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You are here: Home / Anderson On Health Insurance / Testing a cluster

Testing a cluster

by David Anderson|  August 25, 20208:57 am| 97 Comments

This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance, COVID-19 Coronavirus

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The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill is the center of a massive cluster of COVID-19 infections.

 

COVID situation at UNC, two weeks into the term. 784 confirmed cases among students, 51 employees. 31% positive tests last week. Clusters in 7 residence halls, 3 Greek houses. Only bright spot is public reporting of data, which many schools are not doing. https://t.co/1aSWOVJ2DG pic.twitter.com/KQQlHbhklg

— Valerie A. Lewis (@valeriealewis) August 25, 2020


UNC is about 20 minutes down the road from Duke. Duke has students return to campus at about the same time as UNC. Duke has not had widespread community transmission on campus, at least not yet. UNC has had to close campus and is seeding a major spread event.

Testing strategies or lack there-of is a major part of this story.

UNC had no pro-active testing strategy. UNC would only test symptomatic individuals and close contacts of symptomatic individuals. This means that the university had no awareness of any community spread risk much less actualities until students started to go to campus health centers with symptoms. And by that time, there had been several days of potential high density contact in dorms, in classes, in stores, in parties and elsewhere on and near campus.

Duke has used a different set of strategies. Any student who returned to campus  was tested on re-entry. This identified non-symptomatic individuals who otherwise could have been infectious and broke future infection chains. It also makes the primary source of any on-campus infections to be from off-campus interactions. More importantly, Duke is also conducting massive weekly surveillance testing using non-CLIA labs and pooled testing strategies. The goal is to limit infections to one, two, three, four here and there instead of forty, fifty, one hundred and thirty infections in a cluster. Duke is assuming students will be infected. Their goal is predicated upon enough surveillance testing that singular infections don’t become campus wide outbreaks.

UNC did not have that capacity or willingness to build that capability. And now they are closed down as the Board of Governors and the Chancellor expected impossible behavior from 20,000 people in the context of broad community spread without having the tools available to have a hope in hell of breaking infection chains early and often.

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Reader Interactions

97Comments

  1. 1.

    Another Scott

    August 25, 2020 at 9:09 am

    Something that everyone should have realized by, say, April at the latest is: the virus is everywhere on the planet.  You cannot assume that because someone isn’t coughing and doesn’t have a fever that they aren’t infectious.  You just can’t.  Playing dumb, at this late date, is terribly irresponsible.

    Thanks for the post.  I’m glad that you and your colleagues are helping to build a system that has a chance to work.

    Good luck!

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  2. 2.

    Hoodie

    August 25, 2020 at 9:11 am

    UNC Board of Governors is stacked with Republicans appointed by the legislative GOP leadership. Go figure.

  3. 3.

    mali muso

    August 25, 2020 at 9:13 am

    Watching this from my little corner of the college world.  We started hybrid classes yesterday.  All residential students were tested and quarantined until results came back, and the handful of asymptomatic positives are now in isolation.  Masks are required everywhere indoors and when social distancing isn’t feasible outside, and you see students wearing them outside while walking from place to place.  Classrooms are at low density with students rotating turns being in person or Zoom.  From what I understand, there are plans for weekly pooled testing to happen throughout the semester.  Fingers crossed we can pull this off.

  4. 4.

    sdhays

    August 25, 2020 at 9:14 am

    the Board of Governors and the Chancellor expected impossible behavior from 20,000 people

    I have to say I’m really tired of reading variations of this statement over and over and over again. Human behavior in the aggregate isn’t rocket surgery; it’s something average people can comprehend. It’s just not acceptable that people who have risen to the level of governing large institutions, especially educational institutions, have this level of absurd incompetence.

  5. 5.

    planetjanet

    August 25, 2020 at 9:17 am

    I am sure UNC-Chapel Hill has the resources.  They did not have the will, nor concern about their students’ well-being,

  6. 6.

    Slappy Kincaid

    August 25, 2020 at 9:19 am

    NC State took a dive right after UNC Chapel Hill.  Clusters started appearing at frat houses and dorms, so they shut down in-person attendance.  Duke is hanging in there, but for how long?

    I also spotted a local story that UNC was warned this would happen by epidemiologists who took a look at their reopening strategy and the University chose to ignore the warning and go forward with their inadequate plan.

    It’s like none of them had ever been to college or seen a movie about college in their lives.  Parties?  College students have parties?

  7. 7.

    Ken

    August 25, 2020 at 9:21 am

    I also spotted a local story that UNC was warned this would happen by epidemiologists who took a look at their reopening strategy and the University chose to ignore the warning and go forward with their inadequate plan.

    I am not a lawyer. Does that rise to the level of depraved indifference?

  8. 8.

    UNCDave

    August 25, 2020 at 9:22 am

    “The University of Chapel Hill”?  Surely you mean Chapel Hill State University?

  9. 9.

    David Anderson

    August 25, 2020 at 9:22 am

    Given current testing has shown less than a dozen new on-campus infections and no clusters, Duke has a fighting chance.  I would suspect that any university using the same type of protocols as Duke (entry testing, pooled surveillance testing of everyone on a frequent cadence) and in a region of far lower background spread (New England and New York basically) will have far better odds than Duke in making it to Thanksgiving.

     

    Any university that is doing almost no proactive surveillance testing and is in a region of high community spread (Mississippi, Alabama, Nevada etc) is going to be lucky if they last 3 weeks.

  10. 10.

    David Anderson

    August 25, 2020 at 9:23 am

    @UNCDave: Updated

  11. 11.

    Barbara

    August 25, 2020 at 9:24 am

    This is about sports.  No one will ever convince me otherwise.  They KNOW that they can’t hold an athletic season if students are not allowed back on campus.

