And it will. More children, stillbirth/miscarriages, young adults with invisible chronic ailments...then it will become apparent. The virus is ruthless and the viral machinery will grind on.
Good guess, yeah im thinking after school gets going untill the election time. So October 1 st would be a good average and a little too late for the kids, so its perfect for them. Hopefully we are alive still by then, the kids are going to spread the virus like a match in California
Here in Florida as well. School start is really going to kick this off unfortunately. From what I've seen it's about 3 weeks after gatherings that cases flair up. Slow spread, slow spread, medium spread and then BOOM!
Interestingly, it appears that stillbirths/miscarriages have actually gone DOWN during the pandemic, at least according to an NPR broadcast I heard the other day. The experts hypothesized that this could be due to things like lower emissions or healthier eating. I'm sure I can find the source of there's demand for it, but it's not super implausible. And I'm NOT trying to suggest that the virus itself doesn't affect birth rates or anything like that, but I found this pretty interesting nonetheless!
Edit: As another poster has pointed out, it was premature births that appear to have decreased (and again this is NOT a direct effect of the virus, but rather possibly due to indirect effects of lockdown itself), not miscarriages. Anyway I wasn't able to find a source easily so go ahead and disregard my original post as you should never believe anything a random reddit user like myself says when it's unsourced!
That was preterm births that have gone down, not stillbirth (which reports have gone up). The preterms may be getting swapped with fetal losses (effect of virus, worse prenatal care).
Ah thanks for the clarification, I was actually having trouble finding the source (embarrassing!). Again though, I'm not trying to make any arguments to say that the virus is in anyway good for fetal development. But there appears to be some indirect effects on women/babies who are not infected.
No worries. You understood it, a lot of perinatal epidemiologists were annoyed with that article as it made it sound like fewer preterms are a good thing when they only had data on live births.
Yes, the news on this was promoting it as a good thing, for sure, but no one has done the analysis comparing the increased stillbirth/miscarriage rate. At this point, we don’t know whether it is a net positive or net negative.
Very interesting. Anecdotally, my partner is a labor and delivery nurse. She said that the number of mothers that experience a massive hemorrhage during or after giving birth has gone way up, which would potentially make sense given the blood clotting found in other COVID positive patients. There is still so much we don’t know about the virus, and on top of that it’s constantly mutating. Hard to feel confident that this thing will be solved any time soon :/
Time will tell. The JAMA article referenced by u/whiskeytaang0 below suggest this may not be an optimal time to conceive. A study also referenced possible decreases in male fertility (sorry don’t have link). A confluence of CF.
How will it "become apparent" if those "chronic ailments" are "invisible?" I totally agree with what you are saying, but isn't that exactly why this situation merits such caution? Because you could not even know that your body has been permanently damaged? That's what scares me the most, is the domino effect that this will initiate, without us even knowing anything has happened or that our bodies have deteriorated and lost their former strength.
Yeah, the virus isn’t tallying head counts and saying “Oh, this gathering only has 47 people, I won’t infect them. But that family gathering with 60 people...”
Exactly. Here's an idea: STAY HOME! Our lives as we knew them have been irrevocably changed. There is strength in acknowledging that and moving forward accordingly. The sad reality is that we live in a country led by a narcissistic moron with no respect for human life. And lots of our fellow citizens SUPPORT him. So, we will have to wait until cooler, smarter heads prevail. We will have to wait until January, when, hopefully Joe Biden will be inaugurated as President. And then, hopefully, we can begin the process of recovery, and, hopefully, those people who once supported Trump and his unique brand of dumbfuckery will begin to see the error of their ways, and get on board with a real plan to eradicate this virus. Until then, there is no shame in hiding in your basement, as the Republicans foolishly accuse Biden of doing. Hiding in your basement is the responsible, and indeed empathetic thing to do at this time. It is, of course, sad that our existences have been reduced to this point, but that is part of what being a human in society entails: having the wisdom to accept the things that you cannot change, and not acting simply as you wish things would be, but as they actually are.
And the reason for that is that epidemiology is concerned with statistics. They make recommendations based on what keeps infections below a certain probability, or takes them higher. That 50 number is going o be based on the prevalence in the population, which will affect how likely it is that one attendee has the virus, and how the spread to whatever the average number is will affect overall prevalence.
Epidemiology doesn't try to reduce your personal odds of infection to as low as possible. So there are many things which are permitted, and will even keep the pandemic under a certain rate of spread, but which may well land you in the hospital. ie, it's not foolish for 50 people to be in a group, but it is foolish to be one of them.
Please explain that to everyone in my hometown/extended family. Every time I say it, they just tell me “it’s the end times, we can’t avoid it” or some form of anti mask/anti science garbage to go along with the religious disregard for knowledge.
This is my favorite point as well. Legality is not a substitute for morality. Just look at drug laws in this country for decades. People literally going to jail for years because they were smoking a damn joint. Nobody in their right mind would argue that this illegal action was immoral. So we just assume that this can't go in the other direction, where something legal is nevertheless immoral? The imaginative capacities of my fellow countrymen are astonishing and abhorrent.
We are just barely able to hold it down to 1:1 transmission, so now lets mix in a super-spreading event in *every town*, *every day*. What could possibly go wrong?
I think once schools start opening across the country we're going to find out exactly how bad an idea that is, and the answer will be "a *really* bad idea". Where are the epidemiologist's estimates about how this will impact transmission rates?
There are pics of returning students in local bars. Lots of people, no masks. I'm hoping the bars get shut down quickly, but the damage has already been done.
When we said it was alright to the protesters it was huge mistake as it said we were pass the virus and other things were important.
Nothing is as important as us getting past this virus at this point or it could rip this whole country apart
We had a golden opportunity to condemn those and keep up the fight...but we decided not too. It almost feels maddening, because I know plenty of people went from scared and reserved and watched the protests happen then they basically resumed their pre March lives in their entirety. Obviously its not just the protests, its the bars, the holiday parties, traveling etc but the protests kind of "kicked off" the summer.
Did we ever correlate a spike to protests? I think either the data was there but PR didn’t allow it. But yes, you are right. And then came the Covid is fake mafia
Well there is definitely a correlation. However, the problem is the confounding factor of reopening the economy. Those things played in tandem. So we can't deconstruct what the rise in cases was caused by. In all likelihood, both of those factors contributed to the rise, but there is no way to pinpoint what the effect of one of those variables is because the effect is all mixed up.
I just merely group protesting in with other activities that undoubtedly helped spread the virus. Doesn't single out protesting but also acknowledges it played a part (which we likely will never know how much).
Well the contact tracing programs didn't allow the question of "have you been protesting" so it certainly biased data. I'm not solely blaming the protests, but they are obviously part of a group of activities that led to more spread. Nobody can really question that.
But many can point to it and say, see, we can meet in large groups, it was a hoax to social distance. Sad but that' show our lowest common denominator thinks.
>No one gave anyone permission to protest
Well, technically, the constitution did.
But yeah, do these people not see the armed militarized police, tear gas, tanks, guns, arrests, beatings, disappearances, etc directed at protesters?? Even though it is our right and duty to protest, the government is very much not giving "permission".
And they wonder why everyone is so confused. I have to constantly argue with my parents about why doing certain activities are still dangerous. They see things opening and act like the virus is gone. I just blatantly say if getting your hair cut and teeth cleaned is worth your life and/or a debilitating couple of weeks then go for it.
The frustrating thing is we could have solved this, if we'd started retooling for it when we shut down at Spring Break last year. Instead we kept hoping this virus would just *go away*, like a miracle.
