5 ms·

Cornell University – Important updates for faculty and instructional staff

21 points by malshe 5y ago

sandworm101 5y ago
>> our on-campus vaccination rate of 94% is higher than those other instances. My work just had a "breakthrough" case. We are 100% vaccinated (military, no holdouts) but a fully vaccinated and healthy person nevertheless got symptoms and tested positive. They were better in a couple days but the incident is making us all think about any return to "normal" work. We may be safe, but none of us want to become a Delta carrier. (Funny story, their post-vaccine symptoms felt worse than their later experience with having actual covid.)
- malshe 5y ago
  I agree and I feel like they are assuming that vaccination grants 100% protection against Covid-19.
  - sandworm101 5y ago
    It depends on the definition of protection. I think vaccination does give 100% protection from an individual being killed by covid. But there are people who cannot be vaccinated for health reasons and nobody wants to be the person who spreads it to them.
    - comex 5y ago
      The number of vaccine breakthrough cases leading to deaths is rather low, but not zero. There have been hundreds of them in the US: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/10/us/covid-breakthrough-infections-vaccines.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/10/us/covid-brea...
      - sandworm101 5y ago
        In the real world, 99.99% protection from a risk is 100%. This is medicine, not particle physics.
        wumpus 5y ago
        Saying 100% is a bad idea, because an endless stream of people are going to tell you it's not 100%. Look back at previous HN conversations about anyone claiming their software is 100% fault tolerant, or that their datacenter has 100% uptime.
        sandworm101 5y ago
        Saying anything about covid seems bad on HN. Just look at all the perfectly reasonable discussions that have been downvoted into grey status. Something organized must be happening.
        wumpus 5y ago
        Well, you could do your part by stopping saying 100%.
        makomk 5y ago
        In the real world, the vaccines don't provide anywhere near 99.99% protection. There are some misleading stats which claim 99.9% protection, but the trouble is that they do stuff like including a whole bunch of deaths from the winter wave which ended before vaccines were generally available and ending before the recent Delta wave. Realistically you might be able to expect somewhere around 90% reduction in the risk of death which isn't nothing but also isn't close to 100%.
- newsyyswen 5y ago
  But it's only dangerous to be a carrier when you are amongst the unvaccinated, and those people have now made a conscious choice to expose themselves to the virus. At what point do we stop being responsible for other peoples' choices? The exception is obviously the immunocompromised, but hopefully the booster shots will help to provide that group with some lasting immunity.
  - sandworm101 5y ago
    >>amongst the unvaccinated, and those people have now made a conscious choice to expose themselves to the virus. What about those with immunological disorders that cannot handle any vaccination? What about the children?
- cm2187 5y ago
  Vaccines may not provide a good protection against getting and transmitting the virus, but if they provide a very good protection against any complication (which we know they do - even against known variants), why can't we return to normal? If it is downgraded to effectively a minor cold, why can't we live with it?
  - wumpus 5y ago
    Let's say you have a child under 12 and an elderly immune-suppressed person in your house, the first of which can't be vaccinated and the second doesn't have much of a reaction to the vaccine. You, vaccinated, return to normal, and catch Delta. You are asymptomatic. You go home, and infect the child and the elderly person.
    - cm2187 5y ago
      You can say that of any other disease.
      - wumpus 5y ago
        During a pandemic [of that disease]? You bet you can! [Edit: added a clause]
- nradov 5y ago
  We'll probably all become Delta carriers eventually. It's highly contagious enough that any infection control steps you take are likely just delaying the inevitable. At some point we'll have to accept that reality and go back to normal, just like the human race has done with every previous pandemic for thousands of years. Fortunately the vaccines are very effective at preventing bad outcomes. https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immunity-not-possible-astrazeneca-developer-2021-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...
  - toiletaccount 5y ago
    i agree with this, but delaying enough may get us to a vaccine for delta without having to get delta. i wish more vaccinated people would get tested and participate in studies so we had a better idea of what the risk level is for long term organ damage. i'm assuming it's significantly lower, but i dont have anything to back that up with.
    - nradov 5y ago
      There will always be another variant. Most regular people aren't willing to put their normal lives on hold indefinitely in the hope that better vaccines might be available at some unknown point in the future. That's just human nature.
  - HarryHirsch 5y ago
    Fortunately the vaccines are very effective at preventing bad outcomes. The probability of getting post-Covid syndrome even after a mild case is ~ 20 %. Immunity against coronaviruses seems to last about a year. So in the present regime there's a 1-in-5 chance every year of having to deal with Covid sequelae, incidence rising, presumably, with age. That's not acceptable. We need other interventions, like better ventilation, smaller gatherings & so on.
Hydraulix989 5y ago