    Duke has an advantage over UNC in this respect: it owns the fraternity “houses” that are located on the campus.  If the administration prohibits parties, there will be no parties.

  12. 12.

    sdhays

    August 25, 2020 at 9:37 am

    @Barbara: That still doesn’t explain why the “strategy” to reopen is basically “wag our finger and everything will be fine”. It’s laziness, stupidity, and total incompetence.

  13. 13.

    Ken

    August 25, 2020 at 9:42 am

    @sdhays: The “laziness, stupidity, and total incompetence” was covered adequately by Hoodie.

  14. 14.

    LeftCoastYankee

    August 25, 2020 at 9:44 am

    A whole lot of magical thinking is going on around wanting college football.  One figure I saw said Louisville was planning to have 11,000 fans at games instead of the usual 60,000.

    If there are no distancing and mask requirements (or they are laxly enforced) that’s a super-spreader event every Saturday.  Multiply by 2-3 in every state where “big time” college football will be happening.

    Even if there are measures in place, it’s a totally unnecessary risk.

  15. 15.

    David Anderson

    August 25, 2020 at 9:51 am

    @Barbara: I’m more worried about the off-campus parties and gatherings at Duke but yeah, Duke has a lot more control of some of the obvious risk points.

  16. 16.

    FlyingToaster

    August 25, 2020 at 9:57 am

    In Boston (relatively low spead, but clusters still in Eastie adjacent to Chelsea (neighboring municipality), we’re dreading the BU/BC/Tufts return.  Northeastern and Emerson seem to have a testing and distancing strategy worked out (rented out closed hotels to reduce dorm density); Tufts has testing but is perfectly happy to cram everyone into their dorms + off-campus housing in Somerville and Medford.

    BC is opening because of Football.

    I’m predicting return to Zoom by Sept. 21 for BC and BU.  Jeebus.

  17. 17.

    Immanentize

    August 25, 2020 at 10:02 am

    @FlyingToaster: Brandeis has its own very nice dashboard.  They are doing OK.  IM AT Suffolk.  We have mandatory weekly testing, but also so many commuter students who work.

    My son just started at Rice.  They are really on top of it — no one on campus until tested (including faculty and staff) and weekly testing for everyone.  Plus strict masking and distance rules tied to their honor code.  No community spread yet (that I know about).  But throw on a hurricane….  Sheesh.  What a world we have made for ourselves.

  18. 18.

    dmsilev

    August 25, 2020 at 10:05 am

    Around here, the County said “no in-person classes unless you’re running a nursing school or similar”. Some of the schools, USC in particular, still had a whole bunch of students come back to (private) off-campus housing, largely because the school had planned on partial reopening and students had signed leases and the like. Surprising basically nobody, students are partying in those apartments, and equally as not-surprising, “USC reports ‘alarming increase’ in COVID-19 cases”.

  19. 19.

    pika

    August 25, 2020 at 10:06 am

    Our Western New York SUNY semester starts Monday. The state’s and region’s numbers have consistently low so far. But simply the act of providing face shields, extra cleaning, and more hand sanitizer is going to blow an even bigger hole in campus’s already-past-the-bone budget–there’s certainly nothing for testing. There’s no other help, no funds. I decided to teach online entirely because the best-case scenario seemed to be a series of 2-week quarantines that would be severely disruptive to the students’ learning even if folks were possibly exposed and no one got sick.

  20. 20.

    Parfigliano

    August 25, 2020 at 10:11 am

    @Barbara: Yes this is about sports and the all mighty dollars they generate.

    Yes there will be parties.  Maybe not at the frat but parties will happen.  We are talkin college kids here.  Only the wilfully ignorant could think otherwise.

  21. 21.

    Barbara

    August 25, 2020 at 10:13 am

    @David Anderson: To be sure.  And I don’t give high odds that the DU administration will stand up to rule breaking by wealthy well-connected students, they never did when I was there, but the entire physical layout of the university is much less suited to casual mixing, whereas, any night on Franklin Street once UNC students come back to Chapel Hill is basically ripe for transmission of the virus.

  22. 22.

    Baud

    August 25, 2020 at 10:13 am

    I think you hit publish before completing the last word of your title.

  23. 23.

    Redshift

    August 25, 2020 at 10:13 am

    @Barbara: I don’t think so. This is a very good article on how the “business model” of colleges and universities has changed in recent decades and especially the last decade that is driving them to do this. A big part of it is that they compete based on in-person experiences rather than academic quality, so they need students on campus for that. (Author is an adjunct professor.)

  24. 24.

    Pittsburgh Mike

    August 25, 2020 at 10:22 am

    This is sadly so obvious — if you’re going to gather people together indoors for more than a minute or two, you need frequent periodic testing to catch outbreaks before they spread.

    Even at $30/test, doing weekly testing for 9 months costs about $1000/student. In a world where tuition is $20K-60K, I don’t understand why frequent testing isn’t happening. Even a saliva test that only catches people likely to be infectious would still be an improvement — it might be even better, since it doesn’t waste time on people who are no longer infectious.

    It is so sad that the CDC has thrown in the towel in terms of leadership during this pandemic, still focusing on hand washing and masks with a virus that probably spreads more by aerosols in crowded spaces. Cheap, simple and frequent testing is the key to reopening, yet that’s not the message of any government, state or federal, that I see.

    Not just sad, Sofa King sad.

  25. 25.

    Ryan

    August 25, 2020 at 10:22 am

    Duke also dramatically reduced student capacity, assigning each student to a dorm room that normally houses more than one.  I would be surprised if this was not a huge factor.  One small point, staff were not tested upon re-entry, though they do have to report symptoms and are subject to surveillance testing.

  26. 26.

