Cornell researchers say virtual semester will cause 4 x MORE covid hospitalizations than in-person semester

My son got his same day.

You sound like you are reading a sermon. What sacred book did you find this wisdom in?

Do everyone a favor and eliminate your map.

What if the solution to saving our planet from complete environmental and ecological destruction was killing half the planets population? Even then it’s only a maybe that the other half would make it. Would you still cling to this romantic fantasy of an upper middle class dream world that you are too stupid to realize you pretend to live in?

This will be an interesting experiment that I’ll watch with interest.

But the notion that 9,000 undergrads will move to Ithaca this year even if classes are virtual is idiotic. No way no how. But no way to know for sure now.

"Cornell recommends the course of action which would net Cornell the most money"

rojo wrote:

David S wrote:

How could being around more people be better than not being around them?

The logic is simple - kids are going to socialize regardless so you’d rather have them officially in school so you can be testing them and stop asunotomatic spread . It seems like they would apply to any place where lots of kids live off campus.

Where are all these tests coming from? Who's paying for it?

Bra-ket wrote:

My one question is - what is the probability of a widespread epidemic on campus this fall? This should be one of the most pressing questions but it isn't addressed at all.

My guess is probably about 100%. Disease is too contagious among segments

of the population.

Thing is the epidemic, unless some ridiculous 'cure' is applied, will not be very

impactful.

Despite being promoted as the 'novel' coronavirus, implying like smallpox in the

new world everybody is going to get it. It is pretty clear that a large segment of

the population, depending on their age and immune system history, has some

resistance. So much that rather than the 1-1/R infection rate that the naive calculation

gives for herd immunity (for an R=3 of this contagious virus giving 70% estimates), it

seems to be more like 20-30%, which NY City, for example, now has.

For a group of 20 year olds, it will probably be less than that, but assume 20% get the

disease, which is actually Cornell's calculated number for online classes. Their

numbers for online classes are 7200 infections out of 35000 in the Cornell community,

which will lead to 60 hospitalizations (and I guess no deaths as a number wasn't listed

in the article). I doubt 60 hospitalizations will cause much of a crises in general,

although of course bad for those 60 and I'm sure some will have to tough it out

at in the dorm.

And the thing is, you can probably pick out the 60 beforehand from their weight

and medical conditions. They can wait until the second semester and herd

immunity before hosting parties.

Now if there are a lot of 'extracurricular' activities, way more than 20% can get it,

but those 'extras' will likely have asymptomatic or mild cases. Testing in the

slums of Mumbai (where people are packed in like sardines) showed that

like 80% of the population have had the disease, but the deaths weren't out

of line with the rest of the city, where it seems more like the 20-30% rate, and

showing declining cases--herd immunity--at that percentage.

Moving back to sports. Canceling them is just not warranted. I hope the SEC

forges ahead with football.

rojo wrote:

David S wrote:

How could being around more people be better than not being around them?

The logic is simple - kids are going to socialize regardless so you’d rather have them officially in school so you can be testing them.. .

Which university/college is testing the general student population?

NY State =/= NYC lol.

This is stupid. The same kids who would socially gather in apartments/houses, go to parties, bars (if open), churches, and go out into the community will do this regardless of being in class or going online.

The university still has grounds to test its students even if they are taking online classes. They can say, hey report to our health center and take a test or we'll drop you from your classes and deactivate your student email.

Going on campus can only do harm. How are you going to police thousands of students on a campus? You can't. They want to put these kids on campus and subject them to all this BS. Let them stay at their place and only bring them on campus for testing and lab classes.

I don't think you understand that the disease is widely noted to be killing off older people. Obviously younger people aren't at risk for the virus however opening colleges, gives kids the virus, which in turn they'll spread to all the Gen Xers/Boomers & up.

The notion that wealthy students are any less knuckleheaded than kids elsewhere is laughable. Every campus that opens in the next few weeks will contribute to increased community spread, not only where the universities are, but also back where the kids return to when they leave campus. These schools are hoping to have a semester's worth of $$$ in their fat little toad hands before they have to send the kids away again. Despicable.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/11/college-towns-coronavirus-393881

Precious Roy wrote:

The outbreak of COVID in upstate NY was minimal. Ithaca has less than 300 positive cases since the beginning of the outbreak. It may be one of the safest communities in the US for coronavirus right now.