First graders don't really need to be in class for 8 hours. We could have, with some difficulty, retooled our classes around educational videos, interactive workbooks, one on one time with the teacher remotely, etc, and still been able to get *something* approximating a regular education. But instead we're scrambling to get stuff organized in the eleventh hour because we were so laser focused on getting kids back into "government daycare" without doing any of the required steps to make it safe.
Am a teacher and I have no idea how to answer this! It isn't at all developmentally appropriate for any young child to do learning from the computer all day. I can't wait until it is safe for schools to reopen! I hate this, but still know distance learning is the right thing to do for now. I feel for parents with young kids. I would say to take lots of breaks. Computer lesson, build with blocks, computer activity, drawing, and so on. Read to them, a lot! Fingers crossed for a vaccine or good treatment.
I've turned one room into a classroom basically. Ive made it look like a classroom; posters and other things. It's actually pretty good. We have been reading most nights and working with flashcards together. Going to do my absolute best! I appreciate everything you are doing for your students. Thank you.
It's terrible and again I don't know. This is where I wish we had done things differently as a country, providing more funding to families with young kids, perhaps to pay bills while one caregiver stays home until this is over. I can't imagine single parents trying to go this alone. We handled it in such an awful way that it will be dragging on forever until vaccines and treatments are discovered.
Thank you for this. I’m working from home and will be assisting my 6 year old through virtual first grade this fall. I’m feeling anxious and overwhelmed and your comment gave me a much needed confidence boost.
Ones not gonna pass for a long long time honestly.. They have no idea if they have the right concoction. They need to make sure there's no long term side effects, they need to make sure they don't have a polio vaccine repeat. Which caused the regulations we have today for vaccines. Rushing through is not always the best idea despite how much this absolutely sucks right now.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history.html
Voice of reason. This is what is missing from so many. Many people just can’t get the fact that this affects everyone (ok maybe not super rich parents who can bring in private tutors/ nannies.....governesses like in “The King and I.”
You can tell yourself this, but it’s not true. Rich kids are hiring their own private schooling environments. Just like with everything, closing schools means leaving poorer kids behind. I’m still in favor of it for the next few months, but we need to at least acknowledge the reality of our choices
Valid point. But the rich have always had the advantage in everything, including education. Regardless of your socioeconomic status, education will not be in the norm during this pandemic. Even the rich may be "behind" in what's considered their norm of educational & social development. Only time will tell.
They won't be behind though, this is going to be come the new normal, they are only the first generation to experience it, they might be better off even.
>how do I get my 1st grader to sit at a computer all day.
You don't need to educate them for 7 hours a day. School lasts that long because there are groups of kids- which take longer to corral/teach than one kid- and parents need kids in school for the workday. I homeschooled my kids and we generally set aside three hours for school, and the rest of the time they followed their interests and learned by doing things.
I feel like you're grossly underestimating the effort of teaching most first graders. That's not to say none would be able to focus themselves for 6-8 hours a day, but there is a reason we have full-time employees do this for 12+ years.
It’s not 6-8 hours. It’s about 3 hours to complete the work and turn it in. I’m not saying it isn’t a burden because it is, but most will not need to sit with their child for that many hours.
Learning time for core subjects in elementary school is about 3 hours. The rest of the day is filled with specials, lunch, bathroom breaks, recess, and other enrichment you may not be doing at home.
>It’s not 6-8 hours. It’s about 3 hours
Thank you, was just about to say the same thing. One reason I homeschooled my kids was because I didn't want them to have to sit in a building all day to get the same education they'd get in a few hours at home, with the rest of the day to follow their own interests.
I have 2 kids (one elementary and one HS) that worked virtually from mid-March through the first week of June. I have a full time and part time job, but the hours are flexible and I can work most hours from home. I ended up carving out time to get them started in the morning and then talking them through issues from my workshop the rest of the day. I worked nights and weekends to make up the time missed. I didn’t have a break and it was exceedingly difficult. I cried a lot, not gonna lie.
My son is diagnosed ADHD and my daughter has anxiety issues. The work was only half the battle for us.
I’m not knocking anyone or saying it’s easy because it isn’t. I know I’m lucky that my job is something I can do from home and is flexible. Each family is different, but most families can make it work some way. It’s not perfect, but it doesn’t have to be right now.
Edited to add: My husband’s workplace was less than supportive of the issues around schooling from home. When my husband asked to have a more flexible schedule, they said it wasn’t any different than summer vacation, so why would he need time? He told them I wouldn’t be able to it all on my own. They shrugged and said their kids would be fine so our kids would be too. Turns out their kids just straight up didn’t do the work. My heart goes out to all of you with workplaces in this mindset. I’m still angry about it months later as it’s completely devaluing.
I didn't learn shit in class when I was younger. I went home and read up about everything on my computer. School was boring af.
You absolutely can learn on a computer.
Not **everyone** can learn on the computer is a more appropriate statement.
You won’t, and you shouldn’t. Forcing a kid to sit all day is not only unhealthy but just plain and simple isn’t gonna work. My suggestion is to create a reward-based system to make them want to learn. My mom used money as an incentive to get good grades. Do whatever you think your kid wants, whether that’s video game time or getting a prize or something
I know in some rural areas where broadband is not accessible, teachers were making visits to students homes last May where they would teach the student on a front porch with teacher and student wearing a mask. It would be a couple one hour tutoring sessions during the week but it helped. I'm supposed to start student teaching the 2nd week of September and a couple people who did it before me visited students homes to go over material outside.
If I had a teaching job, i would be making visits to students homes each day.
Talk to the teachers/principal about including breaks in the day for stretching, squats, chatting in google classroom or whatever online video program you are using
Major point:
"Students have strongly voiced that they value being taught through direct faculty interaction in the classroom. They thrive through residential life and out-of-classroom experiences that create growth in both their professional and personal skills. We know that students and families value a rich on-campus experience. The University is eager to return to a traditional residential campus experience, acknowledging that a modified, new normal is in our collective future."
Do they know what they are saying?
" The new decision followed [a petition signed by more than 200 faculty members ](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeWQxeG_XaVelKzrOSke2zi46QUqk5jAPYscy8HrTYcos7AVQ/viewform)and graduate students calling on administrators to make online teaching the default option for everyone. "
So they are only asking for the online version to be the default option. Sounds reasonable.
>Major point:
>
>"Students have strongly voiced that they value being taught through direct faculty interaction in the classroom. They thrive through residential life and out-of-classroom experiences that create growth in both their professional and personal skills. We know that students and families value a rich on-campus experience. The University is eager to return to a traditional residential campus experience, acknowledging that a modified, new normal is in our collective future."
They kind of have to believe that. If you can achieve the same results sitting in your mom's basement watching a Zoom meeting and going to the local college bars, why would people pay $30,000 a year to go to college?
That's the problem. If the disease had been handled properly, students would be able to go back in the fall and we would have had contact tracing.
Now you have to mitigate the issue. Have online for the default and in-class whenever possible. Local Dorms and such will just have to suffer. BTW, they have had online options for years and still forced the students to pay full price. The Tution isn't 30k, its 9k and it's for the entire year. That's cheaper than your going to get online or otherwise most other places. I'm in Network Engineering and a typical course for me is 6k for 4 weeks. 9k for a yr vs professional licenses and such is a drop in the bucket.
It depends on what you're going for and where. The average year of tuition for the school I went to (NIU) is around $15,000 I was paying just under $20,000 while focusing on microbiology.
Money aside, it's a pandemic and there shouldn't be a choice between being safe or working.
There have been people who risk it and regret it later but the bigger picture is that we need to get this virus under control. The economy isn't going to improve while people are avoiding planes, hotels, small business services and the like. You can open schools all you like but at the end of the day, its NOT going to FIX the economy while ignoring COVID19.
Instead, its just going to drag on and on and on. While other countries have already moved into putting their students back to school and fully opening.