    Mart

    August 25, 2020 at 10:25 am

    My understanding is Duke only brought in freshmen, with everyone else remote.  That limits ability to get booze and party, also helps to distance. This was a first-hand account so wonder why Mr. Anderson did not mention? Am I losing it? Don’t answer…

  27. 27.

    Mo Salad

    August 25, 2020 at 10:26 am

    And yet the prevalent meme has always been “Duke Sucks!”. Hmm.

    Looks like you picked a good school, Mayhew.

  28. 28.

    StringOnAStick

    August 25, 2020 at 10:29 am

    @Redshift: The depends a little on the focus of the school.  There is a small but heavily STEM U in our town, and we know several people who work there.  Going to a hard-core engineering school means lots of lab requirements, so there is a need to be on campus, especially for Freshmen because without those entry level classes, you can’t move on to the next ones.  Not letting the freshmen on campus means they lose an entire year of academic progress. Fortunately this place is known as the complete opposite of a party school and the planning that’s been done to make this work is impressive.

    It is small enough and serious enough of a campus that sports have the emphasis they should have: as something that rates well under academics and no one going there has any dreams of making it in pro sports.

  29. 29.

    ET

    August 25, 2020 at 10:36 am

    @David Anderson: Alabama just reported over 500 positives so 3 weeks may be generous I suspect. They only thing that might push it to 3 weeks or even more, is 1. football revenue, 2. the stubborn desire to not look like they didn’t know what they were doing, and 3. admitting they were wrong (particularly admitting that Science was right).

  30. 30.

    gvg

    August 25, 2020 at 10:40 am

    Duke has per Google about 6500 students and UNC Chaple hill is around 20,000 and then UNC Charlotte is about 24,000. The bigger numbers will be harder to manage.

    My University is much bigger. I think they are fooling themselves but professors had options and many of the classes will be online. They tested all employees before they brought us back and we haven’t had serious outbreaks. They offer testing tho the students (and many want it but couldn’t get it elsewhere) and I think they are planning more tests…but they weren’t saying they would enforce the mask mandate on students until this morning I heard on the radio that they will suspend or expel students that don’t comply. I bet this news is a reason why.

    I don’t think it’s about football. Most schools don’t actually make a profit. We do barely. Its the tuition and dorm fees and pressure from the state government. Honestly, they need in person for the same reason many businesses do, but they are just not in a good position.

    They are apparently using their own tests done by our own labs. They have a medical school and a hospital. Engineering has also helped per reports. Realistically I think everything is screwed until we have a real Federal government again so February, and then it will take time.

  31. 31.

    zhena gogolia

    August 25, 2020 at 10:53 am

    @mali muso:

    Our college has also spent lots of money trying to do this right. I’m praying for us all.

  32. 32.

    waspuppet

    August 25, 2020 at 11:07 am

    @sdhays: That’s been a hallmark of the response, in universities but also governments and elsewhere, that I hope people remember — at every step, the Visionary Leaders who are paid six and seven figures to be Visionary Leading Leaders with Leadership Vision and Mission have devolved actual leadership and responsibility as low as they can possibly push it — to county health officers and their meager staffs, and to 19-year-olds. (While retaining, of course, the power to look over everyone’s shoulder and say “You’re doing it wrong.”)

    This has of course been happening for decades, but I want to believe more and more people are realizing this and preparing to ask their Visionary Leaders, “OK, your turn — you make 18 times as much as I do; what exactly is it YOU do around here?!”

  33. 33.

    wvng

    August 25, 2020 at 11:12 am

    @David Anderson: Does Duke have anything like a “no tolerance” policy about off (or on) campus parties?

  34. 34.

    burnspbesq

    August 25, 2020 at 11:12 am

    @David Anderson:

    ‘is Duke helping Central? That would be a neighborly thing to do.

  35. 35.

    ballerat

    August 25, 2020 at 11:14 am

    David, what is the significance of Duke using non-CLIA labs? I looked up CLIA and learned it was a regulatory standard that applies to labs that test samples from humans including for disease.

    Does this mean Duke’s tests do not meet a standard of accuracy, or that by going non-CLIA they were able to respond faster?

    I ask because it sounds like a CLIA lab ought to be a good thing.

  36. 36.

    trollhattan

    August 25, 2020 at 11:15 am

    All incoming/returning students at my kid’s new college are tested (20-minute result) on entry, dorm capacity is reduced to single-occupancy, they’re supposed to primarily stay in their rooms, with masks and distancing mandatory while moving about campus. After ten days everybody is retested. Foreign students had to arrive early and shelter in place.

    Small school, so we’ll see how it goes. Classes began yesterday. Also, Johnny Cash rule is invoked, as the school is surrounded by a burning ring of fire.

  37. 37.

    catclub

    August 25, 2020 at 11:23 am

    @Barbara: This is about sports.

     

    with a dose of incompetence thrown in.  If they actually asked themselves: “What do we need to do to have a football season this fall”?

    The answer would be a total lockdown in april.

    also, using that future football season in the fall as a motivator for abiding by a lockdown, could work. Instead, Trump’s ‘it’ll just get better by magic’ was followed.

  38. 38.

    ballerat

    August 25, 2020 at 11:24 am

    @planetjanet: Exactly the same can be said for the United States as well, just substitute citizens for students.

  39. 39.

    dr. bloor

    August 25, 2020 at 11:25 am

    @trollhattan: Just wait til someone shoots a man in Econ, just to watch him die.

  40. 40.

    Barbara

    August 25, 2020 at 11:29 am

    @ballerat: Whatever they are doing (and I can’t remember all the CLIA waivers) it is exempt from CLIA.  Usually, it means that it is part of the internal operatins of the hospital, and so subject to accreditation by other organizations.  CLIA was meant to protect the public from organizations that were basically operating without any standards at all.

  41. 41.

