Huh? Mask requirements are more likely to be for indoor situations where social distancing may be more difficult, like grocery stores, public transportation, taxi/rideshare, and airplanes.
@alh Thanks. I didn’t think about that.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/diy-cloth-face-coverings.html says:
Runners outside do not seem to be the main focus, though those running in crowded areas may find it difficult to practice social distancing and therefore would be recommended to wear masks in those situations (but runners in uncrowded areas can easily keep away from other people).
^^^Why all the “Huhs”? You guys have obviously not set foot in a densely populated city lately. Even in 45,000 Middletown Connecticut virtually everyone wears a mask outdoors.
I would have thought that it’s because post 3817 implied that college faculty are lazily sitting at home and relishing being paid for nothing, hoping that would continue, unlike the rest of hard-working 'muricans. And that it would take a lot to force them “back to work” from these cushy surroundings.
To me, it fed into a kind of anti-intellectual sentiment that of course I’m devastated to see anywhere, but that I’m particularly surprised to see expressed openly on CC of all places.
Perhaps I read too much into it.
Man, you guys are lucky. I might see 1 in 20 wearing a mask around here, and this is before students try to come back. I’m about to put up a sign in my lawn reminding people who the masks are for and why to wear them. Might use the whole lawn as one of these crank news-billboard scenes with coronavirus news. At a minimum it may make the less careful cross the street.
Nope. In one.
Oh Please. I merely pointed out the fact that professors are not pushing to be back on campus because they have no economic incentive to do so. Stating that really should not be controversial. Obviously people who have a strong economic incentive to return to in person work (such as those without their current level of pay) are more likely to push to be back in person. Some posters then replied with claims of how hard they are working at home, and how much they are missing work-related travel, conferences, etc. No doubt that is true, but not unique in education compared to any other field.
So neither apology nor retraction is coming for stating the obvious. Better critical reading skills are recommended.
I agree with you, actually, but many are not motivated by teaching, either. Many are primarily interested in scholarly research. But in any event, this appears to be off-topic, so back to our main discussion.
Can we please stop the bickering and get back to topic which is supposed to be school in the fall, not whether or not people are wearing masks, not motivation of professors.
Not true. This statement represents a lack of understanding of how faculty are continued and promoted. Tenure-track faculty, for example, absolutely have an “economic incentive” to get back on campus, to get evaluated on their teaching, to do their labwork, to go to conferences so that they can establish scholarly reputations and publish. If they don’t do these things, they will not get tenure, and that is a career disaster.
Those of us working at tuition-dependent private universities understand very well that we need “butts in seats” to survive. We are very much aware that the Covid19 crisis poses an existential threat to the industry that employs us.
Do you think that the only people who have “economic incentive” to get back to work right now are hourly wage earners living in food insecurity? Should everyone be at that level in order to now be deemed sufficiently concerned about their livelihood? Is “incentive” now the equivalent of “desperation”?
Noone is going back to in person teaching in the fall except for labs and some other arts type classes based on what is being said here. The professors that are posting here seem to indicate that this virus is too dangerous for them to be back on campus and they will not put their lives at risk. Maybe between now and Aug there will be treatments that will help. I am hearing a lot from the medical professionals that similar to Tamiflu, if given early enough some of what has been discussed /written about might make cases less severe. For those are posting, if you schools dictate that they want you to teach something in person, with SD precautions, will you refuse, as you value your personal safety first.
It appears because of their age many students on the other hand want to be back on campus, even if some classes are online, but they still would like to have other classes in person. I know some colleges are hoping even if instruction is mainly online that they can still provide some residential experience to their students. I know that my kids Hated being home and learning online to the point that they would live in their college town with friends if they have to.
An interesting experiment this summer will the the sleepaway camps that are opening up. Difference being that the staff will be those who willing are agreeing to work there and mostly college age. Will these camps be able to prevent the virus from spreading. Will the parents be sending their kids still (from what I have seen many are). There are so many rules in place for those that are going to try this. Will the kids follow?
I’m smiling, @suzyQ7, because you keep saying these things next to each other: “live with”, “have a life,” and “virus”.
We’ll have learned to live with the virus, and have a life with it, when we either have a vaccine or we understand the virus and/or its diseases well enough to treat it effectively and reliably. That’s living with a disease.
