Obviously testing and tracing make it more likely to find and isolate cases and prevent the spread. Whether that’s through individual testing, batch testing, wastewater testing, or whatever. It’s more important to find asymptomatic cases early in congregate housing since it spreads so quickly in high risk circumstances. Maybe what ND is doing now, after they changed course, is enough as long as students are complying. 46 cases is manageable. Can they quickly identify an outbreak before it spreads with this method? I sure hope so.
What schools like Wisconsin (2,000 cases!), Alabama, Missouri, Iowa, etc is criminal IMO. You can’t even get a test at some of those schools without a doctor’s referral. Insane. ND’s approach is miles and miles better than that.
But I have to say that I am sick to death of people saying “no hospitalizations!” about these college students as if they are the only ones in the community who matter.
DS19’s university here in Ontario has just announced that the winter 2021 semester will continue online. Not a surprise. I was expecting that but disappointed for him none the less. I expect more schools to follow suite shortly. There have already been reports at some schools who invited students back to campus of cases and of parties flouting Covid restrictions. I think the more those kind of stories are reported the greater the pressure will be on the various institutions to go online and possibly shut their campuses.
It is not true that no college students have been hospitalized. It is relatively rare, but students have died. Also, neither colleges nor families are required to report it to the media when a student is hospitalized. Would you call the news media if your student was in the hospital?
Even if no college student were ever hospitalized, large outbreaks among college students provide a reservoir for the virus. I doubt it will stay in that population.
I very much want in-person school to succeed on every level.
But:
College kids are not immune from severe Covid disease, and can definitely spread it.
If testing is too expensive or too inconvenient, let’s put our support behind efforts to make it cheap and convenient. We do need wide-spread, frequent testing unless we want this virus to go viral.
Frequent testing is important for college students as numbers of close contacts due to communal dorm life, dinning, activities, sports, socialization etc puts this demographic (and people who they come in contact with including faculty, staff and larger community) at a higher risk. This demographic is often asymptomatic or mildly effected so without regular testing, they can pass it on to many more without knowing and start huge spikes in their communities.
I wish corresponding testing resources were present at my parent’s assisted living. For they are the communal living residents who are truly most at risk and could benefit from mandatory twice weekly testing, as well as staff and vendors. The fact that 70% of covid deaths in my state occur among this demographic is the real travesty. There are two people getting tested in my family twice a week right now and they are not the elders.
Just like colleges, assisted living communities would greatly benefit from instant testing (“lick the strip” type). Every employee and every visitor can be tested before entry or contact with any resident. A positive result means preventing the entry of the virus spreader before there is a chance to spread virus.
As it is now, testing is typically reactive – by the time the test results are available, the person testing positive has been spreading virus for a day or few.
It’s so frustrating that we could have “lick the strip” testing. This is not a fantasy. We could do this, and it would be a game changer all over. But we haven’t.
Yes, this is my DD20’s experience as well, in a double at Tufts. She is really happy so far. Of course, would prefer more F2F class time, but she has some, and likes all her classes even when they’re online. Is allowed to go running with small groups, masked, socially distanced.
I love the reference to the controversial picnic blanket.
It will be interesting to see what happens once it’s colder or raining a lot and the picnic blanket thing is not so appealing.
MSU Fraternity and Serority houses under mandatory quarantine order implemented by the county. Violation is a misdemeanor with $200 fine or up to 6 months jail time.
Here are some examples which show how game changing an inexpensive “lick the strip” instant test would be:
Scenario 1:
Student A gets up in the morning, on day 0. Having last been tested three days ago (day -3, negative result known on day -1), the student gets tested, and the test swab is sent to the lab. Student goes to in-person classes on days 0, 1, and 2, but then gets notified of a positive result on day 2. So now everyone (student, faculty, staff, off-campus person) who has been in contact with the student from day -2 to day 2 has to quarantine, in addition to the student testing positive.
Scenario 2:
Student A gets up in the morning, on day 0. Having been tested every day (negative results), the student licks the strip and sees a positive result. Student does not go to class in person (attends by videoconference) and otherwise avoids contact with others that day (and succeeding days until medical clearance, however defined). Other than perhaps roommates in densely packed dorms or other housing, no one else gets exposed or needs to quarantine.
At Wesleyan, about 40% of the freshman class (300/750) are housed in doubles. According to its latest covid-19 dashboard, there are currently no active cases.
Or less frequent (say once a week) but other surveillance methods, like sewage testing. This sewage testing must be more difficult/expensive than I imagined or else all colleges would be using it, right?
I worry that the idea of repetitive testing over-simplifies and likely emboldens bad behaviors. If you know you’re going to be tested every day the process becomes common and failures will eventually be seen as systemic instead of behavioral.
All of this testing is expensive and changes the dynamic from one of shared responsibility to more of a game of “catch me if you can”. I’m not being Pollyanna-ish about this, and I do appreciate the difficulties in keeping everyone safe…but I don’t believe testing everyone, every day, is a reasonable technique for managing the virus either.
Masks and distance work, and if the student body doesn’t appear to be completely disregarding the rules, then in some ways testing might provide a false sense of control. If things flair up…increase testing…but these issues need to be managed, they can’t be planned.
