I still don’t think I would stay on campus. Everyone else, except for those in nursing homes and prison, has the freedom to come and go from their homes. There are some college students that have jobs off campus. Just seems a little extreme to me.
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The metric is new cases and I believe it is over 14 days. But because it has to be 2 weeks below the threshold, plus the reporting delay, plus the time between announcing and reopening, the numbers should be far lower by the time they reopen. For example, my district reported 39 cases per 100,000 this week, and we still haven’t met the 2-week guidelines (due to not meeting % positivity). But we should meet the guidelines next week and be back to hybrid the following Monday.
I think this is where you might be mistaken (though I honestly don’t know how the numbers work - this is just based on what I’ve inferred from this discussion and the County dashboard). The 100/100,000 metric is new cases over 14 days, so it really is only 1 out of 1,000 people who are sick (at most) or contagious at any given time. No need to compound the number because within 14 days, almost everyone who has tested positive is no longer contagious.
ETA: If you are right about the 20% of positives (which is a reasonable guess), then that would be 1/200 people is contagious. But even then, most of the truly contagious ones will be home sick. Anyway, the guidelines were released by the Arizona Department of Health. While they may not be perfect, I assume they know more about this than I do and have their reasons for setting the threshold there.
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That would be reasonable IMO. Just my opinion.
Though
Just for now. Just for this semester. These schools can’t keep charging as much or more for fewer activities and outlets. I get that there are no winners right now and grace needs to be given - but the campus experience is supposed to be more than food and a room.
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True. I always had off campus jobs.
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It would depend on the campus and I can accept it for right now.
(The isolated to a room bugs me. And sub-par dining options bugs me.)
I can accept we need lower expectations for a season. (For me that season is almost up though.)
There are 114 colleges and universities in Massachusetts. As a citizen in this state, I think we are struggling with the the consequences of 18-22 year old behavior. That might sound harsh, but it was a factor in the spring.
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I hear what you are saying.
There are pros and cons to universities.
One of the nicest features for my county is we have seven colleges/universities and one community college. Our population is 742,000. Just outside the county adds two more community colleges and the second SUNY.
They are awesome employers, and they historically have provided revenue to countless other businesses.
And now —- 
—- we are in wholly unchartered waters.
The interdependence between student and school is facing new assessments. Who needs whom more?
Everyone is losing some things in the process - but no one knows where lines belong.
It’s HARD.
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I think this is where we (meaning I) get easily confused. So it’s 100/100,000 new cases within a 14 day window? I was also reading it as a daily average of 100/100,000 new cases for 14 days.
I’m not sure about this? I thought at some point they were guesstimating that’s roughly half the spread was from those that were pre/asymptomatic? And that’s what is driving the community spread? (As opposed to significant numbers of symptomatic people being out and about anyway.)
This seems somewhat consistent with this data set:
From what I can see, the different states/local governments/institutions have very different mindsets and objectives, so that’s why guidelines are all over the place. Some states are trying to minimize the deaths while maintaining basic functionality. Some (including Texas) are trying to maximize re-opening while keeping within the hospital capacity.
If Texas was doing actual economic modeling and trying to balance the economic benefits, the Covid health ramifications, and also account for the other detrimental impacts to individuals, that would at least make some sort of sense to me, but that’s not what is happening. It is very much “how can we make things as normal as possible”, even if the activity has minimal economic benefit unless it is a known vector point (but may be contributing to the overall community spread). I am willing to give up “sort of normal” for the short term to save lives.
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Obviously there is asymptomatic spread but a significant percentage of cases are symptomatic (plus my understanding is viral load is higher from symptomatic people), and of those, hopefully most will stay home and not infect others, knowing we are in a pandemic. So I agree with you - it’s just a matter of what “most” means in both instances.
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Oh!
Look at me.
I have happy tears!
This just came from DS20:
Let’s Celebrate! We’ve made it through the first two weeks on campus and folks are “free to move about the cabin.” Social distancing and masking are still crucial through the rest of the semester but Monday marks the beginning of in-person gatherings and the successful completion of quarantine for many (let’s keep it that way).
Join us at 9:30pm on Monday, September 7th for a fireworks show!
Sign up for one of our socially distant viewing areas ( masks required ). We are limited to 50 people per viewing area. [ Reserve your spot today )!
Fireworks will be shot from the Field of Dreams and you must sign up for a spot to attend.
Students, Faculty, and Staff can also pick up their commemorative ReOrientation Week shirt.