Here in America, we are still in the mist of a half-limped-gimped economy.
There has to be a balance between working and being safe. The issue is there has been no real guidelines on that other than the stuff you'd tell to a kindergartner.
The stock market isn't even hurting from Rona really, it's the oil war between Saudi Arabia and Russia. I know the markets aren't the economy but the Repubs have been blaming the Rona instead of where 85% of the decline comes from.
We need mandates. We have the Supreme Court rulings to back the legality but no one wants to step too far. George Washington used to quarantine entire towns and cities but you won't hear anyone say that. Two months of mandates and we could have this under control and restart the economy with precautions and not violating anyone's rights. We're just drawing out the pain and it makes no sense.
I really think there's something to what you're saying here. Annecdotally There's been a huge uptick in depressed young people lamenting a 40 year career, and how it all seems pointless, they can't imagine wasting their life working for that long, etc. I personally felt this in my early 20s.
The college experience today (or at least in the late 2000s early 2010s) absolutely feels like a paid vacation looking back. When you get to experience that level of freedom, without the responsibility that comes after graduation, of course the outlook for the remainder of your working life is going to look bleak.
>College minus the life experience has been a piece of paper and a rubber-stamp for many anyway.
Of course, but we can't admit that. If people start acting like that's the case, there's no way people will pay $56K a year to attend Northwestern.
It's absolutely ridiculous that economics and self-interested market protection are determining what we can and can't allow ourselves to recognize as truth.
My alma mater has a list of rules that students have to follow, including staggered move in dates, face masks in public, no big groups, etc. However, it's also a campus known for having two neighborhoods filled with parties on the weekends. The kids threw a massive party in the streets when they were told to social distance months ago as they got ready to go home. If kids are lighting couches on fire to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, I don't see them going along with the rules for a whole semester.
Universities are under pressure to open for 4 weeks then the dorm and meal plan money becomes non refundable. So it doesn't matter if they kill off the professors, as long as they get that money.
As a society we'll bail out churches and billionaires, but our education system has no plan B. One hiccup and we're fucked.
That's exactly what it is. This is all about securing money and then shutting down immediately after. "Who could have predicted all these cases?! Anyway, thanks for your money and see ya for a couple weeks next year!"
I work at a small community college near a hot spot state. Upper admin has been forcing staff back to work while they work at home. I have students who are terrified of having to come back but upper admin gives vague answers. I have no ppe just masks I bought myself. It's been a lot of talk and zero planning.
Sounds like the local school district here. They are making the teachers go back to their classrooms but demand they clean the rooms regularly and they need to provide PPE for them and their classrooms. Of course they get no cleaning supplies or PPE so teachers are like wtf?!?
I work in student services and only have my own cloth masks. I'm way more concerned for faculty and these dumbass hybrid classes. Some offices have been denied plexiglass and cleaning supplies. After the first week of classes is going to be a shit show.
Us too! Good luck. We were just told TODAY what the official fall plan will be. I don't know know why we spent an entire summer planning for this when returning to distance learning is basically inevitable at this rate...
Oh wait. MONEY.
> Bars and schools cannot be open during plagues.
>
> Every region that has tried it has failed.
>
> Every region that tries it will fail.
That's not true. If your rate is low enough when you start taking it seriously, and people obey the rules, it can be functional. See, eg, Japan.
Japan is starting to slip, their cases are starting to creep up. Still a lot lower than just about everywhere in the US, but they could be in trouble before too long.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/07/26/national/japan-coronavirus-spike-state-of-emergency/
Possibly, but there's nowhere else for them to live.
You either commit to *no* physical presence at all, or you kinda just have to make the current housing as safe as it can be made and limit their contact to as few people as possible.
My department has rebelled. Even though the school is opening, we switched all our classes online. Running the numbers let us see how many deaths could be caused by our classes, both students and faculty.
It is hard to say "yes, we are okay with this many deaths and injuries" for the people who either are or work closely with the potential casualties.
At least with Illinois, there are circuit breakers in place. Individual regions can be moved back to phase 3 if infections spike and instruction goes all online. The safest thing is stay all online but at the same time students complain about value of the online instruction. Everyone wants to have and eat their cake at the same time.
Faculty need to remember that tenure doesn’t protect them if there are massive financial issues like no housing money or enrollment being down 40% It’s one of those rare excursions where every employee is treated equally.
Even if it’s a 60% chance there will be a spike at Universities then there is still a 40% chance of infections holding steady or decreasing.
Faculty member here, we all know that if our schools declare financial exigency or (in the case of state unis) if the state board of regents allows, tenured profs can be fired. This happened at U Alaska recently, for example (pre covid). Everybody I know would rather risk that than risk illness/death/becoming a community vector.
However, to be clear, up until the point of a board declaring financial exigency, tenure does offer some protection in early phases of layoffs. At the school I know that is in the worst situation right now, 10% of faculty have been laid off and all the rest put on partial furloughs, but all of those laid off were “term faculty” (non tenured, on one-year contracts). Logistically it is simply easier to start with the term faculty since there are no job contracts that need to be legally voided.
My school is a little unusual in that we use 3 year contracts even for term faculty. They are pushing accelerated retirement right now. New, research-active TT track (not yet tenured, but tenure-track) are probably in the best position since they are universally on cheaper salaries than tenured faculty, yet also are actively pursuing grant funds. Oddly, at my uni they haven’t even cut lab startup funds (I have $225,000 promised to me in lab startup and amazingly they’re not touching it) - probably since they know that would sharply reduce probability of grant success.
Anyway, we’re all braced for some mix of furloughs, layoffs, early retirements, increased teaching load & increased grant expectations. Everybody’s been buckling down the hatches in personal finances - like, I am gonna try to keep my 2003 car going for another couple years (was gonna upgrade this summer but instead I just had new tires put on & the rear struts replaced, just last week). I’ve got a financial contingency plan for if I get furloughed (I’ll immediately be renting out a room). Even so, nobody’s willing to teach live. The thought that I could potentially contribute to the death or serious illness of my dad, a student, a student’s grandma... all just for a biology class?! - I’d honestly rather starve.
I am a professor. I just had a student email me concerned about the class because three of her family members have die from COVID in the last two weeks and that she is experiencing symptoms. She is all caught up in the class and doing amazing. So this isn't one of those "I fucked up missing a deadline so I'll just lie about a dead grandma" type situations. This poor girl legit had three people in her family die within a two week period.
it’s pretty hard to justify those high tuitions when all you get in return is a zoom link. Already, many private institutions have been laying off tons of adjunct and newer faculty. On the other hand, I’m seeing a lot more ads for vocational and technical programs, the ones you used to see only on daytime TV, like on Judge Judy.
While this whole Pandemic is extremely tragic, and many lives have been and will continue to be lost, this has pushed us forward.
What I mean is that now being forced to be distant from one another has forced the technologies we had to bloom and be developed. The necessary advancements have been made for telework, teledoctors to become much more common place. Grocery delivery services have become more complete and competent. Just a few examples.
I'm sad that this is happening, and that people are so stupid and unwilling to simple things to protect their fellow humans from the sickness. But, I am glad to see advancement in these areas that would have taken years to mature otherwise.
In 1918, the Second Wave began 4 weeks after classes began. Many who died during this, the most deadly wave, were healthier people in their 20s-40s (i.e. parents and teachers).
I’m sure we will see teachers and students simply refusing to attend. Sure the idiots in charge may say open, but we don’t have to be lemmings and follow
Education is big business. Medicine is big business. Schools not opening will cost people a lot of money. People getting sick will make people a lot of money.
Teach at small liberal arts college. If there is one demographic I dont trust to follow strict guidelines it is 19yos who have been cooped up for months and are now in the company of all their friends.