Before that happens, all you can do is be the victim of the disease. You’re a minor victim by trying to stay out of its way and knowing people who get it and who die, as we’re doing now. The other form of victimhood is actually getting the disease, which is a total crapshoot. Might be fine, might not infect anyone else. Might die. Might be crippled. Might infect your family and watch one of them die – or, rather, get word from the hospital. Of the available options, that first one’s by far the nicest.
I get that it upsets people to be victims. But sometimes that’s how it goes because a thing is in fact stronger than you are and dangerous, and we’re lucky to be able to be home typing about it instead of out there risking our lives and our family’s lives. Those who aren’t are also victims of our government and selfish people, which is why I’ve been campaigning for the Gates Foundation to support line workers financially until their employers actually mitigate risks. Physical separation, ventilation, PPE, reconfiguration of the line to slow production, actually follow the real CDC guidelines, not the hijacked-CDC guidelines. That’s probably one of the more immediately useful public health efforts a large grant can be put to: withhold the slaves.
I really don’t know what to tell you, since you don’t seem to want to accept how serious this is. I expect there were people talking like this in Europe in 1939, too, how it was ridiculous and we have to just go out and live, nevermind the air raid sirens. I bet a lot of them survived, too. But then as now, going out and living is a good way to get killed.
It won’t last forever, but it’ll last a while. Adaptation. People did remarkably good work during the war. Consider Max Perutz. Bundled off to Canada as an enemy alien, away from his lab, held in detention for a year, still managed to do a lot of the work towards figuring out the structure of hemoglobin, the first really big protein to be mapped, atom by atom. That’s a fancy story, but there are lots of others. Just think of all the people who’ll learn to garden and learn to pay attention to soil, learn that it’s alive, that we have no food unless it’s healthy. That’s a big deal all by itself.
I think it is only fair to point out that the mask thing began as a question regarding classrooms. Which, btw, hasn’t been answered, in part because it’s not clear what the recently emasculated CDC guidelines say.
Stop with the WW2 analogies. This is far more like the situation in the US from 1900-1940 ( when pandemics were frequent) than the US from 1940-45. It dishonors both the victims and survivors of the War to suggest otherwise in any way.
I really don’t know where you’re getting this stuff from. It’s extremely difficult to get a professor job at all, has been for decades now. You don’t get one of those unless you also have a serious interest in teaching, and you’re evalulated on your teaching as part of your tenure and promotion. I’m working with a guy trying to carry on groundbreaking research after his partner was disabled, and I’m asking him what his real longterm goal is, and he thinks, and the answer is not about discovery. It’s about teaching. Teaching graduate students to be serious and tenacious researchers.
If you’re not tenured, you’re getting paid beans so that you can teach. That’s why people do it. You can make more at Target than you can as an adjunct, and get benefits that adjuncts don’t, and people still line up to adjunct. Why? Because they believe teaching is important and the best use of their time on earth.
Turn off whatever channel is telling you these things, because it’s not helping you see the place you’re sending your kid and your money to realistically.
You could not be more wrong in your view of all this.
I hope you’re not teaching your kid this kind of contempt for universities and professors, because – well, for one, you’re throwing away your money and your kid’s time. But you’re also making it harder for us to do our jobs, because it means your kid starts five feet back from the starting line, misinterpreting what the university and the professors are all about and what the motives are. We have to teach those kids what the place is actually for before they can really roll, and it’s tricky, because, understandably, they don’t want to be disloyal to or argue with their parents.
You’re here with a lot of teachers and professors who’re giving you an inside view. Use it, and catch up.
That’s it for me on this one.
South Carolina or Southern California?
Not sure why this has turned so personal, how about we just move on. Every idea should be questioned and debated. I’m sure “teachers and professors” want to enlighten us all - I just don’t know of anyone who speaks for all of them.
One might also think that Swedes trust that both their government and the rest of the population are trying to weigh up the pros and cons of different actions, and figure out the best way forward in a difficult situation. Unfortunately in the US it seems we prefer to accuse everyone with a different perspective of acting in bad faith, as this thread is now amply demonstrating. I’ve seen tensions on all forms of social media increasing dramatically over the last week as we all get more stressed after being locked down for two months. So perhaps its now time for this thread to either be locked, or much more actively moderated.