What Will College Be Like in the Fall?The Cal State system recently announced that its 23 campuses will do most instruction online in the fall. On the other hand, other universities, like Purdue in Indiana and New York University, have said they are inviting students back to campus. Schools like the University of South Carolina have decided to bring students back from August until Thanksgiving and then end the semester online, to avoid a second trip back to campus before the winter holidays. ............. With any virus, a big fear is a spread you get when an interwoven community mixes with a larger population — like a college campus in a city. ......... We’re in a global pandemic, and the idea that college life is going to be normal if we do reopen is just a fantasy. ............ students are often silent carriers, because many people in their age group who have the disease are completely asymptomatic. ............ When we reopen, it’s no longer a time of unlimited freedoms. It will be a time of mutual accountability and collective responsibility for the well-being of one another. ............. We can say, “You’re going to die if you don’t do this, or other people are going to die,” but young folks often think that’s not going to happen to them, or it’s not going to happen tomorrow. Making the campus safe has to be about people coming together and coming through for each other. ......... I can’t imagine this working if it’s top down. The community has to collaborate. ........ I was there at the time when the AIDS epidemic began. We had all sorts of policies and practical approaches to dealing with it. We had great massive socially conscious movements to try to do things to help people behave more safely. But the epidemic kept spreading. What worked was developing a highly effective antiretroviral therapy. Nothing else honestly worked. .................. The virus waits for opportunities to exploit human behavior to allow people to infect other people. We expect that there will be those who will not follow the guidelines and that the virus will swoop in. We have to know how we’ll react when things fail and try to limit and curtail the brush fires that will break out. ............ The idea is for a person who is infected to have a single room with a private bathroom. ............. There could be a 14-day quarantine for those who broke the rules ............ four kinds of behavior — sanitary hygiene (washing your hands frequently); reporting your symptoms, including the most minor symptoms; social distancing; and wearing masks. ........... Suppose we start the school year on Sept. 1 with one student out of 1,000 unknowingly infected with the disease. You can think of this as the fraction of the population that falsely tests negative on arrival to campus. Further suppose that the number of people to whom an infected person will on average transmit the disease (the R0, or “reproductive ratio”) starts at 2.26, which is within the range of numbers calculated in the first month of the outbreak in Wuhan, China. If the population is 100 percent susceptible to the disease — in other words, students arrive with no immunity — and there is no social distancing, 85 percent of the students will have experienced infection by Dec. 18. .................. But if social distancing is practiced 50 percent of the time that individuals have potential for close contact, only 0.9 percent of the population will be infected in the same time period. And if there were 60 percent social distancing, the R0 would be less than 1, and only a very tiny fraction of the population would become infected — 0.2 percent in four months. ............... I think you have to say to people who misbehave chronically, you’re being sent home. ........... The members in our local are 85 percent black and brown and often live in multigenerational households, and many of them have comorbidities for the virus. They feel two contradictory things. One is: People are very afraid to go to work. They are very afraid of the public-transit system. They’re very afraid that the institutions may not take the level of responsibility that’s necessary to keep them safe. And I think they’re frankly very afraid of the unknown................. The last thing we need is for people to lose health care in a health care crisis.............. Dining-hall workers, and to some degree custodians who have to clean bathrooms, face significant risks. Anyone over 60 to 65 years old, anyone with comorbidities, accommodation needs to be made for people in these categories, for both staff and faculty, and especially for those who interface with students. ............. The most important thing to protect our staff and our vulnerable populations is testing. We have to have adequate numbers of tests so we can test all our students and all our student-facing staff, including faculty, prior to opening schools for residential purposes. That is absolutely a precondition................... schools could use pooled testing. That means combining several samples and then doing one test on them. If the test is positive, then you’d test each individual sample separately. .............. There are about 11 million undergraduates enrolled in four-year colleges, and that doesn’t include staff who are essential to campus operations. .......... Testing is really the entry-level benchmark to reopen any industry. ........... The culture around being sick at work is you go to work anyway, particularly in the food-service industry. ............ The idea is to keep the same team of workers together so that if someone does get sick, and people have to go home and quarantine, you’ll just have to replace that team. It’s less flexibility for the workers, but it’s good for them in terms of reducing infectious spread. ........... All the institutions that I know of are operating on a grab-and-go system. ........... I also see senior colleagues who are real gems for the institution committed to figuring out Zoom. I have faith that we can figure out a hybrid of some in-person and some video classes. Whatever needs to work, we’ll make work, because the stakes are so high........... the development of critical thinking, problem solving and leadership skills — skills that are so important in this search for equity and mobility — happen within and outside the classroom. Being together, being seen and heard, really matters. Also, for some of our students, they need the housing, they need food, they need safety, they need to be in community. ....... nationally many higher-ed institutions are among the largest employers in our regions. It’s important for us to reopen, to keep people employed, to keep the economic engine running. And I would also say, for some institutions, there is an existential threat that’s out there if they’re not allowed to reopen. .......... We learned this spring that online education is not a perfect alternative to the residential experience. ........... the colleges most threatened economically by this downturn are the smaller or midsize private institutions ......... for many small liberal-arts colleges, and even midsize schools that are private that have some graduate programs, I think they’re definitely in much bigger trouble because they rely primarily on tuition for revenue. Unlike the elite private schools, they don’t have large endowments; they’re basically tuition dependent ............ From talking to small liberal-arts colleges in Connecticut, I know many of them feel that they are existentially threatened by a possibility of having to be online for an entire year. ........ We’ve done an assessment of all of the classroom spaces to see what it would take to observe a six-foot radius around all students. ........... Some West Coast schools are thinking about holding a lot of classes outdoors in the fall. ........ you will see a lot of schools end the on-campus portion of the semester at Thanksgiving. ......... we could extend the school year and make the summer a full session. ........ there is a lot of talk of students taking gap years if school is all online. ............... We were very pleased and actually a bit surprised at how eager students are to come. ........ after a while the mask could morph into a new norm — don’t touch me, don’t get near me. .......... If there were a manageable number of cases, I don’t think we would see the same wholesale movement nationally to send students home and move all classes online again. In the spring, no one wanted to be the first campus to get a case and to have an outbreak, so there was an element of reputational risk that drove some institutions to say, Oh, no, we’ve got to move them off campus immediately.............. Now we know that one of the keys to successfully weathering and containing an outbreak is to be able to test, trace and isolate immediately. Planning for that must be a condition of reopening .......... in the hotel industry. We had the Biogen conference at the Marriott Long Wharf, which turned out to be a superspreader event. The entire hotel industry in the city of Boston has been painted with that stain. .......... It isn’t going to be the same kind of fun, and you aren’t going to have the same kind of parties. But you are going to have great educational opportunities, and there will still be a lot of benefits to take away from it. I think we’re in a world of imperfect choices. And I think everyone has to be a grown-up and recognize that’s where we are.
right now every employer in america is terrified that their black employees will be honest about their work experiences
— Muriel Bowser #StayHomeDC (@MurielBowser) June 5, 2020
"As the Commander of Pacific Air Forces, a senior leader in our Air Force, and an African-American, many of you may be wondering what I’m thinking about the current events surrounding the tragic death of George Floyd. Here’s what I’m thinking about..." - Gen. CQ Brown, Jr. pic.twitter.com/I2sf1067L6
An important step by Governor Newsom. And a big thanks to @DrShirleyWeber and @KevinMcCartyCA for their persistent leadership throughout the years in championing reforms on police accountability, which has made California a model for other states. https://t.co/6EX1oFUOBR
Message from grandma in Moscow: "Maybe now you [Americans] will understand us [Russians] little: what it's like to like to live through an extended civil war, under the rule of cretins and surrounded by their brainless minions. Let's chat tomorrow!"
.@AOC calls for defunding the NYPD during her @NY1 debate against primary opponents (side note—wild to see her debating as incumbent! 2018 we hardly knew you!)
