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Students are returning to US universities in a unplanned pandemic experiment

23 points by sohkamyung 6y ago

Pfhreak 6y ago
It's tragic that the US has politicized this pandemic and decided that rolling the dice with student lives is the right outcome.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- m0zg 6y ago
  It could be "the right outcome". Consider the facts. Very, very few young people die from this, almost none. Median age of those dying is something like 80. The virus is now endemic - it's never going away. We are not guaranteed to have a vaccine, in spite of the valiant efforts by multiple companies - there's no vaccine against any other coronavirus, and it's not for the lack of trying. Hospitals are not overloaded right now. They likely will be, come late fall/winter. So one could argue that transmission among the young, mostly healthy people off peak of hospital capacity constraints is not the worst thing that could happen. Done right, in fact, such transmission could be our "get out of jail free" card, as long as we properly isolate the sick and the elderly and maintain some semblance of hygiene and social distancing for those at moderate risk.
  - dr_zoidberg 6y ago
    > there's no vaccine against any other coronavirus, and it's not for the lack of trying. It wasn't economical to develop those. So far, coronaviruses were responsible for either common colds (small impact) or MERS/SARS (which were quickly contained to their region). We're now facing one with a global scale, and high impact (to society & the economy). Governments will pay for those vaccines to be developed, deployed and used. And if it isn't as effective and needs to be reapplied every X years, so much more economical incentive to develop a vaccine.
    - m0zg 6y ago
      > It wasn't economical to develop those. It was, if you run the numbers. There's over a billion of cases of common cold in the US alone every year, people have it 3-6 times a year, every year. The economic loss is insane. If you want to target just the coronaviruses for starters, 20% of common cold is caused by them. People with comorbidities and weak immune systems die from common cold too. And yet we don't have a vaccine. Nor do we have a vaccine against HIV for example. Vaccines are hard to do for some things, and C19 could easily be one of such things. What I find especially pernicious is that people don't realize that it's _not going away_, ever. It's going to be seasonal now.
- anoncake 6y ago
  The vast majority of students is a lot younger than 80 years. The risk to them is absolutely neglible.
jurassic 6y ago
A lot of universities may never reopen if they don't bring students back this year. It's not surprising they're choosing to cash the tuition checks as long as that remains a legal option.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  People are worried about what's going to happen when schools reopen. I'm not because it'll blow up within a week. It's just not going to happen.
  - HarryHirsch 6y ago
    UNC Chapel Hill is back on-line after a week of in-person instruction. Four clusters in dormitories. That was fast.
rawfan 6y ago
If universities were tax funded, they wouldn't have to endanger their students now (and costs would be way lower, of course, as they are in the rest of the world).
AtlasBarfed 6y ago
The only possible good thing is it collects a large number of highly resistant young people to speed herd immunity. But really this is just greedy colleges being greedy.

23 points by sohkamyung 6y ago

It's tragic that the US has politicized this pandemic and decided that rolling the dice with student lives is the right outcome.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
m0zg 6y ago
It could be "the right outcome". Consider the facts. Very, very few young people die from this, almost none. Median age of those dying is something like 80. The virus is now endemic - it's never going away. We are not guaranteed to have a vaccine, in spite of the valiant efforts by multiple companies - there's no vaccine against any other coronavirus, and it's not for the lack of trying. Hospitals are not overloaded right now. They likely will be, come late fall/winter. So one could argue that transmission among the young, mostly healthy people off peak of hospital capacity constraints is not the worst thing that could happen. Done right, in fact, such transmission could be our "get out of jail free" card, as long as we properly isolate the sick and the elderly and maintain some semblance of hygiene and social distancing for those at moderate risk.
- dr_zoidberg 6y ago
  > there's no vaccine against any other coronavirus, and it's not for the lack of trying. It wasn't economical to develop those. So far, coronaviruses were responsible for either common colds (small impact) or MERS/SARS (which were quickly contained to their region). We're now facing one with a global scale, and high impact (to society & the economy). Governments will pay for those vaccines to be developed, deployed and used. And if it isn't as effective and needs to be reapplied every X years, so much more economical incentive to develop a vaccine.
  - m0zg 6y ago
    > It wasn't economical to develop those. It was, if you run the numbers. There's over a billion of cases of common cold in the US alone every year, people have it 3-6 times a year, every year. The economic loss is insane. If you want to target just the coronaviruses for starters, 20% of common cold is caused by them. People with comorbidities and weak immune systems die from common cold too. And yet we don't have a vaccine. Nor do we have a vaccine against HIV for example. Vaccines are hard to do for some things, and C19 could easily be one of such things. What I find especially pernicious is that people don't realize that it's _not going away_, ever. It's going to be seasonal now.
anoncake 6y ago
The vast majority of students is a lot younger than 80 years. The risk to them is absolutely neglible.

jurassic 6y ago

A lot of universities may never reopen if they don't bring students back this year. It's not surprising they're choosing to cash the tuition checks as long as that remains a legal option.

Gibbon1 6y ago
People are worried about what's going to happen when schools reopen. I'm not because it'll blow up within a week. It's just not going to happen.
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  UNC Chapel Hill is back on-line after a week of in-person instruction. Four clusters in dormitories. That was fast.

rawfan 6y ago

If universities were tax funded, they wouldn't have to endanger their students now (and costs would be way lower, of course, as they are in the rest of the world).

AtlasBarfed 6y ago

The only possible good thing is it collects a large number of highly resistant young people to speed herd immunity. But really this is just greedy colleges being greedy.