t experienced yet.
A quarter of the US population is under 20. Since March, they have been mostly separated by parents. When they return to daycare and K-12 over the next few weeks, tracking spread in the “north dorms” at State U is going to look simple. Hopefully, not a single one of them has so much as a fever, but the impacts of large clusters could be significant on those at home.
If you believe that, then it’s unlikely that college-aged students living at home have been secretly infected and haven’t been blamed for more spreading among their friends and families. It would be great if tens of millions of US residents have had the virus without knowing, but it doesn’t seem likely.
I think the CA colleges, who now look “right” in terms of their early moves online, just benefited from general timing more than anything. CA/LA was late to bloom with the virus, and got to learn from the outbreaks in the East Coast, and the reopening struggles of eastern/southern/midwestern states. Coupled with a governor who has been fairly strong and consistent, state regulations may have also prevented colleges from opening, so it wasn’t necessarily due to any great leadership or decision making of the schools themselves. Not that they don’t have great leadership or decision making, but I don’t think I would take this into account too strongly…whether a CA school turned out to be “right” in its early closing announcement.
As for beaches, I was out in SoCal a few weeks ago, at a popular beach on a weekend, police officers were giving citations ($100) to anyone not wearing a mask, heading up to the outdoor bathroom, and making people leave who didn’t have one.
To go way back to the party issue…at parties, everyone has a cup in hand, sipping, so masks are off. Add some loud music and raised voices, and that’s why we are only hearing about parties being the spreading events.
I think this focus on beaches is silly and a waste of time. The chances of getting Covid at a sunny breezy beach is very low. Its just that the at the beach reopenings coincided with a lot of other reopenings - hair salons, gyms, indoor shopping, and just general get togethers of more than 10 people. We just focus on the wrong things. Its like the ‘deep cleaning’ protocols - all theater.
Bringing this back to colleges - Colleges need to encourage alot of social distanced outdoor activities. That way students are filling their social time safely, and not congregating indoors in big groups.
Those pics online at Villanova where kids were outdoors spread in groups, mostly masked did not worry me at all, for example. If everyone spent their social time outdoors, there would be ALOT less spread of this virus.
^Wesleyan has devised “walking routes” around campus for exercise:
https://www.wesleyan.edu/about/directions/walkingroutes.html
In other words, we’re hearing about parties being spreading events because parties are spreading events. We knew this in March. And we also know that some students will have parties even if they are forbidden. None of this is rocket science, yet each school individually continues to insist that if everyone just tries harder it will work. But some people are not going to try harder; we know this.
The difference may not be the location, but the absence of parental supervision.
Amherst still has only 1 positive, but for some reason, they just increased the asymptomatic testing frequency from twice a week to three times a week (Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays). Wonder if this was influenced by the Yale study saying once every two days was optimal.
They charge that in a normal year for COA and don’t provide anything but a bare bones room (no pillow, sheets, or blanket) as a dorm room. The isolation/quarantine rooms are just extra dorm space in most places. Honestly, they probably didn’t think about a pillow as most students move in with their own. I’m not sure these rooms would have towels, sheets, pencils and pens, lamps. The more stuff the school supplies, the more that has to be re-sanitized before the next student can move it.
I never thought the school would be good at running a quarantine hotel, especially when they don’t have the personnel to staff it.
There are tons of memes on Tik Tok circulating about the boxed meals at NYU. My daughter has been sharing them. Some are quite funny.
ETA: was trying to quote someone who mentioned NYU taking care of its quarantined students. Not sure what happened there!
From the article “My guess is that I caught it there.”
If the dining friends tested positive, then it would have been definitive, but he didn’t mention it. So we don’t know, I guess.
Out of all of the things he described, the dining (as a stationary activity) was probably the highest risk. Even if none of his group of friends was contagious, someone else on the patio upwind of him could have been contagious. Imagine being downwind of a virus breather for an hour (even outside). To make it more obvious, would you want to dine at a patio when there is someone upwind of you continuously smoking, even if that person were much more than 6 feet away?
College students doing socially distanced picnics with take-out dining hall food should try to arrange themselves so that none is directly downwind of any other.
The sportswriter lives with his daughter, Mary Clare. He could have caught the virus at the socially distanced outdoor dinners, but my money is on his daughter.
Nice. Good to know. But rhetorically what would make it invalid and isn’t that what they would argue. I am not a lawyer or play one on TV but have dealt with contracts but not this type.
I’ve read several of these “don’t know where I got it” articles, where someone else in the household did go out, and seemingly hadn’t been tested. Grocery stores count as going out in my mind.
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NYU students (and all others) are paying for board. I’m sure when they go to the cafeterias, they don’t get half a bagel and a lemon.
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I don’t know how we will advise D21 for fall 2021 if class is all remote. It would depend on the school, how their remote classes work, if kids are on campus, and what the rest of life is like there. If it’s the same as this year, I think she would take a year off. I really just cannot wrap my head around that our country will be exactly the same in 12 months.
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The CA schools (and others) that decided to not have kids on campus made a good choice. Aren’t we seeing that already? Maybe it’s too early. One thing though. I don’t think it’s Scripps or LMU’s responsibility to rule the kids who show up near school to live near campus and take remote class (or go live anywhere else with their friends for that matter.) At that point, the students are members of society taking remote classes and living in apartments or houses that they rent. They need to follow the state’s rules where they live. If they have a party, it’s the same as if my neighbor decided to have a party. How would it would have gone if UNC did not invite kids to the dorms? Everyone renting off campus would still be there but campus would be closed. Those kids would be residents of Chapel Hill and would have to answer to the police.
UNC was advertising in person instruction, so there was a reason for students to rent off campus apartments. There have been articles since the school went on-line only, about many many students wanting to break their leases. I don’t believe all the apt dwelling students would be in Chapel Hill now without that enticement of in person classes.
Simple laws of physics dictate that the probability of virus transmission increases dramatically as the distance between two people decreases, unless extraordinary steps are taken to mitigate the increased risk. College students face much higher risks of infection when they live and spend time closer to each other, even in the absence of parties. The denser the place is, the higher the probability of infection, everything else being equal. Indoor parties are obviously the worst, but even outdoor gatherings in close distances increase the risk of transmissions significantly.
NYU students are posting their lame quarantine meals on social media . My high schooler was showing me this afternoon, now it’s on CNN.