They are 18, not 8. Who watches you to make sure you stay properly hydrated, since you are at far greater risk of complications than college aged students? Kids do get sick at college, and do learn to care for themselves
Someone posted already that the average victim age in Mass was 82. I believe in Italy it was 79 1/2. Dementia was the third most common comorbidity for victims here, I recall. I do wonder why the media chose to highlight the exceptional case of youngish victims, when the typical reality is far different. I suppose it sells more newspapers.
I was the one who posted the average age in Massachusetts, but I also posted about a young, healthy victim who was on a ventilator for weeks. I think the press highlighted the case of the young athlete because it ran against what they’d been reporting earlier-that the virus poses no danger to people in their teens and twenties.
One thing that scares me is the damage they are apparently finding in the lungs of young people who seemingly have fully recovered. I wonder if years from now we’re going to see a big increase in the number of lung cancer rates in non-smokers (scarring from pneumonia is a risk factor.)
Here, at least, the lung complications are occurring in those who vape. Admittedly a lot of teens and twenties do vape so are at higher risk. Doctors here say they see teens with the lungs in the condition of those in late middle age. Before COVID. Sad.
@BillMarsh
“Help me out. What surprises me is not that someone would know 10-12 or even 20 people who have tested positive, but that people would know that many in a specific 4 year age range (18-22) rather than spread across the life spectrum of 90-100 years. Why that age range in particular? I’m honestly confounded by that. Particularly with testing difficult to access in some places.and with many people in that age range not needing to be tested to go to jobs and mix with other workers.”
Ok. I focussed on that age range because this forum is regarding college aged kids -my children are within that 4 year range (so i have those contacts) and my friends are within the other range I mentioned. I can give you the grim statistics from my parents senior living facility but this is college confidential not seniors anonymous. I am in a hotspot and know many who have been infected. Is that really hard to believe? and if you have friends who are doctors you can get tested. Access is everything as well all know.
Primary care doc. This is true, vaping does terrible damage to lungs. The data on Covid and vaping is not clear yet but certainly vaping or any inhaled product increases pneumonia and lung issues pre-Covid. I see it in my teen patients all the time, over and over, pre-Covid. Please please discourage your kids from it as much as parentally possible.
Regarding Covid: our clinic tests for it a lot, and have for weeks. We are not in a hotspot but definitely have coronavirus in our area: every single positive case under 20 in our clinic has been mild so far(over 30 cases in that age range), no hospitalizations, no one sick longer than a few days, but there are cases in the area(not mine) of children in the hospital with it, even ICU. There are healthy children every year who die of flu (and rsv and meningitis, etc).
I am not comparing the two ; Sars-coV-2 is a far more serious virus than flu! Just pointing out that healthy children and young adults do die of infectious diseases every year, all the time. And each time it is tragic.
Certainly, all the data so far indicate Covid19 is very low risk for death or serious disease in people over 1 and under 30, though there are some emerging reports of more serious syndromes in some children that may or may NOT relate to covid–so the optimism is a very cautious one.
School will likely resume in the fall, k-12 and college, with some precautions in place, and we will all move forward, only going back to shut-downs if the hospitals are in danger of being over-run. Spread will continue, just slower and manageable, and definitely the vulnerable would be wise to stay as distanced as possible.
Staying shut down and having students not return to school/college will not end this disease. The purpose of the shut down was to decrease chance of hospital over-run and to buy time to ramp up testing and get a handle on this new very unusual virus.
I think that would depend on the dorm set up. DS19 lived in a double w ensuite washroom this past year. I fully expected him to come down with something during the school year but didn’t, not even a cold.
Quite the opposite, Mwfan… I am suggesting that pushing for early reopenings, that making isolation more difficult, that not listening to science, experts, immunologists etc – all that is not just “self-serving.” It is downright irresponsible. In two months we’ve lost more lives than during the entire Vietnam War. Apparently that’s not a meaningful statistic to some citizens. “They were old,” we hear, at times dismissively. The argument that we can remake the economy but can’t bring back the dead is lost on these folks, many of them who claim to be Christians. What I’m seeing all too often these days is not just people disrespecting facts, learning and science. I’m seeing people being cavalier about mass deaths. It’s truly shocking to me.
That’s what I was suggesting.