    David Anderson

    August 25, 2020 at 11:29 am

    @ballerat: CLIA labs are labs that can report individual level diagnostic results to a particular person and are regulated by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  Non-CLIA labs are allowed to do surveillance testing but not diagnostic testing.  A non-CLIA lab can be used to do pooled PCR testing for each floor in each dorm and report “3rd Floor East Wing of Rich Donor Hall has multiple infections” and then follow-up diagnostic testing run through a CLIA lab can say BOB, JANE and JO have Covid.

    Most large research universities have sophisticated non-CLIA labs that are used for research.  This is merely a redeployment of excess capacity to solve local problems without swamping the major commercial labs with more testing.

  42. 42.

    JustRuss

    August 25, 2020 at 11:31 am

    My state U will start classes in a few weeks.  I just tried to get a covid test, it took 4 days for my physician’s office just to call me back when I tried to contact them about getting a test.  This community is so not ready.

  43. 43.

    docNC

    August 25, 2020 at 11:36 am

    @gvg:  This is a huge point.  One of the biggest, in fact. The University of NC – Chapel Hill is a good-sized public university; all students were allowed back.  The dorms with the clusters tend to house freshmen; one of them could house the entire freshman class at DOOK.  All these small colleges with their rich folks ability to afford and completely test all incoming are not comparable to public schools, where this is happening across the country.  But knowing DOOK, smugness prevails over a true comparison.

  44. 44.

    terraformer

    August 25, 2020 at 11:42 am

    Ed Burmilla (of “gin and tacos”), who recently moved to the Tarheel state, responded to UNC’s leadership blaming students for the outbreak there:

    If your argument is “College students are old enough to be responsible for their choices” you’re gonna be shocked to learn how old university administrators are

  45. 45.

    sdhays

    August 25, 2020 at 11:42 am

    @waspuppet: It certainly would be nice if the concept of leaders being that much better than anyone else took a big hit during all this carnage, but I’m finding it hard to be optimistic on that point.

  46. 46.

    MobiusKlein

    August 25, 2020 at 11:44 am

    My son is leaving today for Freshman year at WPI, in Mass.  Starts off by getting tested and sent straight to a hotel room to wait for the result.   Gets tested weekly after that.

    My daughter’s school in Oakland CA (Mills) has no similar plan, and it’s all stay in the dorm for remote classes, no testing I have heard of.   So she’s opting to stay at home for remote classes until the storm passes.    Would be awesome to have consistent guidance, rather than each place winging it.

    Instead, we are running 10000 uncontrolled experiments in preventing community spread.

  47. 47.

    Bill Arnold

    August 25, 2020 at 11:46 am

    @Pittsburgh Mike:

    It is so sad that the CDC has thrown in the towel in terms of leadership during this pandemic, still focusing on hand washing and masks with a virus that probably spreads more by aerosols in crowded spaces.

    I agree about hand washing and surface cleaning targeting SARS-CoV-2 spread; this is, according to 6 months of pandemic science, almost entirely mispent effort, and a lot of it.
    On masks, however, you are spreading disinformation. Masks are for source control, capturing droplets before they evaporate to a size that can remain airborne for a while, and also redirecting the flow of exhaled air. Even in situations where the usage isn’t universal, they appear to offer some protection to the wearer; example:
    SARS-CoV-2 Infections and Serologic Responses from a Sample of U.S. Navy Service Members — USS Theodore Roosevelt, April 2020
    Service members who reported taking preventive measures had a lower infection rate than did those who did not report taking these measures (e.g., wearing a face covering, 55.8% versus 80.8%; avoiding common areas, 53.8% versus 67.5%; and observing social distancing, 54.7% versus 70.0%, respectively).
    And find a supercluster where there was 100 percent mask discipline; I have not seen any reports of such a supercluster.

    If we want our economy back, we combine a massive increase in testing with rigorously crafted measures to limit sharing of unfiltered exhaled air.

  48. 48.

    trollhattan

    August 25, 2020 at 11:53 am

    @dr. bloor:

    [checks campus map] thankfully, there’s no Reno Hall. Will have the kid watch for any boy named Sue.

  49. 49.

    ballerat

    August 25, 2020 at 11:54 am

    @David Anderson: Thank you!

    Do we have these tiers outside of academia? It seems so common sense to set up a nation wide network of these pooled pcr testing labs for rapid surveillance testing.

    Just checked: Never mind. Common sense is uncommon as there are 150,000 people in my county and in the last 7 months only 20,000 tests total have been done. Duke will likely do that many in 2 weeks.

    Our fucking republicans. These people would drill holes in the bottom of the lifeboat to let the water out.

  50. 50.

    snoey

    August 25, 2020 at 11:58 am

    @Bill Arnold:

    I agree about hand washing and surface cleaning targeting SARS-CoV-2 spread; this is, according to 6 months of pandemic science, almost entirely mispent effort, and a lot of it.

    Knocking back flu and other respiratory infections is making things easier for the people treating Covid, so not completely wasted.

  51. 51.

    ballerat

    August 25, 2020 at 12:12 pm

    @ballerat: Thanks to barbara as well for responding.

  52. 52.

    Kent

    August 25, 2020 at 12:13 pm

    Latest in bad behavior from universities?   I give you the University of Oregon in my back yard.  The campus is currently on 100% virtual learning but they are opening dorms and dining halls to students.  However if you sign on to get a freshman dorm and meal plan in the event that the campus re-opens you are locked in for the entire 9-months with no refunds.

    University of Oregon Will Charge Students for a Full Year of Dorm Housing Even if They Can’t Enter the Classroom

    COVID-19 has thrown the 2020-21 school year into a state of uncertainty for students and schools alike. The University of Oregon’s latest notice has deepened concern for students and their families.

