School in the 2020-2021 Academic Year & Coronavirus (Part 1)

[ucbalumnus]

@ChemAM

Also, when I said social distancing may not be necessary in fall, I meant (but forgot to put) if we make good progress with regard to treatments.

But that is a big “if”. It is well within the realm of possibility that (a) risk levels and risk factors become much more well defined, so that individuals can have a much better idea of what the risk of COVID-19 infection is and what the risk of a bad outcome from a COVID-19 infection is in the context of their personal risk factors, and/or (b) better observation and treatment protocols reduce the risk of bad outcomes from COVID-19 infection. (An effective widely-available vaccine would be even better, but no one is realistically expecting that in the next few months.)

However, we are not there yet, and colleges are understandably preparing for various scenarios and watching the news even as they hope for the above to happen. But assuming that the above will happen before colleges run up against the deadline to make decisions is not a safe assumption.

[ChemAM]

@ucbalumnus I know. I said social distancing MIGHT not be necessary in fall IF we make good progress in treatments.

[amsunshine]

@mathKids

@usma87

@wisteria100 and @roycroftmom - I am skeptical of any “infection rate” data available right now. Three separate studies (Stanford, USC and NY) have shown potential infection rates 50 - 80 times higher than current reported numbers.

NY numbers are 10 times higher than the total number of those that tested positive. It’s 4 times as many where I live. Unlike one of the CA studies where people volunteered via Facebook (what kind of model is that??), the NY was based on random sample of people shopping supermarkets and other big stores.

I would also argue that the large NY numbers (275, 000 positive cases) are more than just a function of who can get tested.

The NY sampling was not exactly random.

[Mwfan1921]

This article gives a good sense of what type of pressure schools are under to open in the Fall. Macalester College’s President:

His college, with about 2,100 students, is pledging every effort to offer a full school year in person. To go online for a semester, Rosenberg said, might cost Macalester a quarter of its enrollment. For any college, he said, that would produce “very, very dramatic financial consequences.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/will-colleges-reopen-in-the-fall-coronavirus-crisis-offers-only-hazy-scenarios/2020/04/22/a124edae-83d3-11ea-ae26-989cfce1c7c7_story.html

[mathKids]

There may be even more dramatic consequences if they reopen and things go horribly wrong. They may not lose current students now, but they may end up losing future applicants. This is a tricky position to be in.

[homerdog]

@Mwfan1921 ugh just ugh. It’s just so complicated.

[bearpanther]

https://oklahoman.com/article/5660883/ou-to-resume-in-person-classes-this-fall

"The University of Oklahoma will resume in-person classes this fall at its campuses in Norman, Tulsa and Oklahoma City.

Oklahoma State University also intends to have on-campus classes this fall.

“While we are planning to resume classes this fall on campus, we are still analyzing the situation and evaluating our plans,” OSU said in a statement Friday.

OU Interim President Joseph Harroz said on Friday that instruction and housing models will be adjusted to ensure a return to campus is “realistic and safe.” Classes begin Aug. 24.

“While we cannot eliminate all risk, we will mitigate it in every reasonable way we can,” Harroz wrote in a letter to the OU community."

[ChemAM]

@sylvan8798 I am not trying to minimize anyone’s positions. When you say “perhaps you are failing to understand math”, I am merely telling you that I do understand math. I never said it wasn’t very complicated. When you tell somebody they don’t understand math, it implies a lack of intelligence, and to be perfectly honest, it sounded like you were trying to minimize my position. Regardless of whether this was your intention, that is how it came across to me.

[roycroftmom]

Is it really that complicated though? Even in NYC, the epicenter, there are not significant numbers of people under 25 who have been hospitalized, and almost no deaths in that age group, so even if we assume testing would show many more cases, young people do not seem to suffer much at all if and when they get COVID. So student health really isn’t a reason to keep schools closed, at the K12 or college level. If the kids aren’t sick enough to be hospitalized, it is highly unlikely they will have any long term consequences. Yes, they could pass it to more vulnerable groups, but those groups could catch it from anyone, not just students, so maybe the burden should be on the vulnerable to isolate.

[ChemAM]

@roycroftmom One thing I also think hasn’t been addressed in this thread is the effect of doing the entirety of the fall 2020 semester virtually on students’ mental health. At my college, many students’ mental health has been damaged greatly by forcing them out of the college environment they are accustomed to and forcing them back into their parents’ homes, including some who do not have good home lives. If most institutions decided to go virtual, I think there would be a sizable spike in college student suicides through fall. I think the effect of this isolation on students’ mental health actually may pose a greater threat to college students themselves than COVID-19.