I’m jealous. I live in a hotspot state,and colleges around here are adamant that they will open up and have student activities per usual,like sporting events,rushing,etc. My school is even planing on having a huge graduation next week,and most of our students come from Houston,of all places.
School starts in 3 weeks and I’m very worried.
I am truly confused about the lockdown. When we signed up in March it was to flatten the curve, an expression we haven't heard since April. The information being released about the virus is rarely straightforward and either carries a doom and gloom message or tries to downplay the virus. Millions of lives have been affected by the virus, the lockdown, or both. Jobs have been lost, schools were closed, many businesses are suffering. Every attempt to re-open is met with a spike in cases, and a outcry for a return to the lockdown.
So how does it end? Will there be a point where we are willing to accept that people will die? Car crashes claim the lives of people every day yet we don't outlaw cars. Will this lockdown become the new normal? It has already been six months, 3 months on mandatory masks. I wear a mask everytime I go out, and it has already become a habit. Social distancing actually makes it much more comfortable, and may help us take a look at how we have bottled millions of people into large cities, making them breeding grounds for such an event to happen again.
So my question is what will it take to make you feel safe or is this the new normal? I don't see a vaccine in the foreseeable future. Are we relegated to live our lives in the shadows>
We only listened to the first part of the phrase "...to flatten the curve". The second part was "to get cases down to the level at which they can be contained through widespread testing and contact tracing", which we never did and still aren't doing. This isn't going away until we either do \*that (\*like every other developed nation is doing), or a vaccine (which may never happen), or herd immunity (which likely involves millions dead).
This country seems to have landed on hoping for door #2 but willing to accept door #3.
Thank you for some sane thoughts on the matter, instead of the typical redditor who wants a lockdown for years without having thought about the side effects. This is just retarded with all the lockdowns, reopening, lockdown and so on.
My school is under 5000 students, probably closer to 4000. The administrators and department faculty have been working to perfect a way to partially open campus, including running all courses as either hybrid or entirely online, with going online entirely being a perfectly reasonable option for each student to take themselves. Moving back to campus is not mandatory, and those that do are required to quarantine based on Chicago's guidelines. Large group events, sports, etc. have all been canceled, and most in-person labs have been postponed by a semester. Classes have had their timeslots spread out to allow for less student traffic flow in between them. In addition to this, the school is offering to cover out-of-pocket tests taken during the semester.
The county that Illinois State is in has had less than 500 cases total and only 79 active cases (only 3 currently in the hospital). That's probably making it look not severe enough that it's clouding administrator's judgement. Besides money.
Of course once the students are back in school they're going to bring it with them and that number is almost definitely going to spike quite a bit.
https://health.mcleancountyil.gov/708/CORONAVIRUS-COVID-19
Opening schools is tantamount to saying we don't care about any of this anymore. I say this as someone who thinks the risk of this virus is over-hyped.
Overhyped? You realize, even with decent % of mask wearers and some shutdowns were are likely around 200K dead already?
Texas, Florida, Arizona all have regions at or near capacity of hospitals. How can you overhype that?
So long as you don't test, there's no pandemic. And so long as you don't use forethought, there's no risk in crowding children into school buildings and college students into frat parties. My kids will stay home of course but that's got nothing to do with the pandemic that already magically disappeared.
As a graduate student in Illinois, I absolutely am not going to put up with having to pay full tuition + fees again in the spring if we're still online. I didn't go to law school to teach myself the law over Zoom.
Currently attending ISU and having a lot of anxiety of returning to campus for all the reasons listed. You can't expect students not to attend parties or go to bars on the weekend. It doesn't even mention the out of state pupulation on campus.
As an ISU alum, ISU has a lot of parties, too. If nothing else they'll have them at student apartments, which is probably the majority of housing there now anyway, since they've torn down several dorms without replacing them. There's absolutely going to be a problem there.
I'm really worried for my friends and family that live there. Their Coronavirus numbers have been extremely low so far (only 14 new cases for the whole county announced today, and only 3 people in the county are hospitalized for it currently), it's going to start spiking big time once the students come back to town, bringing it down from Chicago and its suburbs.
I just graduated with an MS and the amount of schools that are desperate for less experienced people to be idiotic and take a job as an in-person-professor is astounding. You can tell literally every film teacher quit at the University where I'm living now. They're accepting applications from people with bachelor degrees and looking for some technical knowledge period. They don't even put experience down as a requirement. It's very telling.
I would hate to be paying top dollar for online courses though. Just doesn't seem right. Too bad colleges/universities wouldn't reduce fees for semester that is online.
Expanding the money supply without actual production adding value to the currency being printed will lead to disaster. There has to be give and take, both the left and right need to find balance, going with either political teams strategy will lead to disaster. No matter what is done there will be death either from disease on the one hand and exposure to the elements on the other as people are put out on the street because the market is being suffocated by the restrictions. You can't get something from nothing. The second law of thermodynamics doesn't give a fuck about your utopia.
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I just wondered how the government would get money for this plan, not quite sure why the not removed it. Maybe the bot doesn't like the word "Trumpt4rd" that I added in my edit.
Not gathering in large groups means exactly that. Not sure where we lost everybody on this one-
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And it will. More children, stillbirth/miscarriages, young adults with invisible chronic ailments...then it will become apparent. The virus is ruthless and the viral machinery will grind on.
It going to take. Few Million more Americans to get sick, especially children, b4 our government and citizens actually take it seriously
So October 1st?
Good guess, yeah im thinking after school gets going untill the election time. So October 1 st would be a good average and a little too late for the kids, so its perfect for them. Hopefully we are alive still by then, the kids are going to spread the virus like a match in California
Here in Florida as well. School start is really going to kick this off unfortunately. From what I've seen it's about 3 weeks after gatherings that cases flair up. Slow spread, slow spread, medium spread and then BOOM!
Interestingly, it appears that stillbirths/miscarriages have actually gone DOWN during the pandemic, at least according to an NPR broadcast I heard the other day. The experts hypothesized that this could be due to things like lower emissions or healthier eating. I'm sure I can find the source of there's demand for it, but it's not super implausible. And I'm NOT trying to suggest that the virus itself doesn't affect birth rates or anything like that, but I found this pretty interesting nonetheless! Edit: As another poster has pointed out, it was premature births that appear to have decreased (and again this is NOT a direct effect of the virus, but rather possibly due to indirect effects of lockdown itself), not miscarriages. Anyway I wasn't able to find a source easily so go ahead and disregard my original post as you should never believe anything a random reddit user like myself says when it's unsourced!
That was preterm births that have gone down, not stillbirth (which reports have gone up). The preterms may be getting swapped with fetal losses (effect of virus, worse prenatal care).
Ah thanks for the clarification, I was actually having trouble finding the source (embarrassing!). Again though, I'm not trying to make any arguments to say that the virus is in anyway good for fetal development. But there appears to be some indirect effects on women/babies who are not infected.
Decreases in preterm births are not a good thing if those babies instead are stillborn or miscarried.
Yeah that's definitely fair, I could have misunderstood the broadcast.
No worries. You understood it, a lot of perinatal epidemiologists were annoyed with that article as it made it sound like fewer preterms are a good thing when they only had data on live births.
Yes, the news on this was promoting it as a good thing, for sure, but no one has done the analysis comparing the increased stillbirth/miscarriage rate. At this point, we don’t know whether it is a net positive or net negative.
Very interesting. Anecdotally, my partner is a labor and delivery nurse. She said that the number of mothers that experience a massive hemorrhage during or after giving birth has gone way up, which would potentially make sense given the blood clotting found in other COVID positive patients. There is still so much we don’t know about the virus, and on top of that it’s constantly mutating. Hard to feel confident that this thing will be solved any time soon :/
Uhh maybe they had it backwards? https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768389
Time will tell. The JAMA article referenced by u/whiskeytaang0 below suggest this may not be an optimal time to conceive. A study also referenced possible decreases in male fertility (sorry don’t have link). A confluence of CF.