    If students sign up for dorm rooms now, says an Aug. 21 notice, they are on the hook for room and board for the whole year, even if they can never enter a classroom. At least one Portland family is unhappy with that decision by the university.

    “We found that a contract that requires [students] pay full room and board or they don’t have a contract seems unfair,” says Claire Carnes, a parent of an incoming UO freshman. “I think we’re expecting something that would be a little more accommodating.”

    Over the past several months, colleges all over the country have struggled to balance student safety with the financial incentives to reopen. Some schools, including the University of Portland, plan an entirely remote year.

    Most institutions have settled on a mixture of in-person and online classes with the possibility of going to a fully remote schedule if necessary. In Oregon, most of the major colleges and universities have adopted this hybrid model, including the University of Oregon. But UO is offering less flexibility than its competitors.

    On Aug. 21, UO gave families whose students would be living in dorms an ultimatum, via a mailed housing contract. They have 10 days to commit to room and board for the entire year. An addendum to the housing contract gives students and their families until Sept. 1 to sign. If they do, their housing contract “will remain in effect regardless of the University’s mode of delivery of courses.”

    Only if UO is forced to clear the campus, including dorms, will families get relief https://www.wweek.com/news/schools/2020/08/24/university-of-oregon-will-charge-students-for-a-full-year-of-dorm-housing-even-if-they-cant-enter-the-classroom/

  53. 53.

    lowtechcyclist

    August 25, 2020 at 12:14 pm

    @Slappy Kincaid:

    NC State took a dive right after UNC Chapel Hill.  Clusters started appearing at frat houses and dorms, so they shut down in-person attendance.  Duke is hanging in there, but for how long?

    I also spotted a local story that UNC was warned this would happen by epidemiologists who took a look at their reopening strategy and the University chose to ignore the warning and go forward with their inadequate plan.

    It’s like none of them had ever been to college or seen a movie about college in their lives.  Parties?  College students have parties?

    Here’s your answer:

    @Hoodie:

    UNC Board of Governors is stacked with Republicans appointed by the legislative GOP leadership. Go figure.

    The same is likely true of NC State as well.  But Duke is private, so the politicians can’t tell them what to do.

  54. 54.

    Gretchen

    August 25, 2020 at 12:17 pm

    What’s the significance of using non-CLIA labs?  As a lab person I’m worried about how every lab seems to be developing their own test rather than having someone say, this is the gold standard, everyone should use this, the best one.

  55. 55.

    docNC

    August 25, 2020 at 12:17 pm

    @lowtechcyclist:  NC State is part of the UNC system

  56. 56.

    trollhattan

    August 25, 2020 at 12:19 pm

    Related, a women’s soccer writer I follow posted this yesterday.

    If you want to know how things are going in my neck of the woods… 27 student-athletes from my employers just tested positive, and the entire student-athlete population on campus is now in quarrantine. Everything is fine!

    I think he works at Ohio State, but not completely sure.

  57. 57.

    raven

    August 25, 2020 at 12:20 pm

    @Kent: When I started at Illinois in the fall of 69 I lived in a private campus dorm because, even though I’d spent 3 years in the Army, I had to live in campus housing because I wasn’t 21. Due to my immersion in the counter-culture I flunked out the first semester and they kept my money for the entire year.

  58. 58.

    trollhattan

    August 25, 2020 at 12:21 pm

    @lowtechcyclist:

    California has published COVID rules that cover all higher education institutions in the state, public and private. IDK whether other states have the power to do so.

  59. 59.

    trollhattan

    August 25, 2020 at 12:24 pm

    @Kent:

    Yoikes.

    We have a lot of OU Ducks in town and a lot of their kids head there. Considering OOS tuition I have to wonder whether the trend continues under these rules.

  60. 60.

    raven

    August 25, 2020 at 12:25 pm

    August 8, 2020 at 4:54 p.m. EDT

    As universities anticipate beginning classes in the fall amid the coronavirus pandemic, a private student housing company pushed contracted colleges to maintain dorm capacity, according to communications uncovered via a public record request by a student.

    Corvias Property Management, a real estate company specializing in military and student housing, wrote to the University System of Georgia and Detroit’s Wayne State University in late May to remind the public school officials of their financial and legal burdens, saying that reducing the privatized college dorms’ capacity would hurt the bottom line of the partnership, according to letters reviewed by The Washington Post.

    The letter to the University System of Georgia, which was first shared on Twitter and reported on by Inside Higher Ed, has drawn ire of students and faculty at Georgia colleges who question if their schools’ decisions to reopen were financially driven.

  61. 61.

    Kent

    August 25, 2020 at 12:27 pm

    @Barbara:This is about sports.  No one will ever convince me otherwise.  They KNOW that they can’t hold an athletic season if students are not allowed back on campus.

    Actually there are SEC and ACC schools who are planning to keep athletes on campus quarantined for football while the rest of the school is on virtual.

    Which, of course, completely destroys the notion of “student athlete” which was a fiction anyway in many cases.  But it just makes the fraud more obvious.

    Why the fuck should athletes go through concentration camp football when they aren’t even earning an education for that privilege and going to class?    Sheesh.   Only about 2% of them actually go to the NFL.

  62. 62.

    trollhattan

    August 25, 2020 at 12:28 pm

    @raven:

    Boy howdy. When contract time rolls around I hope folks are putting in some acts of god…or China clauses so they’re not bound to pay up or else.

    Sounds like a more polite version of the private prison industry.

  63. 63.

    raven

    August 25, 2020 at 12:29 pm

    @Kent: The dorms are full of kids going virtual.

  64. 64.

    Kent

    August 25, 2020 at 12:30 pm

    @raven: I bet your room and board wasn’t $15 grand/semester and didn’t include gourmet meals, a climbing wall and NFL-quality fitness centers.*

    *I toured UO with my daughter in February just before the covid outbreak shut everything down.