The most obvious parallel to draw between the Middle East and the protests happening around the United States is between the deaths of George Floyd and Khaled Said. But it would be a mistake to stop there, @stevenacook writes.https://t.co/nLfJdsbQtq
The C.D.C., long considered the world’s premier health agency, made early testing mistakes that contributed to a cascade of problems that persist today as the country tries to reopen. It failed to provide timely counts of infections and deaths, hindered by aging technology and a fractured public health reporting system. And it hesitated in absorbing the lessons of other countries, including the perils of silent carriers spreading the infection. ........... In communicating to the public, its leadership was barely visible, its stream of guidance was often slow and its messages were sometimes confusing, sowing mistrust. ............... “The C.D.C. is no longer the reliable go-to place,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. ......... Even as the virus tested the C.D.C.’s capacity to respond, the agency and its director, Dr. Robert R. Redfield, faced unprecedented challenges from President Trump, who repeatedly wished away the pandemic. His efforts to seize the spotlight from the public health agency reflected the broader patterns of his erratic presidency: public condemnations on Twitter, a tendency to dismiss findings from scientists, inconsistent policy or decision-making and a suspicion that the “deep state” inside the government is working to force him out of office. ............. Given its record and resources, the agency might have become the undisputed leader in the global fight against the virus. Instead, the C.D.C. made missteps that undermined America’s response. ......... “Here is an agency that has been waiting its entire existence for this moment,” said Dr. Peter Lurie, a former associate commissioner at the Food and Drug Administration who for years worked closely with the C.D.C. “And then they flub it. It is very sad. That is what they were set up to do.” ............ The agency’s allies say it is just one part of a vast network of state and local health departments, hospitals, government agencies and suppliers that were collectively unprepared for the speed, scope and ferocity of the pandemic. They also point out that lawmakers have long failed to adequately prioritize funding for the kind of crisis the country now faces. .......... “They are learning at the same time the world is learning, by watching how this disease manifests.” .......... “It’s important to remember that this is a global emergency — and it’s impacting the entire U.S.,” the agency said. “That means it requires an all-of-government response.” ........... Wearing a red “Keep America Great” cap, Mr. Trump falsely asserted that “anybody that wants a test can get a test,” claimed he had a “natural ability” for science and noted that he might hold campaign rallies even as the virus spread. ............ At one point that month, administration officials asked the agency to provide feedback on possible logos — including “Make America Healthy Again” — for cloth face masks they hoped to distribute to millions of Americans. The plan fell through, but not before C.D.C. leaders agreed to the request ............... The C.D.C., established in the 1940s to control malaria in the South, has the feel of an academic institution. There, experts work “at the speed of science — you take time doing it” .......... The C.D.C.’s most fabled experts are the disease detectives of its Epidemic Intelligence Service, rapid responders who investigate outbreaks. ............ the C.D.C. is risk-averse, perfectionist and ill-suited to improvising in a quickly evolving crisis — particularly one that shuts down the country and paralyzes the economy. .......... increasingly bureaucratic, weighed down by “indescribable, burdensome hierarchy.” ............ the C.D.C.’s most consequential failure in the crisis: its inability early on to provide state laboratories around the country with an effective diagnostic test. .......... European travelers had brought the virus into New York as early as mid-February; it multiplied there and elsewhere in the country. In Seattle, a strain from China had struck nursing homes in late February. ........... The C.D.C. could not produce accurate counts of how many people were being tested, compile complete demographic information on confirmed cases or even keep timely tallies of deaths. .......... “We got crappy data,” said Fran Phillips, Maryland’s deputy health secretary. “We would call them up and people would say, ‘Well, I was in China, but that was three years ago.’” ............ Some staff members were mortified when a Seattle teenager managed to compile coronavirus data faster than the agency itself, creating a website that attracted millions of daily visitors. “If a high schooler can do it, someone at C.D.C. should be able to do it,” said one longtime employee. ............... Data is one of the essential tools of public health; Mr. Trump, though, often appears to see it as a weapon against him. He has suggested that testing is “overrated” and that it makes the United States look bad by increasing the number of confirmed cases. He has seized on lower-end projections of the virus’s toll, only to see them eclipsed as the cases and deaths rose. .......... “The scientists at the C.D.C. are still great,” Dr. Jha said. “It’s very puzzling to all of us why C.D.C. performance has been so poor.” ............ Veteran officials at the C.D.C. were not unfamiliar with the ways of Washington. But they had never dealt with a president like Mr. Trump or a White House like his. .......... a second wave of the virus could be “even more difficult” than the first ......... In private, some senior administration officials began referring to agency scientists as members of the “deep state” ........... In late February, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, who oversees the C.D.C.’s respiratory diseases center and had been leading the agency’s emergency response, was sidelined after she issued a stark public warning that the virus would disrupt American lives. The comments sent stocks tumbling and infuriated Mr. Trump, who had not been told in advance. Public health officials, inside and outside the agency, saw her forced retreat as an effort to silence the truth. .................. To the president’s aides, one of the most frustrating moments came on May 1, when Dr. Schuchat published one of the agency’s regular reports on morbidity and mortality without giving the White House any notice ......... Written in dry, scientific language, the report offered a blunt assessment of the virus’s spread, showing how travel from Europe and mass gatherings had accelerated it. Dr. Schuchat went further when interviewed for an Associated Press article — “Health Official Says U.S. Missed Some Chances to Slow Virus” — saying that “taking action earlier could have delayed further amplification.” ............. the president — who the next day would explain, “In America, we need more prayer, not less” — made it clear the C.D.C. no longer had any choice. .......... Doctors and nurses remain desperate for updates on how to protect themselves. School superintendents and college presidents need to decide how to hold classes in the fall. And employers want advice about whether to test all of their workers before returning to business as usual. ............ In a crisis, one of the C.D.C.’s main roles is to explain its guidance and reasoning, provide a rationale for when its thinking changes and acknowledge what it does not know. The agency’s routine in past emergencies was to hold press briefings almost daily .............. it took until April 27 for the agency to expand its list of possible symptoms to include more than a dozen signs of illness that some medical specialty societies had reported weeks earlier. ......... Initially, the C.D.C. recommended that all doctors and nurses coming in contact with coronavirus patients wear N95 respirators, which filter out 95 percent of all airborne particles. But on March 10, with supplies dwindling, the C.D.C. announced that less protective surgical masks were “an acceptable alternative” except during procedures that might aerosolize the virus. Days later, the agency said health workers could even wear “homemade masks (e.g., bandanna, scarf) for care of patients with COVID-19 as a last resort.” ........... N95 and other respirator masks are superior to surgical or cloth masks in protecting medical workers against the virus.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 4, 2020
What Will College Be Like in the Fall?Administrators, professors, a union representative and students consider the new realities of life on campus in the midst of a pandemic. .......... With the threat of the coronavirus continuing into the fall and next year, colleges and universities across the country are struggling with whether to reopen their campuses — and if so, how. ........... two-thirds said at the end of May that they were planning for an in-person semester in the fall ............ If students return, what changes to college life will be needed to contain and suppress the virus? ......... ensuring that schools have the capacity to test students upon arrival and at other intervals, as well as faculty and staff members who come to work on campus, and to conduct contact tracing; and providing guidance about masks, physical distancing and density for dorms, dining halls and classrooms. ........... recommends giving schools that comply with the applicable state regulations immunity from lawsuits for infections that occur on campus. ........... hospitals and essential businesses that have figured out how to continue their work without seeding an outbreak in their communities
Horrifying. You start with the tiny possibility that two officers may be walking over to deescalate the abusive one.
Instead, they join in beating a man trying to get out of traffic.
This isn’t a problem of bad apples or incidents. This is an institutional and systemic crisis. https://t.co/eoBXXnNXZV
Shift change: National guard has been replaced with a different unit. One officer identified himself to protestors as being with “DOJ”, another said he was from California, and one has a Bureau of Prisons patch on his vest. No name plates. pic.twitter.com/QIjNlMTfsQ
Barack Obama: "Just remember, this country was founded on protest ... every step of progress in this country, every expansion of freedom, every expression of our deepest ideals has been won through efforts that made the status quo uncomfortable."https://t.co/4wWOItz5Zl
NEW: The protests will likely spread the coronavirus. Doctors and nurses explained to me why they're protesting anyway: The virus is a public health threat — but so is racism.
As one put it, “I’m an African-American first before I’m a physician.”https://t.co/dgcuCOQumJ
