MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2020 2:24 pm
wgdsr wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2020 10:47 am
MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2020 9:21 am
wgdsr wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2020 8:42 am
MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2020 7:26 am
wgdsr wrote: ↑Tue May 12, 2020 9:35 pm
california state public universities close classes for fall on may 12. so much for letting science guide us.
Are you just saying that they could have or should have waited longer to make this call? More data?
a) do they have all the science they need, "we call it data", to make a decision now.
b) and/or is there a need to make a decision now.
they already had a dry run, have experience, and did it in the spur of the moment. mostly without incident.
is it possible there could be more substantial data in the interim, that would change their perspective, before a decision needed to be made?
of course everyone can have their own perspective on it, i know mine. this has very large implications and shouldn't happen with expediency because pressure, planning and execution would be hard(er).
Fair position.
Similar to where Hopkins is, though I'd say they certainly think that's where it's going, based upon the best, meaning most optimistic, predictions of test and trace and isolate capabilities. Which are inadequate, even with the promised 10-fold increase from where we were in April.
While they are thinking about how many students they could actually handle with singles only with dedicated bathroom capabilities...the big issue is staff and faculty protections, plus the reality of international students and the probability that they won't be able to travel to the US by then. while certainly student protection is not irrelevant, the concern is that close quarters translates to petrie dish spread, making it extremely difficult to protect surrounding community. Half of students live off campus, in the community, but also typically in congregate living, so difficult to truly isolate infections.
I'm not sure what will change this calculus over the next months other than confirmation of new blooms to the downside or the 'miracle' of this 'magically going away' without a vaccine to the upside. But the scientists are saying that even if summer helps, expect the second wave come fall. Only the partisans are suggesting otherwise.
But do you think there's something else that could change the calculus sufficiently?
Reducing death rate from infections will matter, but unless we're clear of serious long term health damage as well, not sure even therapies will help...unless its a quite miraculous drug. I don't think the scientists are putting much weight on that possibility before fall.
Seems to me that we'll be doing elementary and middle school age kids back to school sooner than HS and college. Need to in order to let parents go back to work. There's going to be a ton of pressure on that, for sure.
i believe there will be additional information before decisions like this need to be made. i use as examples all the new info, directions, initiatives that have gone on since this started. and maybe increasingly so, given the now larger "market" for it.
maybe you (and others) are of the opinion that we have the playbook already, the path is clear other than a miracle. or you're just playing devil's advocate.
in either case, i'm far from convinced there is/was a need to make a call on it now. seems a lot more like making their job easier. as an example, and i have zero idea whether this is the case at all, it's conjecture... calif goes to online classes in july by need and all info gathered by then. 30% of students defer. no one there to take their place. do it today, students to take their place. don't have to work on other contingency plans. $ rolls in. less work to do. statue commissioned. bc it's about the kids.
A little cynical, but you could be correct about $.
Certainly could be part of the calculus.
I'm not sure it's necessarily about not wanting to do the work to do all the scenario planning that I described Hopkins as doing (I'm sure lots of schools must be doing) but sure, making the decision now means they can focus all their energies on the known path chosen. To do virtual really well requires some serious investments and training post haste, so I can see the appeal of having clarity.
I'm not playing devil's advocate when I say I think the really critical aspects are known well enough at this point to make a pretty darn rational call. Again, Hopkins hasn't made that call, but as we listened to them discuss the issues in detail, I can certainly see how someone could easily come to the conclusion that there's negligible chance of something breaking so well differently that you'd want 100% of students back on campus, dormed as usual etc. But that was my conclusion and that of some others, not necessarily the only way to interpret the trade-offs. Someone else might have heard them differently.
i do find it utterly amazing that anyone thinks they have some crystal ball for how this thing falls over the next 100+ days.
testing could be in any of a 100 fold window from lower bound to upper bound.
testing accuracy could be absolutely amazing down to what it is now. which would change its usefulness by many orders of magnitude.
what testing/protocols will be in place at that time for the schools that may want to operate, as there may be some? someone knows that?
we have global initiatives to have a treatment targeted by the biotech/medical field in their greatest/largest effort in our world's history. i'm not even sure if 10% of the trials and studies that have been underway already are out yet.
who knows what happens to us and the virus as a society, in many respects we haven't been out of our houses while it's really been here and we're "opening up" now.
who knows if we have immunity?
who knows if the virus is/will morph into something worse or benign?
who even knows how it saps oxygen?
who happens to know if it's seasonal?
who happens to know if it dies in the summer? comes back in the fall? what research did they use for that? last year's covid 19?
here's the original covid moniker... sars:
https://www.who.int/csr/sars/epicurve/e ... ndex1.html
here is the typical flu season:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season.htm
the mers (other covid) cases over the years seemed to be in the summer and died in the fall, you can get a chart pretty easily.
if anything, for many of respiratory viruses, it seems they take the fall off. maybe there's just as many instances/other examples of fall=virus season, but they certainly don't fit a for sure pattern or anything close to it.
just pretty amazing to me for anyone to believe they now know how this will run for us, given what has happened, and continues to happen on an almost daily basis. and the stakes and projects involved. that's not a shot at you... mdlax, you're allowed the takeaway from the academics you heard from and the info you digest... just pretty flabbergasted!