  65. 65.

    Slappy Kincaid

    August 25, 2020 at 12:30 pm

    @Ken: I am a lawyer and I really don’t know.  Here’s your textbook definition of Depraved Indifference, though:  “Conduct which is so reckless, wanton and deficient and lacking in regard for the lives of others as to warrant the same culpability as the individual who actually commits a crime.”

    I think this is usually applied in 2nd degree murder and manslaughter cases, but law school was long ago and this doesn’t come up in my practice.

  66. 66.

    Kent

    August 25, 2020 at 12:31 pm

    @raven:@Kent: The dorms are full of kids going virtual. viral

    FTFY

  67. 67.

    raven

    August 25, 2020 at 12:33 pm

    @Kent: My old man sent me a couple of brochures when I was in the Nam. The dorm I chose had unlimited chow and a pool. That was enough for me!!! It also doesn’t matter how much it cost 51 years ago, the GI bill didn’t cover it so I had to take out a fucking loan AND get a part time job as a janitor in that dorm. Bitter, nah.

  68. 68.

    Kent

    August 25, 2020 at 12:35 pm

    All I gotta say is that my family sort of lucked out by this.  Oldest graduated from Arkansas in May.  Middle child is a HS senior and youngest is a HS freshman.  So this is actually the one single gap year with no child in college for us between 2015 and 2028.   I feel for all my friends who are sending kids to college this fall.  I know a bunch.  It’s a complete mess.  Some of the smaller liberal arts colleges are trying to re-open under severe protocols. All the state schools out here are on 100% virtual.  But the kids are returning to the college towns anyway to get their apartments which they have to lock down for 1-year leases to have them at all in many tight housing college towns.

  69. 69.

    Barry

    August 25, 2020 at 12:40 pm

    @Pittsburgh Mike: “It is so sad that the CDC has thrown in the towel in terms of leadership during this pandemic, still focusing on hand washing and masks with a virus that probably spreads more by aerosols in crowded spaces. Cheap, simple and frequent testing is the key to reopening, yet that’s not the message of any government, state or federal, that I see.”

     

    Think of trying to do public health in the USSR.

  70. 70.

    gvg

    August 25, 2020 at 12:41 pm

    I just did a news search. It appears my University is working with local town and county police to forbid parties by students. Students are not allowed to attend parties. This is new.

    I’m going to add that dorms are only a small fraction of the student population. They don’t have enough and haven’t since the 60’s when the sunbelt population began exploding and especially in the 70’s. Sp students mostly live off campus in a huge number of apartments. This means that for the first time in decades, the school is trying to control off campus. It’s really new.

    Also the football team spokesmen are being very cautious in what they say but it sounds like they don’t think there will be a full season. They are doing a lot more testing than I expected and it’s apparently the whole conference. 3 times a week I think.  The idiot Governor has told the press he’ll try to arrange the rivalry game which is across conferences. I suspect he’s out of luck because it’s a lot more complicated than he wants to hear about.

    The state teachers association is suing to prevent the state from forcing in person classes on all schools and they won their first court fight (unconstitutional for state constitution) but it’s being appealed and therefore is not in effect yet.

    What happens in regular school impacts what happens in the Colleges too IMO. its a factor for staff and faculty and community spread. Nothing is really separate.

  71. 71.

    Mokum

    August 25, 2020 at 12:42 pm

    @Immanentize: At the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, they modelled weekly testing and found that they could not control infections, at the end of the semester basically everybody would be positive. So they went with testing every 4 days, predicting only a few hunderd infections at the beginning, from incoming students, out of 50,000 students. You have an app on your phone with your testing status. I took my latest test last week, and now the app just turned to red, and I will not be admitted in any campus building. They are now testing 10,000 people a day, they claim it is about 1% of the US testing taking place on campus. Students returned yesterday, most classes only, we’ll see how itworks out. But for the time being I am impressed. Need to go and get tested! Drool some more in a tube.

     

    ETA the university testing dashboard: https://go.illinois.edu/COVIDTestingData

  72. 72.

    burnspbesq

    August 25, 2020 at 12:46 pm

    @docNC: 

    Your hatred is blinding you to reality. No one should have to die with “Dook sux” as their last words. And no one will die with “GTHC” as their last words.

    We’re doing it right; you’re having a clusterfuck (in the words of the Daily Tar Heel editorial board).

  73. 73.

    The Moar You Know

    August 25, 2020 at 12:51 pm

    It is so sad that the CDC has thrown in the towel in terms of leadership during this pandemic

    @Pittsburgh Mike: The FDA as well.  And the damage this will do to our society is real, lasting and will take decades to undo.  If it can be undone.  I know for me I’m going to have a real hard time trusting any government agency that’s working under a future Republican administration for the rest of my life.

    These agencies were supposed to be shielded from political influence.  I’d always thought that was written into law.  It obviously isn’t, and it needs to be.

    Can’t remember the exact saying, but it’s something like “building trust takes years, losing trust takes a second”

  74. 74.

    Ruckus

    August 25, 2020 at 12:52 pm

    @Pittsburgh Mike:

    Isn’t the CDC overseen at the very top bottom by someone who has all the mental tools of a caterpillar (and yes that’s not be nice towards caterpillars), one djshitforbrains. He is actively trying to kill people, because they are not genuflecting to him. What is the CDC supposed to do, go rogue?

  75. 75.

    MomSense

    August 25, 2020 at 12:57 pm

    My son’s fiancée is a new adjunct and her university starts classes tomorrow.  She thinks they will be back to remote learning in two weeks.  Another university in the same system got as far as students returning, had a big outbreak and is already closed.  Fortunately her classes are small because she teaches piano.  The social distancing is built in.

  76. 76.