Cornell (Faucci's alma mater) has always been ahead of the curve with COVID. The student culture is more communal than individualistic, the campus is relatively isolated in a small town near the Finger Lakes, and the emphasis is more on academics, rather than partying. Science, rather than fear and politics, has always been a core tenent.
- codesections 5y ago
  > and the emphasis is more on academics, rather than partying. [citation needed] My impression has always been that the Greek scene at Cornell is pretty… well, I'll go with "active"
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- chillel 5y ago
  tenet
  - Hydraulix989 5y ago
    Updated, thanks for the correction.
temporalparts 5y ago
> Faculty are not required to provide remote access or record lectures I don't understand this. Harvard Medical School has the same policy (or rather, none of the lectures are recorded). Why are schools asking students to choose between the health of their peers vs their grades and their potential futures? Even responsible people can get exposed to COVID, and this would be punishing students that decide to not endanger their peers. This is why unlimited sick days make sense in big tech companies: if you're sick, please don't spread it to everyone else in the office.
- newsyyswen 5y ago
  The article also points out that only 1/4 of the classrooms are A/V-equipped. It might be a cost thing.
  - swiley 5y ago
    Yeah, webcams are prohibitively expensive for a University. No. This is because remote learning makes these institutions obsolete and they're going to continue throwing their reputation around to try to prevent that.
    - nautilius 5y ago
      Yeah exactly, because the only power of a university is that they keep the material they teach top secret. Just imagine if you could just go into a store and buy textbooks! What a crazy world that would be! Everyone would be a genius and have every degree imaginable!
      - swiley 5y ago
        That's the way its treated though; everyone assumes you don't know what you're doing if you haven't been to university because there's some top-secret stuff there that you couldn't have possibly found somewhere else.
        5y ago
ndr 5y ago
To recap: Cornell to reinstate in-person classes as the norm and will require vaccination. Two possible exceptions: 1. Medical, will need a doctor to say so in writing 2. Religious, will need to answer in writing to: - Explain in your own words why you are requesting this religious exemption. - Describe the religious principles that guide your objection to immunization. - Indicate whether you are opposed to all immunizations, and if not, the religious basis that prohibits particular immunizations.
- TuringNYC 5y ago
  I was surprised to see this. I wonder if the rubric for acceptances and denials would be made public. Once this door is opened, it seems hard to allow any mix of acceptances/denials other than 0/100 or 100/0 without opening up a whole different set of conflicts.
  - Hydraulix989 5y ago
    It seems reasonable though? I cannot think of any major world religions against vaccination, yet can certainly understand medical exemption in specific cases.
    - TuringNYC 5y ago
      I'm a long-time NYC resident and there have been numerous controversies over the years regarding religious vaccination exemptions. Some seemed legitimate (from the other person's viewpoint) while other cases I personally know were anti-Vaxxers trying to get religious exemptions (without actually being religious.) Except, in the second case, how do you decide if someone is being truthful or not w/r/t their rationale? After a recent Measles outbreak, there was a major push: https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-us-news-health-religion-new-york-13ef6b7b83914b9b84ef8dc6e06d071b https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-us-news-health-religi...
      - Hydraulix989 5y ago
        I'm personally skeptical of religion in general. There are two religions mentioned in your linked article: Judaism and the Amish religion. That said, Israel has even encouraged Orthodox Jews to take the vaccine. As for the latter, I highly doubt there is any meaningful Amish contingent on campus. Like Cornell, I would also be hard pressed to empathize with an anti-vaxxer claiming religious reasons.
armchairhacker 5y ago
This is what a lot of colleges seem to be doing: in-person everything, but vaccinations either required or strongly recommended. Lots of places are also requiring or strongly recommending masks. Personally this is what I'm hoping for. I'm all for staying safe, but the data shows that if you're vaccinated, even the Delta variant has a very slim chance of causing serious illness. Remote learning doesn't work well for me, and having events being cancelled / heavily regulated / remote is seriously impacting my social life. I don't want to seriously impact my work and social life just for the very slim chance that I'm going to get infected or infect others. Also, there is nothing stronger than the vaccine on the horizon and we have to get back to some semblance of normal eventually. We do need to keep in mind children and immunocompromised people. But I'm not interacting with children. I do think colleges should offer limited online exemptions for immunocompromised or otherwise vulnerable people, but then I'm not interacting with immunocompromisde people either. Ultimately though, we have to see how this actually plays out for colleges. Because if Delta really is as dangerous as people are saying, or if there is a new variant, there's just no way we're going to avoid another lockdown. Look at what's happening in the South, where most people are unvaccinated - people are trying to pretend Covid doesn't exist, but the hospital system is collapsing and people who would have been alive are dying because there are literally no hospital beds. All I an do is hope that it's not.
charbonneau 5y ago
> Describe the religious principles that guide your objection to immunization How about no?