It is not that we are cavalier about the deaths, more than we are fatalistic that they are going to happen, just as past plagues afflicted generations before us. One can try to prolong the disease’s effects through lockdowns so that hospitals do not become overwhelmed. That is the goal of flattening the curve, not the avoidance of deaths, particularly in those who are highly fragile, which will occur regardless until there is an effective vaccine (the NYTimes has a helpful chart showing how a vaccine could develop by summer 2036). Some of us think it is important to consider life-years lost rather than number of deaths. The deaths in Vietnam were generally healthy young men, aged around 20 (so maybe 60 years lost per person). The deaths in Mass, for example, are generally ill elderly, aged 82 on average (so maybe 2 years lost per person?). That is, for me, an important distinction, but you may disagree. We all will die, eventually, and the inevitable closeness of that event for those already over 80 is relevant to me.
I am not cavalier about the “we can always remake the economy”. I would not be surprised at all if more people die from the resulting economic depression than from COVID; I am certain that will occur in my county.
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Everything I’m hearing is that things will begin reopening within the next few weeks, even listening to immunologists and other experts. Certainly not everything all at once, but things should start gradually reopening within weeks. Are there immunologists and other experts saying fall is too early?
Fall, no. Today – in many areas, yes.
Yes. That is how you look at it. It isn’t how I look at it. Which is why I wrote what I wrote.
The lockdowns were always intended to flatten the curve and give hospitals time time to prepare for patients, for more to be learned about the best treatment options, and to get more (and better) testing up and going, along with contact tracing. We’ve made progress on all these fronts – but it’s been bumpy and uneven. (And it’s been mostly done in spite of the federal government, rather than with its help, but don’t get me started on that.)
The lockdowns were never intended to stay in place until there’s a vaccine; that’s simply not sustainable b/c people will not / cannot stop everything until then. That said, re-opening too early brings its own problems. My state (NC) has seven COVID benchmarks developed by public health experts to guide three phases for re-opening. And the governor has said we may switch back and forth some between phases depending on outbreaks.
I think this is the best we can do – listen to experts and use data. While this won’t end loss of life, I do believe we can (and will) mitigate losses substantially. This is the reality of a global pandemic.
Finally, at the risk of stating the obvious, those most vulnerable should as much as possible self-isolate until we do have a vaccine, even as restrictions are lifted.
Well, CA opened the beaches and now closed them again so that’s the kind of thing I see happening all summer long. One step forward, one step back, on and on. Will we really get to where we need to be in August to put kids on campuses if people can’t even go to the beach?
Maybe this should be rephrased: People can’t go to the beach SO THAT kids can be on campuses in August…
Frankly, opening the beaches first was kinda dumb. If everything else is closed and people can’t work, of course people are going to flock there! Open the beaches later when other things are also open.
Because locking up 20 year olds is such a sensible way to protect nursing homes?
20 year olds grandparents live in those nursing homes. That’s the point. An asymptomatic 20 year old college student visits their parents. Their mother then visits her mother in a nursing home. One week later that whole nursing home has covid-19.
We are all interconnected.
Preventing the circulation of the virus among the young and health prevents those asymptomatic young people from transmitting it to other carriers, who then infect nursing home patients…who die.
ETA:
Or more likely in places with strict protocols in place, young and healthy infects health care aide, who cares for clients in three different facilities and carries the virus into all three.
https://patch.com/massachusetts/boston/ma-coronavirus-study-symptom-free-patients-infected-nursing-homes
That’s the big issue with a return to campus. Watching for symptoms and taking temperatures is ineffective in screening for the disease. We obviously can’t put off college forever but I think the hope is that with the development of better treatments we can at least bring down the death rate.
I live in CA and the governor has been very cautious since day 1 so it doesn’t surprise me that he closed the beaches again (temporarily) but as the reopening phases are implemented over the next few weeks/months and people will be allowed to go back to work, go to restaurants, hike on trails, use parks, the beaches will once again be open.
In addition, little doubt in my mind now that students will be back on campus in the fall, albeit with a mix of online and in-person instruction and with many precautions put in place like frequent testing, masks, quarantine protocols, no large group gatherings, limited physical interaction with professors or at-risk faculty, administrators, etc. The thing about societies is that we do a pretty good job of adapting/pivoting when faced with adversity. This will be the new college “normal” for the foreseeable future.