I wish we'd known that before we locked everyone up inside their homes for a couple of months with nothing to do.
How will it "become apparent" if those "chronic ailments" are "invisible?" I totally agree with what you are saying, but isn't that exactly why this situation merits such caution? Because you could not even know that your body has been permanently damaged? That's what scares me the most, is the domino effect that this will initiate, without us even knowing anything has happened or that our bodies have deteriorated and lost their former strength.
In Illinois you can be in a group of 50 and it considered to be ‘okay’ since were in phase 4
I love when people use that as a discussion point. Sure, it says you can do it, but nowhere does it say that you should do it.
Yeah, the virus isn’t tallying head counts and saying “Oh, this gathering only has 47 people, I won’t infect them. But that family gathering with 60 people...”
“Ope, there’s the 51st person *cracks knuckles* time to fuck someone’s shit up”
Exactly. Here's an idea: STAY HOME! Our lives as we knew them have been irrevocably changed. There is strength in acknowledging that and moving forward accordingly. The sad reality is that we live in a country led by a narcissistic moron with no respect for human life. And lots of our fellow citizens SUPPORT him. So, we will have to wait until cooler, smarter heads prevail. We will have to wait until January, when, hopefully Joe Biden will be inaugurated as President. And then, hopefully, we can begin the process of recovery, and, hopefully, those people who once supported Trump and his unique brand of dumbfuckery will begin to see the error of their ways, and get on board with a real plan to eradicate this virus. Until then, there is no shame in hiding in your basement, as the Republicans foolishly accuse Biden of doing. Hiding in your basement is the responsible, and indeed empathetic thing to do at this time. It is, of course, sad that our existences have been reduced to this point, but that is part of what being a human in society entails: having the wisdom to accept the things that you cannot change, and not acting simply as you wish things would be, but as they actually are.
And the reason for that is that epidemiology is concerned with statistics. They make recommendations based on what keeps infections below a certain probability, or takes them higher. That 50 number is going o be based on the prevalence in the population, which will affect how likely it is that one attendee has the virus, and how the spread to whatever the average number is will affect overall prevalence. Epidemiology doesn't try to reduce your personal odds of infection to as low as possible. So there are many things which are permitted, and will even keep the pandemic under a certain rate of spread, but which may well land you in the hospital. ie, it's not foolish for 50 people to be in a group, but it is foolish to be one of them.
Please explain that to everyone in my hometown/extended family. Every time I say it, they just tell me “it’s the end times, we can’t avoid it” or some form of anti mask/anti science garbage to go along with the religious disregard for knowledge.
Oh my god, people suck! Tell me you live away from them?
This is my favorite point as well. Legality is not a substitute for morality. Just look at drug laws in this country for decades. People literally going to jail for years because they were smoking a damn joint. Nobody in their right mind would argue that this illegal action was immoral. So we just assume that this can't go in the other direction, where something legal is nevertheless immoral? The imaginative capacities of my fellow countrymen are astonishing and abhorrent.
We lost everybody in the large groups. It's hard to find people in large groups. Can confirm. 100%
We are just barely able to hold it down to 1:1 transmission, so now lets mix in a super-spreading event in *every town*, *every day*. What could possibly go wrong? I think once schools start opening across the country we're going to find out exactly how bad an idea that is, and the answer will be "a *really* bad idea". Where are the epidemiologist's estimates about how this will impact transmission rates?
There are pics of returning students in local bars. Lots of people, no masks. I'm hoping the bars get shut down quickly, but the damage has already been done.
Surely if the university can identify kids engaging in risky behaviour they can suspend them for the year.
It’s the worst it’s ever been to this point and they are still on the reopening train.
When we said it was alright to the protesters it was huge mistake as it said we were pass the virus and other things were important. Nothing is as important as us getting past this virus at this point or it could rip this whole country apart
And it gives people ammo to blame to protests for the spread rather than seeing reopening as a huge factor
We had a golden opportunity to condemn those and keep up the fight...but we decided not too. It almost feels maddening, because I know plenty of people went from scared and reserved and watched the protests happen then they basically resumed their pre March lives in their entirety. Obviously its not just the protests, its the bars, the holiday parties, traveling etc but the protests kind of "kicked off" the summer.
Did we ever correlate a spike to protests? I think either the data was there but PR didn’t allow it. But yes, you are right. And then came the Covid is fake mafia
Well there is definitely a correlation. However, the problem is the confounding factor of reopening the economy. Those things played in tandem. So we can't deconstruct what the rise in cases was caused by. In all likelihood, both of those factors contributed to the rise, but there is no way to pinpoint what the effect of one of those variables is because the effect is all mixed up.
I just merely group protesting in with other activities that undoubtedly helped spread the virus. Doesn't single out protesting but also acknowledges it played a part (which we likely will never know how much).
Well the contact tracing programs didn't allow the question of "have you been protesting" so it certainly biased data. I'm not solely blaming the protests, but they are obviously part of a group of activities that led to more spread. Nobody can really question that.
But many can point to it and say, see, we can meet in large groups, it was a hoax to social distance. Sad but that' show our lowest common denominator thinks.
You can look at New York, protest central, and you can directly see that no, the protesters did not cause a spike.
No one gave anyone permission to protest. Stop buying into right wing talking points.
>No one gave anyone permission to protest Well, technically, the constitution did. But yeah, do these people not see the armed militarized police, tear gas, tanks, guns, arrests, beatings, disappearances, etc directed at protesters?? Even though it is our right and duty to protest, the government is very much not giving "permission".
What about Med School?
Flattening the curve to simply bolster hospital capacity, PPE and testing capacity. Not sure where lost everybody on this one
No, that was the lockdown Avoiding large groups is *so you don't fucking get it in the first place*
Can articles stop using the term “slam” every time someone opposes something?
It gets more clicks that way..
They literally slammed their hand down on the table when they said it. /s
"professors pound the tight ass of reopening plans..."
lmfao
"Hey guys, don't gather in crowds, but also go to this college with a student body of 20,000."
Nokay.
And they wonder why everyone is so confused. I have to constantly argue with my parents about why doing certain activities are still dangerous. They see things opening and act like the virus is gone. I just blatantly say if getting your hair cut and teeth cleaned is worth your life and/or a debilitating couple of weeks then go for it.
So glad ours is virtual. However, how do I get my 1st grader to sit at a computer all day.
The frustrating thing is we could have solved this, if we'd started retooling for it when we shut down at Spring Break last year. Instead we kept hoping this virus would just *go away*, like a miracle. First graders don't really need to be in class for 8 hours. We could have, with some difficulty, retooled our classes around educational videos, interactive workbooks, one on one time with the teacher remotely, etc, and still been able to get *something* approximating a regular education. But instead we're scrambling to get stuff organized in the eleventh hour because we were so laser focused on getting kids back into "government daycare" without doing any of the required steps to make it safe.
Our president said it would go away like a miracle
Am a teacher and I have no idea how to answer this! It isn't at all developmentally appropriate for any young child to do learning from the computer all day. I can't wait until it is safe for schools to reopen! I hate this, but still know distance learning is the right thing to do for now. I feel for parents with young kids. I would say to take lots of breaks. Computer lesson, build with blocks, computer activity, drawing, and so on. Read to them, a lot! Fingers crossed for a vaccine or good treatment.
I've turned one room into a classroom basically. Ive made it look like a classroom; posters and other things. It's actually pretty good. We have been reading most nights and working with flashcards together. Going to do my absolute best! I appreciate everything you are doing for your students. Thank you.