21 points by malshe 5y ago

>> our on-campus vaccination rate of 94% is higher than those other instances. My work just had a "breakthrough" case. We are 100% vaccinated (military, no holdouts) but a fully vaccinated and healthy person nevertheless got symptoms and tested positive. They were better in a couple days but the incident is making us all think about any return to "normal" work. We may be safe, but none of us want to become a Delta carrier. (Funny story, their post-vaccine symptoms felt worse than their later experience with having actual covid.)

malshe 5y ago
I agree and I feel like they are assuming that vaccination grants 100% protection against Covid-19.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  It depends on the definition of protection. I think vaccination does give 100% protection from an individual being killed by covid. But there are people who cannot be vaccinated for health reasons and nobody wants to be the person who spreads it to them.
  - comex 5y ago
    The number of vaccine breakthrough cases leading to deaths is rather low, but not zero. There have been hundreds of them in the US: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/10/us/covid-breakthrough-infections-vaccines.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/10/us/covid-brea...
    - sandworm101 5y ago
      In the real world, 99.99% protection from a risk is 100%. This is medicine, not particle physics.
      - wumpus 5y ago
        Saying 100% is a bad idea, because an endless stream of people are going to tell you it's not 100%. Look back at previous HN conversations about anyone claiming their software is 100% fault tolerant, or that their datacenter has 100% uptime.
        sandworm101 5y ago
        Saying anything about covid seems bad on HN. Just look at all the perfectly reasonable discussions that have been downvoted into grey status. Something organized must be happening.
        wumpus 5y ago
        Well, you could do your part by stopping saying 100%.
      - makomk 5y ago
        In the real world, the vaccines don't provide anywhere near 99.99% protection. There are some misleading stats which claim 99.9% protection, but the trouble is that they do stuff like including a whole bunch of deaths from the winter wave which ended before vaccines were generally available and ending before the recent Delta wave. Realistically you might be able to expect somewhere around 90% reduction in the risk of death which isn't nothing but also isn't close to 100%.
newsyyswen 5y ago
But it's only dangerous to be a carrier when you are amongst the unvaccinated, and those people have now made a conscious choice to expose themselves to the virus. At what point do we stop being responsible for other peoples' choices? The exception is obviously the immunocompromised, but hopefully the booster shots will help to provide that group with some lasting immunity.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  >>amongst the unvaccinated, and those people have now made a conscious choice to expose themselves to the virus. What about those with immunological disorders that cannot handle any vaccination? What about the children?
cm2187 5y ago
Vaccines may not provide a good protection against getting and transmitting the virus, but if they provide a very good protection against any complication (which we know they do - even against known variants), why can't we return to normal? If it is downgraded to effectively a minor cold, why can't we live with it?
- wumpus 5y ago
  Let's say you have a child under 12 and an elderly immune-suppressed person in your house, the first of which can't be vaccinated and the second doesn't have much of a reaction to the vaccine. You, vaccinated, return to normal, and catch Delta. You are asymptomatic. You go home, and infect the child and the elderly person.
  - cm2187 5y ago
    You can say that of any other disease.
    - wumpus 5y ago
      During a pandemic [of that disease]? You bet you can! [Edit: added a clause]
nradov 5y ago
We'll probably all become Delta carriers eventually. It's highly contagious enough that any infection control steps you take are likely just delaying the inevitable. At some point we'll have to accept that reality and go back to normal, just like the human race has done with every previous pandemic for thousands of years. Fortunately the vaccines are very effective at preventing bad outcomes. https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immunity-not-possible-astrazeneca-developer-2021-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...
- toiletaccount 5y ago
  i agree with this, but delaying enough may get us to a vaccine for delta without having to get delta. i wish more vaccinated people would get tested and participate in studies so we had a better idea of what the risk level is for long term organ damage. i'm assuming it's significantly lower, but i dont have anything to back that up with.
  - nradov 5y ago
    There will always be another variant. Most regular people aren't willing to put their normal lives on hold indefinitely in the hope that better vaccines might be available at some unknown point in the future. That's just human nature.
- HarryHirsch 5y ago
  Fortunately the vaccines are very effective at preventing bad outcomes. The probability of getting post-Covid syndrome even after a mild case is ~ 20 %. Immunity against coronaviruses seems to last about a year. So in the present regime there's a 1-in-5 chance every year of having to deal with Covid sequelae, incidence rising, presumably, with age. That's not acceptable. We need other interventions, like better ventilation, smaller gatherings & so on.