Existing cases has nothing to do with this. All it takes is one person in a community. Northern states were hit hard in the beginning, now the cases are down. Southern states were down in the beginning, now they're going up. Remember when Gov Desantis was praising himself for not shutting down the state during spring break and now look at him, he looks like an idiot. Same with Gov Kemp in Georgia. If you don't keep a consistent steady state of social distance guidelines / mask requirements, cases either fluctuate up and down or worse, they keep going up.

Citizen Runner wrote:

David S wrote:

How could being around more people be better than not being around them?

If you look at the parameters for their study the conclusion really is that very aggressive testing, contact tracing, and enforced quarantines of positive cases results in significantly fewer cases than letting a large subgroup of college kids run wild. This should surprise no one.

Their plan is to test every student and faculty member nominally every five days. It's pretty much the South Korea model of containing virus spread but sustained over months. It will be interesting to see how well they pull it off.

Last point (maybe). If these kids are at their dorms or apartments, they will be hanging out with their friends. Continue to test them and it will be A LOT easier contact trace because they're likely to be hanging with the same friends and likely have their contact information.

Let thousands of kids on a college campus, how do you contact trace that? You can't. So you quarantine all 5 classes that these kids are in just because 1 kid test positive? Same thing is happening in these elementary and HS classes. These kids who tested positive could have been hanging around the library or the student cafeteria building or the rec center.

rojo wrote:

In all of this talk about universities and Covid, I came across a fascinating article from my old employer Cornell.

I can't believe this article hasn't gotten more play nationally. Now it's from early July. Anyone know if Cornell has amended their thoughts since then?

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/07/01/cornell-researchers-say-person-semester-university-safer-online-one

Somebody call Dr Fauci!

NJ fan wrote:

Lockdowns are the worst thing we could have done. Young adults are at almost no risk of serious illness from coronavirus but these lockdowns have cause a massive spike in depression, drug use, drug overdose, suicide, domestic abuse, loss of jobs, loss of homes, starvation, and more.

And kids were already getting a crappy education, now it's much worse online. That's going to make it harder for them to be successful their careers. Also child abuse is rising and going unreported because teachers are the ones that identify it and call the authorities. Kids are also depressed and suicidal. The ones that aren't starving are getting fatter because they never leave the house.

The "cure" at this point is way worse than the disease for 98% of people.

I'd like to see a citation for your claim on those increases. It seems really early to tell about some of those. (Job loss is pretty clear cut).

Not sure the child abuse issue is big in the college-aged cohort.

What is meant by regular testing? And who pays for that?

Let me give you a piece of advice Cornell Student. You are at no statistical risk of COVID and should have no fear of it. Your bigger question should be who gives a crap if there is a mass outbreak at Cornell. 225 people 15-24 have died of Covid period. Unless you are morbidly obese with asthma and diabetes there in no risk to you. 90% of the students who get it will be asymptomatic, most of the rest will be back at the keggers in a few days.

I went to college when swine flu happened which was a real risk to people in the college-age group. We didn't do anything to prevent its spread. I actually got it and it was awful. But I survived and was back at it a week later. You are far more at risk from many other viruses that you will take no action to prevent the spread of going forward in your life once this hysteria is over.

You should insist on in-person learning as online is crap in comparison. You should also educate yourself on the real risk of the virus and not freak the heck out about a virus 25-30% of the US population has already had and between 25-40% cannot get.

One thing that I have learned from COVID is that models seem to be wrong more often than right. Models are good at explaining things on a large scale, but they are very limited in their ability to predict outcomes especially when the inputs are a lot of assumptions.

Also, someone pointed out that Ithaca had few cases. Well what is the students are returning from hot spots? That could blow up the numbers in a big way.

Getting together with 4-5 people would be okay if those people are not interacting with anyone else.