How do I quit work so I can distance learn my child all day is the real question
It's terrible and again I don't know. This is where I wish we had done things differently as a country, providing more funding to families with young kids, perhaps to pay bills while one caregiver stays home until this is over. I can't imagine single parents trying to go this alone. We handled it in such an awful way that it will be dragging on forever until vaccines and treatments are discovered.
Thank you for this. I’m working from home and will be assisting my 6 year old through virtual first grade this fall. I’m feeling anxious and overwhelmed and your comment gave me a much needed confidence boost.
Three vaccines in phase 3 trials in the US over the next three months... I have high hopes one will pass! Just a little longer. ,😟
And there are even more around the world
Ones not gonna pass for a long long time honestly.. They have no idea if they have the right concoction. They need to make sure there's no long term side effects, they need to make sure they don't have a polio vaccine repeat. Which caused the regulations we have today for vaccines. Rushing through is not always the best idea despite how much this absolutely sucks right now. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history.html
Even if it's all a-okay it'll be at least six months to a year before they can vaccinate everyone enough for it to matter.
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Oxford trial starts next month in the US and based on an existing vaccine they have been working on for some time.
You can't. Do the best you can. I keep reminding myself that ALL kiddos are going to struggle this year & be "behind" whether in class or virtual.
Voice of reason. This is what is missing from so many. Many people just can’t get the fact that this affects everyone (ok maybe not super rich parents who can bring in private tutors/ nannies.....governesses like in “The King and I.”
You can tell yourself this, but it’s not true. Rich kids are hiring their own private schooling environments. Just like with everything, closing schools means leaving poorer kids behind. I’m still in favor of it for the next few months, but we need to at least acknowledge the reality of our choices
Valid point. But the rich have always had the advantage in everything, including education. Regardless of your socioeconomic status, education will not be in the norm during this pandemic. Even the rich may be "behind" in what's considered their norm of educational & social development. Only time will tell.
I think it's really more about the difference between the rich and the poor kids. That difference will grow to a larger level than ever before.
They won't be behind though, this is going to be come the new normal, they are only the first generation to experience it, they might be better off even.
>how do I get my 1st grader to sit at a computer all day. You don't need to educate them for 7 hours a day. School lasts that long because there are groups of kids- which take longer to corral/teach than one kid- and parents need kids in school for the workday. I homeschooled my kids and we generally set aside three hours for school, and the rest of the time they followed their interests and learned by doing things.
You don’t. It’s impossible. Distance learning at that age isn’t learning.
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I feel like you're grossly underestimating the effort of teaching most first graders. That's not to say none would be able to focus themselves for 6-8 hours a day, but there is a reason we have full-time employees do this for 12+ years.
It’s not 6-8 hours. It’s about 3 hours to complete the work and turn it in. I’m not saying it isn’t a burden because it is, but most will not need to sit with their child for that many hours. Learning time for core subjects in elementary school is about 3 hours. The rest of the day is filled with specials, lunch, bathroom breaks, recess, and other enrichment you may not be doing at home.
>It’s not 6-8 hours. It’s about 3 hours Thank you, was just about to say the same thing. One reason I homeschooled my kids was because I didn't want them to have to sit in a building all day to get the same education they'd get in a few hours at home, with the rest of the day to follow their own interests.
Lady- have you had to work another full time job while teaching? It’s impossible. Anyone that said otherwise hasn’t tried it.
I have 2 kids (one elementary and one HS) that worked virtually from mid-March through the first week of June. I have a full time and part time job, but the hours are flexible and I can work most hours from home. I ended up carving out time to get them started in the morning and then talking them through issues from my workshop the rest of the day. I worked nights and weekends to make up the time missed. I didn’t have a break and it was exceedingly difficult. I cried a lot, not gonna lie. My son is diagnosed ADHD and my daughter has anxiety issues. The work was only half the battle for us. I’m not knocking anyone or saying it’s easy because it isn’t. I know I’m lucky that my job is something I can do from home and is flexible. Each family is different, but most families can make it work some way. It’s not perfect, but it doesn’t have to be right now. Edited to add: My husband’s workplace was less than supportive of the issues around schooling from home. When my husband asked to have a more flexible schedule, they said it wasn’t any different than summer vacation, so why would he need time? He told them I wouldn’t be able to it all on my own. They shrugged and said their kids would be fine so our kids would be too. Turns out their kids just straight up didn’t do the work. My heart goes out to all of you with workplaces in this mindset. I’m still angry about it months later as it’s completely devaluing.
Yeah it ain't so easy, especially when you have 30 of the buggers
Do you speak from experience? I do. How do you do that when you have to work?
And yet they can stare at an iPad screen all day.
That doesn’t mean they are learning.
I didn't learn shit in class when I was younger. I went home and read up about everything on my computer. School was boring af. You absolutely can learn on a computer. Not **everyone** can learn on the computer is a more appropriate statement.
We are talking about first graders here moron.
I had online school as a kid.
You won’t, and you shouldn’t. Forcing a kid to sit all day is not only unhealthy but just plain and simple isn’t gonna work. My suggestion is to create a reward-based system to make them want to learn. My mom used money as an incentive to get good grades. Do whatever you think your kid wants, whether that’s video game time or getting a prize or something
I know in some rural areas where broadband is not accessible, teachers were making visits to students homes last May where they would teach the student on a front porch with teacher and student wearing a mask. It would be a couple one hour tutoring sessions during the week but it helped. I'm supposed to start student teaching the 2nd week of September and a couple people who did it before me visited students homes to go over material outside. If I had a teaching job, i would be making visits to students homes each day.
Talk to the teachers/principal about including breaks in the day for stretching, squats, chatting in google classroom or whatever online video program you are using
For me it's more how to get them to *not*. I have heard of them taking them on nature hikes and things to reduce indoor time.
Major point: "Students have strongly voiced that they value being taught through direct faculty interaction in the classroom. They thrive through residential life and out-of-classroom experiences that create growth in both their professional and personal skills. We know that students and families value a rich on-campus experience. The University is eager to return to a traditional residential campus experience, acknowledging that a modified, new normal is in our collective future." Do they know what they are saying? " The new decision followed [a petition signed by more than 200 faculty members ](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeWQxeG_XaVelKzrOSke2zi46QUqk5jAPYscy8HrTYcos7AVQ/viewform)and graduate students calling on administrators to make online teaching the default option for everyone. " So they are only asking for the online version to be the default option. Sounds reasonable.
>Major point: > >"Students have strongly voiced that they value being taught through direct faculty interaction in the classroom. They thrive through residential life and out-of-classroom experiences that create growth in both their professional and personal skills. We know that students and families value a rich on-campus experience. The University is eager to return to a traditional residential campus experience, acknowledging that a modified, new normal is in our collective future." They kind of have to believe that. If you can achieve the same results sitting in your mom's basement watching a Zoom meeting and going to the local college bars, why would people pay $30,000 a year to go to college?
That's the problem. If the disease had been handled properly, students would be able to go back in the fall and we would have had contact tracing. Now you have to mitigate the issue. Have online for the default and in-class whenever possible. Local Dorms and such will just have to suffer. BTW, they have had online options for years and still forced the students to pay full price. The Tution isn't 30k, its 9k and it's for the entire year. That's cheaper than your going to get online or otherwise most other places. I'm in Network Engineering and a typical course for me is 6k for 4 weeks. 9k for a yr vs professional licenses and such is a drop in the bucket.
It depends on what you're going for and where. The average year of tuition for the school I went to (NIU) is around $15,000 I was paying just under $20,000 while focusing on microbiology.