    MattF

    August 25, 2020 at 1:07 pm

    Completely OT. Sarah Silverman tells the story of her recent health scare. Extremely funny.

  77. 77.

    Yutsano

    August 25, 2020 at 1:22 pm

    @Kent:

    I bet your room and board wasn’t $15 grand/semester and didn’t include gourmet meals, a climbing wall and NFL-quality fitness centers.*

    Not every school has Phil Knight as an athletic booster. Granted a lot of schools have nealthy alumni, but I can’t think of any off the top of my head who have gone all in like Knight has. Probably has nothing to do with turning UO into a giant Nike commercial.

    OT: anyone have coup in Africa on their 2020 Bingo card?

  78. 78.

    danielx

    August 25, 2020 at 1:24 pm

    Zoom meeting yesterday…co-worker’s daughter just left UNC Chapel Hill to ccome home; was too freaked out by other students’ behavior. Said it was Greek Life that really did it…frats/sororities are partying no matter what.

  79. 79.

    Punchy

    August 25, 2020 at 1:26 pm

    @LeftCoastYankee: I read that Texas AM wants their stadium half full.  That’s 55K fans/weekend.  That the stadium holds 110K is itself amazing, but wanting every other seat filled with no rows in between empty guarantees that about a third of the campus is going to be involuntarily majoring in virology this fall….

  80. 80.

    raven

    August 25, 2020 at 1:28 pm

    @Punchy: 25% here at UGA

  81. 81.

    Soprano2

    August 25, 2020 at 1:36 pm

    This is what I found on our local state university’s Web site https://www.missouristate.edu/Coronavirus/confirmed-cases.htm You can really tell when they came back to campus, the cases spiked to 141. All the mitigation stuff on campus is good – distancing, mask-wearing everywhere, one-way doors and hallways – but as far as I can see there is no routine testing of people on campus, you’re just supposed to get a test when you have symptoms. It’s so stupid to ignore the asymptomatic aspect of COVID. Now I feel bummed about how long this will last, possibly a month. Their reopening isn’t motivated by sports, because their football team SUCKS big-time. I think it’s more about making sure the students come back for the fall semester; I suspect a lot of students would have taken the semester off if there wasn’t the option to come back for in-person classes. I looked around at choir last week and noticed the absence of Chinese students; there are usually several of them in class, and for the past two years our pianist has been a Chinese piano performance major. They seem to be MIA.

    We also have an ongoing clusterfuck at our local jail, now their cases are up to 101 inmates and 46 staff members. https://www.news-leader.com/story/news/local/ozarks/2020/08/25/greene-county-jail-reports-101-inmates-46-staff-positive-covid-19/5626122002/ I still cannot BELIEVE they weren’t taking any proactive measures at the jail until there was an outbreak! What the hell did they think was eventually going to happen? Morons…..

  82. 82.

    Yutsano

    August 25, 2020 at 1:49 pm

    @Punchy:@raven: Madness. Pure unmitigated madness, And people will go. And catch the virus. And it will spread. And people will die. All to watch young gladiator games. Total madness.

  83. 83.

    NotMax

    August 25, 2020 at 1:49 pm

    There’s a (large for us) new cluster on Maui – at the hospital. Second time this has occurred.

    Maui Health Confirms 66 COVID-19 Cases, Surpassing Total During First Wave of Infection

  84. 84.

    Urza

    August 25, 2020 at 1:51 pm

    OT but relevant:
    https://www.westernslopenow.com/news/local-news/new-mail-sorting-machine-at-grand-junction-usps-thrown-out/

  85. 85.

    Ken

    August 25, 2020 at 1:52 pm

    @Ruckus: What is the CDC supposed to do, go rogue?

    “Go rogue” in this case meaning “follow the scientific and administrative procedures they’ve used since the agency was created”.

    It would make quite a thriller novel if they went rogue in the more usual sense.  Are they the keepers of the US smallpox stock?

  86. 86.

    Another Scott

    August 25, 2020 at 1:56 pm

    @Yutsano: Relatedly, …

    https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/08/25/business/biogen-conference-likely-led-20000-covid-19-cases-boston-area-researchers-say/

    A new study shows the Biogen conference held at Boston’s Marriott Long Wharf hotel in February played a far greater role in spreading the coronavirus than previously thought.

    Exponential growth is a hellofa thing.

    (via HelenBranswell)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  87. 87.

    Yutsano

    August 25, 2020 at 2:00 pm

    @Another Scott: Yeah…it’s why I’m worried when cases get close to double digits here in Washington people will start screaming to open up. They have to get to zero and STAY at zero for at least fourteen days. That’s what New Zealand did, and they were okay for a short time until it explioded again out of nowhere.

  88. 88.

    Bill Arnold

    August 25, 2020 at 2:16 pm

    @Yutsano:

    Yeah…it’s why I’m worried when cases get close to double digits here in Washington people will start screaming to open up. They have to get to zero and STAY at zero for at least fourteen days.

    Out of curiosity, how is SARS-CoV-2 spreading in your area? In mine, with 4 months of a high level of mask discipline indoors in public places, spread seems to be in unmasked private indoor social gatherings and within households (unmasked). Not sure about churches(/whatevers); most are pretty respectful of life and thus of slowing the spread of this virus, but there may be some that are unmasked, closely-packed, loud, and indoors.

  89. 89.

    PAM Dirac

    August 25, 2020 at 2:22 pm

    @The Moar You Know:

     

    These agencies were supposed to be shielded from political influence.