[roycroftmom]

The Washington post offers the data from NY. In NY state, 99.95% of those who died from corona virus were over the age of 20. Those few cases are still of course tragic but fortunately rare.

[Sue22]

So student health really isn’t a reason to keep schools closed, at the K12 or college level. If the kids aren’t sick enough to be hospitalized, it is highly unlikely they will have any long term consequences. Yes, they could pass it to more vulnerable groups, but those groups could catch it from anyone, not just students, so maybe the burden should be on the vulnerable to isolate.

Who’s going to teach those students?

[ucbalumnus]

@ChemAM

@roycroftmom If the test has such a high rate of false negatives and it is still predicting this many people have antibodies, the death rate/hospitalization rate is so low I think there is virtually no chance we won’t be back to college by fall.

The NYC numbers are here: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page#download

On April 24, there were:
146,139 known cases
37,995 hospitalizations
10,746 confirmed deaths
5,102 probable deaths (so 15,848 confirmed + probable deaths)

Suppose the study that suggested that 21% of the NYC population has antibodies and therefore was infected (perhaps silently) is correct.

The population of NYC is 8.4 million. So that means 1.76 million infections assumed.

knowncases / assumedinfected = 8.28%
hospitalizations / assumedinfected = 2.15%
confirmeddeaths / assumedinfected = 0.609%
(confirmeddeaths + probabledeaths) / assumedinfected = 0.898%

There may have been other deaths not attributed to COVID-19 that may have been COVID-19 related, such as FDNY’s finding a large increase in the number of non-revivable cardiac arrests in the recent month compared to the usual number, so the death rates are likely a lower bound.

For those who want to compare with the seasonal flu, here are some numbers: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html

Note that the numbers are estimates of symptomatic illnesses, so the actual number of flu infections may be larger if some additional were infected asymptomatically.

hospitalizations / symptomaticillnesses ranged from 1.16% to 1.97%
deaths / symptomaticillnesses ranged from 0.0961% to 0.176%

(If the denominator were total (including asymptomatic) infections (to be more comparable to the COVID-19 numbers above, the percentages would be lower.)

Based on the above numbers, COVID-19 has about a 5.10-9.34 times the risk of death as the flu, and a 1.09-1.85 times the risk of hospitalization as the flu. The multiples would be higher if the flu percentages were based on total (including asymptomatic) infections, making them lower.

The NYC COVID-19 data page also notes that death rate for age 18-44 is about 10.5% of that of the entire population. However, the flu is similar in this respect, so the younger age group that includes most college students, although much lower risk than the overall population with respect to either COVID-19 or flu, is still at a much higher risk from COVID-19 than the flu. And colleges do have older faculty and staff around.

So it is not surprising that colleges are waiting and hoping for more data and better medical treatment that reduces the death or hospitalization rate for COVID-19 before their deadlines to make decisions on what to do going forward.

[sylvan8798]

Who’s going to teach those students?

Apparently we’re interchangeable, like light bulbs.

[ChemAM]

@sylvan8798 Come on. Nobody is saying that. Like you said, the issue is very complicated, so don’t ridicule others with beliefs different from your own.

[ChemAM]

@ucbalumnus Still a much better death rate than what we were projecting before. Definitely good news no matter what.

[Sue22]

@ChemAM, No one said that but there seems to be a great deal of discussion about the fact that faculty and staff coming from off campus could infect students and very little about the fact that all of those students experiencing Covid-19 as no more than a mild cold might put faculty and staff, many of whom are older and consequently at risk from the virus at great risk.

[ChemAM]

@Sue22 But the problem is faculty and staff could get that from anywhere. Plus I saw how upset the faculty and staff were after they announced that Amherst College was shutting down; most of them would be willing to take the risk, trust me.

[ChemAM]

@Sue22 And most businesses will be reopened way before the start of the Fall 2020 semester, including those with workers who are at-risk. It’s just the way things are.

[ucbalumnus]

@ChemAM

@ucbalumnus Still a much better death rate than what we were projecting before. Definitely good news no matter what.

However, those numbers likely understate the difference. There could be more COVID-19 deaths not directly attributed to COVID-19 (like the FDNY’s getting increased non-revivable cardiac arrest calls), and the flu numbers use a denominator of symptomatic cases, rather than total (including asymptomatic) cases. So the actual ratio of COVID-19 death rate and flu death rate is probably higher than calculated in reply #1402 (as noted).