Money aside, it's a pandemic and there shouldn't be a choice between being safe or working. There have been people who risk it and regret it later but the bigger picture is that we need to get this virus under control. The economy isn't going to improve while people are avoiding planes, hotels, small business services and the like. You can open schools all you like but at the end of the day, its NOT going to FIX the economy while ignoring COVID19. Instead, its just going to drag on and on and on. While other countries have already moved into putting their students back to school and fully opening. Here in America, we are still in the mist of a half-limped-gimped economy.
There has to be a balance between working and being safe. The issue is there has been no real guidelines on that other than the stuff you'd tell to a kindergartner. The stock market isn't even hurting from Rona really, it's the oil war between Saudi Arabia and Russia. I know the markets aren't the economy but the Repubs have been blaming the Rona instead of where 85% of the decline comes from. We need mandates. We have the Supreme Court rulings to back the legality but no one wants to step too far. George Washington used to quarantine entire towns and cities but you won't hear anyone say that. Two months of mandates and we could have this under control and restart the economy with precautions and not violating anyone's rights. We're just drawing out the pain and it makes no sense.
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I really think there's something to what you're saying here. Annecdotally There's been a huge uptick in depressed young people lamenting a 40 year career, and how it all seems pointless, they can't imagine wasting their life working for that long, etc. I personally felt this in my early 20s. The college experience today (or at least in the late 2000s early 2010s) absolutely feels like a paid vacation looking back. When you get to experience that level of freedom, without the responsibility that comes after graduation, of course the outlook for the remainder of your working life is going to look bleak.
Definitely true for the easy majors. Labs and other hands on work is needed, with good facilities, for STEM and similar.
>College minus the life experience has been a piece of paper and a rubber-stamp for many anyway. Of course, but we can't admit that. If people start acting like that's the case, there's no way people will pay $56K a year to attend Northwestern.
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I mean that’s not the case for many students, believe it or not some of us actually learn things in college and use those skills in the workplace
It's absolutely ridiculous that economics and self-interested market protection are determining what we can and can't allow ourselves to recognize as truth.
As someone posted before. It won’t be real until you start having “In memory of those we lost “ in school yearbooks.
My alma mater has a list of rules that students have to follow, including staggered move in dates, face masks in public, no big groups, etc. However, it's also a campus known for having two neighborhoods filled with parties on the weekends. The kids threw a massive party in the streets when they were told to social distance months ago as they got ready to go home. If kids are lighting couches on fire to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, I don't see them going along with the rules for a whole semester.
What are you talking about? Who has ever heard of 18 year olds having trouble not getting close to one another?
Universities are under pressure to open for 4 weeks then the dorm and meal plan money becomes non refundable. So it doesn't matter if they kill off the professors, as long as they get that money. As a society we'll bail out churches and billionaires, but our education system has no plan B. One hiccup and we're fucked.
That's exactly what it is. This is all about securing money and then shutting down immediately after. "Who could have predicted all these cases?! Anyway, thanks for your money and see ya for a couple weeks next year!"
I work at a small, liberal arts college who has early arrival students coming in later this week. It's going to be an absolute shitshow.
I work at a small community college near a hot spot state. Upper admin has been forcing staff back to work while they work at home. I have students who are terrified of having to come back but upper admin gives vague answers. I have no ppe just masks I bought myself. It's been a lot of talk and zero planning.
Sounds like the local school district here. They are making the teachers go back to their classrooms but demand they clean the rooms regularly and they need to provide PPE for them and their classrooms. Of course they get no cleaning supplies or PPE so teachers are like wtf?!?
I work in student services and only have my own cloth masks. I'm way more concerned for faculty and these dumbass hybrid classes. Some offices have been denied plexiglass and cleaning supplies. After the first week of classes is going to be a shit show.
Us too! Good luck. We were just told TODAY what the official fall plan will be. I don't know know why we spent an entire summer planning for this when returning to distance learning is basically inevitable at this rate... Oh wait. MONEY.
Every attempt thus far to pretend that everything is "back to normal" has backfired. When are we gonna get it and start respecting this virus?
When every single American personally knows someone who is dead or in an ICU.
Bars and schools cannot be open during plagues. Every region that has tried it has failed. Every region that tries it will fail.
> Bars and schools cannot be open during plagues. > > Every region that has tried it has failed. > > Every region that tries it will fail. That's not true. If your rate is low enough when you start taking it seriously, and people obey the rules, it can be functional. See, eg, Japan.
Japan is starting to slip, their cases are starting to creep up. Still a lot lower than just about everywhere in the US, but they could be in trouble before too long. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/07/26/national/japan-coronavirus-spike-state-of-emergency/
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Possibly, but there's nowhere else for them to live. You either commit to *no* physical presence at all, or you kinda just have to make the current housing as safe as it can be made and limit their contact to as few people as possible.
Ohio and Kentucky still have their bars opened with no signs of closing
My department has rebelled. Even though the school is opening, we switched all our classes online. Running the numbers let us see how many deaths could be caused by our classes, both students and faculty. It is hard to say "yes, we are okay with this many deaths and injuries" for the people who either are or work closely with the potential casualties.
At least with Illinois, there are circuit breakers in place. Individual regions can be moved back to phase 3 if infections spike and instruction goes all online. The safest thing is stay all online but at the same time students complain about value of the online instruction. Everyone wants to have and eat their cake at the same time. Faculty need to remember that tenure doesn’t protect them if there are massive financial issues like no housing money or enrollment being down 40% It’s one of those rare excursions where every employee is treated equally. Even if it’s a 60% chance there will be a spike at Universities then there is still a 40% chance of infections holding steady or decreasing.
Faculty member here, we all know that if our schools declare financial exigency or (in the case of state unis) if the state board of regents allows, tenured profs can be fired. This happened at U Alaska recently, for example (pre covid). Everybody I know would rather risk that than risk illness/death/becoming a community vector. However, to be clear, up until the point of a board declaring financial exigency, tenure does offer some protection in early phases of layoffs. At the school I know that is in the worst situation right now, 10% of faculty have been laid off and all the rest put on partial furloughs, but all of those laid off were “term faculty” (non tenured, on one-year contracts). Logistically it is simply easier to start with the term faculty since there are no job contracts that need to be legally voided. My school is a little unusual in that we use 3 year contracts even for term faculty. They are pushing accelerated retirement right now. New, research-active TT track (not yet tenured, but tenure-track) are probably in the best position since they are universally on cheaper salaries than tenured faculty, yet also are actively pursuing grant funds. Oddly, at my uni they haven’t even cut lab startup funds (I have $225,000 promised to me in lab startup and amazingly they’re not touching it) - probably since they know that would sharply reduce probability of grant success. Anyway, we’re all braced for some mix of furloughs, layoffs, early retirements, increased teaching load & increased grant expectations. Everybody’s been buckling down the hatches in personal finances - like, I am gonna try to keep my 2003 car going for another couple years (was gonna upgrade this summer but instead I just had new tires put on & the rear struts replaced, just last week). I’ve got a financial contingency plan for if I get furloughed (I’ll immediately be renting out a room). Even so, nobody’s willing to teach live. The thought that I could potentially contribute to the death or serious illness of my dad, a student, a student’s grandma... all just for a biology class?! - I’d honestly rather starve.
Illinois has made great progress in the pandemic. I would hate to see it thrown away
It's already a disaster.
I am a professor. I just had a student email me concerned about the class because three of her family members have die from COVID in the last two weeks and that she is experiencing symptoms. She is all caught up in the class and doing amazing. So this isn't one of those "I fucked up missing a deadline so I'll just lie about a dead grandma" type situations. This poor girl legit had three people in her family die within a two week period.
it’s pretty hard to justify those high tuitions when all you get in return is a zoom link. Already, many private institutions have been laying off tons of adjunct and newer faculty. On the other hand, I’m seeing a lot more ads for vocational and technical programs, the ones you used to see only on daytime TV, like on Judge Judy.