    That is absolute nonsense. These agencies are created by laws passed by politicians, laws that are constantly being tweaked by congress, often times for purely political reasons. The agencies’ priorities and budgets are politically determined. The final say in most decisions is held by political appointees by law. I worked for NCI for decades. There was plenty of stuff that caused people to roll their eyes and make snide comments, but it was done because the determination of how everything works is not determined by the civil servants, but by the political process. The NCI did things like run clinical trials on laetrile and vitamin C. There is NIH institute for alternative medicine. That’s what the people through their elected representatives wanted and the civil servants used their expertise to do these things in the most sound way possible. I think Kay has many times mentioned a very important point; people need to understand what their job is. It is not the job of the civil servant to save the people from weak decisions made by weak politicians. With that you get the Comeys of the world deciding to be the hero and save the voters from themselves. There seems to be more lawyers on this blog than civil servants, so many a lawyer analogy will work. If a lawyer has a client that is a real jerk is it ethical to work to lose the case in order to satisfy your private idea of justice? If your client is an idiot is it ethical to ignore their clearly stated wishes to save them from themselves? Of course there are laws and norms that limit how far you have to go to meet your ethical requirements, but you are hired to represent the client and your job is to make that your primary concern. If you don’t want politicians making stupid decisions that they are legally authorized to make, work to make sure such politicians don’t get elected, don’t demand that civil servants exceed their authority to make things better.

  90. 90.

    Bill Arnold

    August 25, 2020 at 2:32 pm

    @snoey:

    Knocking back flu and other respiratory infections is making things easier for the people treating Covid, so not completely wasted.

    Well, indirect contact transmission of influenza isn’t yet proven as a significant mode of transmission, after 100+ years, though it is suspected.
    On the other hand, R0 for influenzas is (considered to be) less than that for SARS-CoV-2, so measures taken against the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic to limit the sharing of unfiltered exhaled air, e.g. masks, physical distancing(dilution), better ventilation(dilution), etc will hopefully totally knock out epidemic flu transmission. There have been strong hints of such an effect in the southern hemisphere.
    Routes of influenza transmission
    (2013 Aug 27, Ben Killingley, Jonathan Nguyen‐Van‐Tam)

    Three routes of human influenza infection transmission are widely accepted:
    -Droplets: these particles can deposit on mucous surfaces of the upper respiratory tract (URT) such as the mouth and nose. They can be inhaled but are too large (>10 μm) to reach the lungs.
    .Droplet nuclei (hereafter referred to as aerosols): these particles are small enough to be inhaled (<5 μm) and reach the lower respiratory tract (LRT). They may also deposit on surfaces in the URT.
    -Contact transmission: particles are transferred to mucous membranes of the upper respiratory tract either directly or via a contaminated object or person, that is, indirectly.

    But

    No direct evidence exists to show that the contact route can mediate transmission, and the data currently available do not fully support the contact route of transmission playing a significant role in the spread of influenza.

  91. 91.

    raven

    August 25, 2020 at 2:33 pm

    @Yutsano: GO DAWGS!

  92. 92.

    raven

    August 25, 2020 at 2:34 pm

    @Soprano2: I taught there one summer about 23 years ago.

  93. 93.

    Soprano2

    August 25, 2020 at 3:06 pm

    @raven: Cool, what did you teach?

  94. 94.

    Tall Tom

    August 25, 2020 at 3:17 pm

    I don’t think any University-sized institutions have a chance of staying open with in-person classes.  That is just too many people together with too many opportunities for a virus to not spread.  It is possible that some smaller colleges can do it, depending on the mask-wearing, hand-washing, and distancing levels that the students can maintain throughout the year, both on and off campus.

  95. 95.

    mali muso

    August 25, 2020 at 3:44 pm

    @Yutsano: Actually, yeah.  Unfortunately, the situation in Mali has been simmering at a low level boil for some time so this was not too surprising.  If you want to read some good analysis from an anthropologist/professor who has extensive experience there, check out this blog.

    What do you do when you can’t trust the legislature or the courts to rein in an executive intent on concentrating its own power and looting public resources? What do you do when the electoral apparatus is set up to ensure that incumbents never lose? You go into the streets, where the Sovereign People can make their collective voices heard.

    “When a head of state fails in his obligations (by various constitutional violations) and the People, angered, rise up, all will bow down before them,” wrote Amadou Aliou N’Diaye in June as street protests were ramping up in Bamako. “The President of the Republic, the Constitution, the institutions… legality itself must bow down before their legitimacy.”

    This Amadou Aliou N’Diaye is no activist or rabble-rouser. He is a former head of Mali’s supreme court.

    Perhaps the streets are the only functioning institution left in Mali these days–the place where ordinary citizens can still hold their leaders accountable. I understand why so many in Bamako took to the streets to demand their president’s removal from office, and why the army eventually stepped in on their side.

    But I do not celebrate these events. As Greg Mann has pointed out, a military coup is not the same thing as a popular revolution, even if it resembles or coincides with one. So here’s hoping that a fourth republic, or whatever comes next for Malians, will be better–fairer, more inclusive, and less venal—than what came before.

  96. 96.

    Brachiator

    August 25, 2020 at 5:14 pm

    @The Moar You Know:

    These agencies were supposed to be shielded from political influence.  I’d always thought that was written into law.  It obviously isn’t, and it needs to be.

    Sadly, people have not been paying attention. Reality has not sunk in.

    Trump is not simply “running the government like a business.”

    He is running the government as a Trump branded business. The executive branch is not doing what the collective legislative vote of Congress decides. Federal agencies are instruments of Trump’s will.

    The laws and the Constitution are being ignored. The GOP leadership and a chunk of the citizens are perfectly satisfied with this.

    The Republican Convention has come down to “Vote for us if you want more of this.”

    There are no legal remedies if the people decide to reject democracy.

  97. 97.

    Brachiator

    August 25, 2020 at 5:24 pm

    @Yutsano:

    OT: anyone have coup in Africa on their 2020 Bingo card?

    I think that this had been simmering for a while. Sadly, the world does not stop for pandemics.

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