From The COVID Reopening Disasters
This is not just a matter of rehashing old news. The rise of Covid infections at universities, as narrated in Acade, tells us a lot about what we’ve been doing wrong all summer.
Categories
Tag: pandemic
From The Risks – Know Them – Avoid Them
So now let’s get to the crux of it. Where are the personal dangers from reopening?
The personal is social.
As we move back to work, or go to a restaurant, let’s look at what can happen in those environments.
The crux:
The reason to highlight these different outbreaks is to show you the commonality of outbreaks of COVID-19. All these infection events were indoors, with people closely-spaced, with lots of talking, singing, or yelling. The main sources for infection are home, workplace, public transport, social gatherings, and restaurants. This accounts for 90% of all transmission events. In contrast, outbreaks spread from shopping appear to be responsible for a small percentage of traced infections. (Ref)
Importantly, of the countries performing contact tracing properly, only a single outbreak has been reported from an outdoor environment (less than 0.3% of traced infections). (ref)
Via Academe Blog
From Our Classrooms and Our Campuses Are Petri Dishes | ACADEME BLOG
Martin Kich on Academe Blog considers the implications of re-opening univeristies – and what’s being over-looked by more vocal planners:
Mitch Daniels, the president of Purdue University and former governor of Indiana has announced his intention to have on-site classes in the fall, emphasizing that about 80% of the West Lafayette community is under the age of 35 and therefore less vulnerable. It seems very improbable, however, that 80% of the university’s faculty and staff are under the age of 35 or that having a large number of asymptomatic carriers of the virus will be reassuring to anyone in the community who is over 35 or living with someone over 35.
If continuing to do most classes online is deemed untenable even for another semester or two, how tenable will it be if even one in three faculty at any university contracts the virus and has to be self-quarantined for several weeks?
How tenable will it be if even one in six faculty have a more severe form of the disease or even have to be hospitalized for treatment and need to be on medical leave for more than two weeks?
How tenable will it be if even a small number of faculty die from the disease?
Add to this the factor that the disease can spread between town and gown by asymptotic carriers and the risk becomes even less tenable. MinnState: take note, please.