There should be more “perseveration” and attention given to the potential long-term effects on the health of covid-19 survivors by schools and governments.
Or did you mean the “perseveration” by posters on this thread?
@RosePetal35 thanks for that information - I was unaware. The news story I read was focusing on cases at colleges in PA and didn’t say this school was remote.
That’s terrible news. And while it looks like he didn’t acquire it at the school, it speaks to the fact that young people are not immune to serious, and sometimes fatal, outcomes. I think there is a feeling among many students that it is not a big deal for them. Sadly, it was, for this young man.
He was a lineman on the football team. His father was a lineman for the Steelers. He was a very large individual. By all accounts he was well like by everyone. RIP.
Some schools definitely have a higher tolerance for cases. University of Tennessee Knoxville has 600 active cases over 2000 in isolation and they’re still open.
@CTTC I was referring more to the media, and the general public, but would certainly include this thread as well.
Based on recent events I felt compelled to make the point. I’m not looking to derail the thread, I realize it’s off topic. I just thought I’d add some perspective.
Maybe people don’t “understand” it because it’s not necessarily true. Depends on how effective the vaccine is, depends on how many people get it, depends on whether people still wear masks after getting vaccinated (which we definitely will need to do), depends on what social distancing regime we were following and will follow with a vaccine.
So what are you saying here? I thought we’d been hearing that college age football players were at less risk than other people of that age group. I’m sure the guy was fat, but lots of college aged people are fat, particularly football linemen. I assume we’re not writing them off.
@CardinalFang obesity is one thing which makes Covid more dangerous. The football player who died was 355 pounds, so I think that played a roll. I don’t know why people think football players are less at risk; I think the thought is anyone in good health is less at risk of serious complications. Being an obese athlete doesn’t equate good health in my book.
Where is U of Al at this point? Last I saw over 1000 positives and their “quarantine dorm” wasn’t a great success.
No we are not, but this is a rarity - in fact. Every year college football players drop dead in the summer from a freak health issue or heat stroke. This well liked football player was 6.3" and 355 pounds and I agree with you, that doesn’t mean we should expect him to die, but its a rare thing for this to happen, just like dropping dead from training in the summer heat is a rare thing to happen for a football player.
Yes, another school with an apparent higher tolerance for case numbers is FSU. FSU now has over 800 positive tests out of more than 11000 tested, for a positivity rate of over 7 percent. This is a big jump from last week, and not surprising. My guess is that the coming weeks will not be especially pretty given the parties off campus over Labor Day weekend and the upcoming football game on Saturday.
It’s not clear how many of those are active cases. I do know one of their quarantine dorms which houses about 85 students is full, the other which has a capacity for a little more than 280 students is currently housing about 15 students. The rest of the active cases must be off campus, hopefully quarantining. My D20 has tested twice so far (both negative) and she has a small pod of friends who are trying their best to be very careful. Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound as if all students are doing the same.
The only young person that I personally know who was hospitalized with Covid-19 is a 22 year old football player who weighs 350 lbs. Fortunately he recovered and was discharged from the hospital. But high BMI is a known risk factor for developing a more severe case.
Per the CDC, just under 20k young people aged 15-24 died in the US from Feb 1 through Sept 1. Of those, 300 deaths were attributed to COVID
I noticed that some college dashboards have changed from providing weekly updates to providing daily ones. That’s much more useful.
University of Georgia update.
According to data released today by the University of Georgia in its weekly update to the campus community, student cases of COVID-19 rose again last week, while those of faculty and staff remained at a very low level.
A total of 1,417 positive tests were reported through the university’s DawgCheck reporting system for the period of Aug. 31 – Sept. 4. Of those, 1,402 were students, 14 were staff, and one was a faculty member. That means 99% of the cases were among students.
https://news.uga.edu/student-cases-increase-faculty-staff-remain-low/
According to the CDC 40% of 20-39 Year old young adults are obese.
https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
Obesity is very well known to be an exacerbating factor of COVID-19.
Sadly, I don’t think those facts support the conclusion that this young mans case was a rarity. Colleges have only been open a few weeks and the serious cases don’t become apparent straight away. The patten on all the news shows I follow shows the death rate rise lagging about two weeks after the surge of initial diagnosed cases in a particular area.
This seems to be a subtle argument for allowing herd immunity to take place on campuses that were either too big or too stupid to open safely and with proper mitigation practices a part of the campus culture. I don’t have a problem with that, if you’re talking about keeping everyone confined to campus for the foreseeable future. But, I don’t see that happening; these people are going home at some point.
I think I’ll just say he will be missed and condolences to the family and leave it at that.
Pitt’s current count is 78 students with active cases in isolation, in a student body of about 20k.
Pitt did not go the route of testing everyone. Instead they are doing randomly selected spot testing plus symptomatic and contact tracing. There have been a lot of emails reminding students of proper behavior, and several fraternities and sororities have been suspended. They have doubled down in several emails to students and parents about why testing everyone is not needed. My son has never been tested, though he has had close friends, including one of his roommates, tested and all have been negative. Positivity rate on the spot testing is 0.36%.
My son’s school still has zero cases in their third week. Students needed a negative test to move in, then were retested the first week. Now they’re testing a certain percentage weekly (I believe 15%). The president emailed today requesting that parents not allow students to come home on weekends. They were discouraging it but are now being more emphatic to please not allow it. There are no visitors allowed on campus. Students are allowed to leave campus to go shopping or out to eat. Since a lot of the students are within driving distance, I am glad they took this stance. We had already told S he would not be coming home until the end of the semester. We even have a small, outdoor, masked wedding of a close family member that he will not be attending.