Hydraulix989 5y ago

Cornell (Faucci's alma mater) has always been ahead of the curve with COVID. The student culture is more communal than individualistic, the campus is relatively isolated in a small town near the Finger Lakes, and the emphasis is more on academics, rather than partying. Science, rather than fear and politics, has always been a core tenent.

codesections 5y ago
> and the emphasis is more on academics, rather than partying. [citation needed] My impression has always been that the Greek scene at Cornell is pretty… well, I'll go with "active"
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
chillel 5y ago
tenet
- Hydraulix989 5y ago
  Updated, thanks for the correction.

temporalparts 5y ago

> Faculty are not required to provide remote access or record lectures I don't understand this. Harvard Medical School has the same policy (or rather, none of the lectures are recorded). Why are schools asking students to choose between the health of their peers vs their grades and their potential futures? Even responsible people can get exposed to COVID, and this would be punishing students that decide to not endanger their peers. This is why unlimited sick days make sense in big tech companies: if you're sick, please don't spread it to everyone else in the office.

newsyyswen 5y ago
The article also points out that only 1/4 of the classrooms are A/V-equipped. It might be a cost thing.
- swiley 5y ago
  Yeah, webcams are prohibitively expensive for a University. No. This is because remote learning makes these institutions obsolete and they're going to continue throwing their reputation around to try to prevent that.
  - nautilius 5y ago
    Yeah exactly, because the only power of a university is that they keep the material they teach top secret. Just imagine if you could just go into a store and buy textbooks! What a crazy world that would be! Everyone would be a genius and have every degree imaginable!
    - swiley 5y ago
      That's the way its treated though; everyone assumes you don't know what you're doing if you haven't been to university because there's some top-secret stuff there that you couldn't have possibly found somewhere else.
      - 5y ago

ndr 5y ago

To recap: Cornell to reinstate in-person classes as the norm and will require vaccination. Two possible exceptions: 1. Medical, will need a doctor to say so in writing 2. Religious, will need to answer in writing to: - Explain in your own words why you are requesting this religious exemption. - Describe the religious principles that guide your objection to immunization. - Indicate whether you are opposed to all immunizations, and if not, the religious basis that prohibits particular immunizations.

TuringNYC 5y ago
I was surprised to see this. I wonder if the rubric for acceptances and denials would be made public. Once this door is opened, it seems hard to allow any mix of acceptances/denials other than 0/100 or 100/0 without opening up a whole different set of conflicts.
- Hydraulix989 5y ago
  It seems reasonable though? I cannot think of any major world religions against vaccination, yet can certainly understand medical exemption in specific cases.
  - TuringNYC 5y ago
    I'm a long-time NYC resident and there have been numerous controversies over the years regarding religious vaccination exemptions. Some seemed legitimate (from the other person's viewpoint) while other cases I personally know were anti-Vaxxers trying to get religious exemptions (without actually being religious.) Except, in the second case, how do you decide if someone is being truthful or not w/r/t their rationale? After a recent Measles outbreak, there was a major push: https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-us-news-health-religion-new-york-13ef6b7b83914b9b84ef8dc6e06d071b https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-us-news-health-religi...
    - Hydraulix989 5y ago
      I'm personally skeptical of religion in general. There are two religions mentioned in your linked article: Judaism and the Amish religion. That said, Israel has even encouraged Orthodox Jews to take the vaccine. As for the latter, I highly doubt there is any meaningful Amish contingent on campus. Like Cornell, I would also be hard pressed to empathize with an anti-vaxxer claiming religious reasons.

armchairhacker 5y ago

This is what a lot of colleges seem to be doing: in-person everything, but vaccinations either required or strongly recommended. Lots of places are also requiring or strongly recommending masks. Personally this is what I'm hoping for. I'm all for staying safe, but the data shows that if you're vaccinated, even the Delta variant has a very slim chance of causing serious illness. Remote learning doesn't work well for me, and having events being cancelled / heavily regulated / remote is seriously impacting my social life. I don't want to seriously impact my work and social life just for the very slim chance that I'm going to get infected or infect others. Also, there is nothing stronger than the vaccine on the horizon and we have to get back to some semblance of normal eventually. We do need to keep in mind children and immunocompromised people. But I'm not interacting with children. I do think colleges should offer limited online exemptions for immunocompromised or otherwise vulnerable people, but then I'm not interacting with immunocompromisde people either. Ultimately though, we have to see how this actually plays out for colleges. Because if Delta really is as dangerous as people are saying, or if there is a new variant, there's just no way we're going to avoid another lockdown. Look at what's happening in the South, where most people are unvaccinated - people are trying to pretend Covid doesn't exist, but the hospital system is collapsing and people who would have been alive are dying because there are literally no hospital beds. All I an do is hope that it's not.

charbonneau 5y ago

> Describe the religious principles that guide your objection to immunization How about no?