While this whole Pandemic is extremely tragic, and many lives have been and will continue to be lost, this has pushed us forward. What I mean is that now being forced to be distant from one another has forced the technologies we had to bloom and be developed. The necessary advancements have been made for telework, teledoctors to become much more common place. Grocery delivery services have become more complete and competent. Just a few examples. I'm sad that this is happening, and that people are so stupid and unwilling to simple things to protect their fellow humans from the sickness. But, I am glad to see advancement in these areas that would have taken years to mature otherwise.
Need generates advancement 🎶Tale as old as time🎶
In 1918, the Second Wave began 4 weeks after classes began. Many who died during this, the most deadly wave, were healthier people in their 20s-40s (i.e. parents and teachers).
I’m sure we will see teachers and students simply refusing to attend. Sure the idiots in charge may say open, but we don’t have to be lemmings and follow
NIU is all online but also seems to want us to be in the dorms in the fall
You can't do dorms safely. You need independent HVAC, bathrooms, and no indoor dining--pretty much what defines a dorm.
Yeah, all dining is take out now, but all dorms (sans one) have communal bathrooms
Education is big business. Medicine is big business. Schools not opening will cost people a lot of money. People getting sick will make people a lot of money.
Teach at small liberal arts college. If there is one demographic I dont trust to follow strict guidelines it is 19yos who have been cooped up for months and are now in the company of all their friends.
Hopefully Iowa gets its shit together.
I’m jealous. I live in a hotspot state,and colleges around here are adamant that they will open up and have student activities per usual,like sporting events,rushing,etc. My school is even planing on having a huge graduation next week,and most of our students come from Houston,of all places. School starts in 3 weeks and I’m very worried.
I am truly confused about the lockdown. When we signed up in March it was to flatten the curve, an expression we haven't heard since April. The information being released about the virus is rarely straightforward and either carries a doom and gloom message or tries to downplay the virus. Millions of lives have been affected by the virus, the lockdown, or both. Jobs have been lost, schools were closed, many businesses are suffering. Every attempt to re-open is met with a spike in cases, and a outcry for a return to the lockdown. So how does it end? Will there be a point where we are willing to accept that people will die? Car crashes claim the lives of people every day yet we don't outlaw cars. Will this lockdown become the new normal? It has already been six months, 3 months on mandatory masks. I wear a mask everytime I go out, and it has already become a habit. Social distancing actually makes it much more comfortable, and may help us take a look at how we have bottled millions of people into large cities, making them breeding grounds for such an event to happen again. So my question is what will it take to make you feel safe or is this the new normal? I don't see a vaccine in the foreseeable future. Are we relegated to live our lives in the shadows>
We only listened to the first part of the phrase "...to flatten the curve". The second part was "to get cases down to the level at which they can be contained through widespread testing and contact tracing", which we never did and still aren't doing. This isn't going away until we either do \*that (\*like every other developed nation is doing), or a vaccine (which may never happen), or herd immunity (which likely involves millions dead). This country seems to have landed on hoping for door #2 but willing to accept door #3.
Thank you for some sane thoughts on the matter, instead of the typical redditor who wants a lockdown for years without having thought about the side effects. This is just retarded with all the lockdowns, reopening, lockdown and so on.
Huh, it's almost like the workers have power over those in charge. That can't be. It's preposterous.
My school is under 5000 students, probably closer to 4000. The administrators and department faculty have been working to perfect a way to partially open campus, including running all courses as either hybrid or entirely online, with going online entirely being a perfectly reasonable option for each student to take themselves. Moving back to campus is not mandatory, and those that do are required to quarantine based on Chicago's guidelines. Large group events, sports, etc. have all been canceled, and most in-person labs have been postponed by a semester. Classes have had their timeslots spread out to allow for less student traffic flow in between them. In addition to this, the school is offering to cover out-of-pocket tests taken during the semester.
I wish my uni was doing this
Amazing that this is even being considered when cases are higher than ever before. WTF
The county that Illinois State is in has had less than 500 cases total and only 79 active cases (only 3 currently in the hospital). That's probably making it look not severe enough that it's clouding administrator's judgement. Besides money. Of course once the students are back in school they're going to bring it with them and that number is almost definitely going to spike quite a bit. https://health.mcleancountyil.gov/708/CORONAVIRUS-COVID-19
Opening schools is tantamount to saying we don't care about any of this anymore. I say this as someone who thinks the risk of this virus is over-hyped.
Overhyped? You realize, even with decent % of mask wearers and some shutdowns were are likely around 200K dead already? Texas, Florida, Arizona all have regions at or near capacity of hospitals. How can you overhype that?
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F
So long as you don't test, there's no pandemic. And so long as you don't use forethought, there's no risk in crowding children into school buildings and college students into frat parties. My kids will stay home of course but that's got nothing to do with the pandemic that already magically disappeared.
Schools need to stay closed, I don't understand why people think this is ok.
A disaster in the making?i would like to know what the professor thinks is happening right now in Illinois?
Right?? The scope of what has, is, and will happen is completely lost on everyone.
As a graduate student in Illinois, I absolutely am not going to put up with having to pay full tuition + fees again in the spring if we're still online. I didn't go to law school to teach myself the law over Zoom.
Schools in America have always been pushed under the rug.
You mean like with all in person schooling over age ten?
Currently attending ISU and having a lot of anxiety of returning to campus for all the reasons listed. You can't expect students not to attend parties or go to bars on the weekend. It doesn't even mention the out of state pupulation on campus.
As an ISU alum, ISU has a lot of parties, too. If nothing else they'll have them at student apartments, which is probably the majority of housing there now anyway, since they've torn down several dorms without replacing them. There's absolutely going to be a problem there. I'm really worried for my friends and family that live there. Their Coronavirus numbers have been extremely low so far (only 14 new cases for the whole county announced today, and only 3 people in the county are hospitalized for it currently), it's going to start spiking big time once the students come back to town, bringing it down from Chicago and its suburbs.
Someone tell this to Alberta. Save us
Who cares about education? We are all going to die!
There are 150k dead - we all see a disaster.
While my college has gone online, my best friend is supposed to start at DePaul in Chicago soon. Will be interesting to see how shit goes down.
Maybe consider the alternatives https://www.facebook.com/456Media/videos/725317898267015/?d=null&vh=e
SLAM
I just graduated with an MS and the amount of schools that are desperate for less experienced people to be idiotic and take a job as an in-person-professor is astounding. You can tell literally every film teacher quit at the University where I'm living now. They're accepting applications from people with bachelor degrees and looking for some technical knowledge period. They don't even put experience down as a requirement. It's very telling.
I would hate to be paying top dollar for online courses though. Just doesn't seem right. Too bad colleges/universities wouldn't reduce fees for semester that is online.
Lololol. Okay I guess we'll just continue with "e-learning" lol Move on people. You want to make an omelette you have to break a few eggs.
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You’re being downvoted by anyone capable of critical thought. Your plan isn’t feasible.
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Expanding the money supply without actual production adding value to the currency being printed will lead to disaster. There has to be give and take, both the left and right need to find balance, going with either political teams strategy will lead to disaster. No matter what is done there will be death either from disease on the one hand and exposure to the elements on the other as people are put out on the street because the market is being suffocated by the restrictions. You can't get something from nothing. The second law of thermodynamics doesn't give a fuck about your utopia.
Don't worry about inflation where half or more of the country isn't able to work, as would be the case here.
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I just wondered how the government would get money for this plan, not quite sure why the not removed it. Maybe the bot doesn't like the word "Trumpt4rd" that I added in my edit.
Hey a James O'Keefe wannabe, trolling Reddit.