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This is most of the weekly list we get:
No color/green is in person/ hybrid. Yellow is hybrid/remote , red is remote . It is ever town and the rate of cases is converted to 100k population rate.
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Yep, as a Mom of a freshman it was completely overwhelming for her. Plus they changed the rules to be much stricter after she was already there (but luckily before we paid). I have no regrets about bringing her home.
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You would hate to see my county’s cases per 100,000 for 7 days right now. There are rumors abound that our local prison is contributing, as well as an outbreak with nurses at one of our hospitals. And of course some nursing homes. It sent all our numbers up. In this county there is a mixture of districts doing complete in-person, all virtual and hybrid. (All districts have the option of cyber if the family chooses). My district is currently hybrid.
We just found out that one class in one school in our district is quarantined due to possible close contact with a presumed case of Covid-19. No district staff or students are positive. I don’t even know what that means. My only guess was support staff for a student that is employed by an agency outside the district. But other than that, I have no idea. Our schools continue at status quo at this point.
I’m trying to understand how our thresholds compare to yours since we are so close to you. Here, if a district has more than 100/100,000 per week, it cannot do full in person but hybrid is still okay. I have no idea what it would take to push the guidance to full remote. I’m not sure it’s been communicated. So that is an approximate average of 14 cases per day. Is that what I compare to your 8 even though we are measuring over 7 days instead of 14?
If so, they are being way more aggressive here!
There are only two districts here, Providence and Central Falls that do not meet this. I think Providence is still doing partial in person. Several schools that were given the green light to start in person are doing full remote.
For our district, K-6 are full time in person. 7-12 are every other day in person. Our town had 7 cases out of 22,000 people last week, so 4.5 daily per 100,000 so I think we’d be hybrid on your scale? As a parent, I could choose to have them take the virtual option but that is asynchronous, with a once per week check in with the teacher. To me, that seems more like independent study and not a true option for us. That would be a disaster for my 11 year old with severe ADHD.
I had been feeling okay about this but now seeing your metrics, I’m worried 
As our the people in the towns surrounding my daughter’s university. 80% of classes are online and dorm density has been reduced by 40% and yet they have almost 1,300 cases and a 20% test positive rate. Testing is not mandatory. It is not going well there and the businesses are terribly fearful of having to shut down again. The students had to sign an electronic pledge regarding expectations but that has done little good. Most of the positive cases are from off campus housing. I have little sympathy for the University. I was shocked last year when I learned that students have no choice but to move to off campus housing beginning their junior year as they only have enough housing for freshman and sophomores and even then there are kids living in lounges of dorms at the start of the year. I will certainly be researching that issues for colleges for my other two kids. Thankfully, my daughter, living in an apartment off campus, is keeping her circle very small – just her two roommates and another friend who lives in town with her parents – and they are all sticking to the small circle.
@qwerty6, happy for you and the good news with your son’s university!
Well our positivity rating is supposedly (our rating is much lower on our department of health website than what is listed on Covid Act Now) higher than yours. The number of people hospitalized is very low in our area. I just found an article that talks about the prison cases. They have definitely contributed to our higher numbers.
These are our guidelines. BUT, these guidelines are put into place by doctors. Many of the staff do not agree. Even with my district’s 5 average (1.9% positive rate) we are one of the 50% of the state’s district still planning on having students in our buildings (hybrid at least 50% in person). Districts with averages between 1-3 cases per 100k are ignoring the guidance and starting remote.
We have 6 prisons that our county does not include in their numbers. Texas Dept of Criminal Justice has all of their prisons being tracked centrally.
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I’ve been thinking lately about how toxic discourse is on regular social media and yet how remarkable it is that we are able to talk about tough issues here (though not explicitly political - certainly approaching political) without being nasty to each other, and even when there are disagreements, we are able to resolve them amicably and move on.
I think one of the greatest problems these days is anonymous social media - where you can say what you want with impunity because the “people” on the other side of your keyboard aren’t real - aren’t human (or worse, they all think exactly the way you do inside your echo chamber). Whereas here we aren’t quite anonymous and we share enough to see the human side of each other. I think that’s a good thing, and people need more of this kind of interaction so that we can realize that the “others” aren’t so different from us.
If we’re going to move forward after this upcoming election, regardless of who wins, we’re going to need a lot more open dialogue across the political spectrum. We are one world, one human race, and (for the Americans among us) one country.
/exitsoapbox
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