University of California School System to open campuses this Fall
Classes will be still mostly be remote unless a lab, etc that requires being in person.
The dam is getting breached.
we'll see how long into the fall it lasts.
Do you think the other California system is going to backtrack? They're going to get absolutely hammer IMO if they're the only ones shut down.
This is virtually the exact same as the California State University system. Virtual classes with exceptions for labs and other classes that can't be done remotely. Regarding CSU's announce on May 12: (LINK)
There also will be “limited exceptions” for courses across the 23-campus system that can’t be delivered virtually, such as essential lab courses and clinical classes for nursing students, White said. Those classes will have restrictions, such as social distancing and fewer students.
As far as I can tell the UC system is just going to take a more generous approach to exceptions while still observing the basics of masking/social distancing.
It is, but the headline takeaway is night and day different between the two!
I was informed last night that we had a case at work. They were last in the factory a week prior. 7 days from when an employee was sick enough to not go into work until the place of employment was notified. If you ask me when we can reopen, its when the the time frame from onset of symptoms to notification of contacts and sanitation of work spaces is 24 hrs or less. That's what it means to have a robust testing and contact tracing program. In 7 days the people that employee infected can in turn be infecting others. There is no way to contain anything that has a 7 day head start.
There’s no way to really contain it regardless. But yea, 7 days is absurd. I’d be pissed if I were you.
Inevitable the reopening happens well before that’s a thing tho. Let’s be clear .... most likely, a vast majority of us will get corona either very soon, during the second wave, or next year, or a year after that .... many of us have likely had it already and were asymptomatic carriers or mildly affected and don’t even realize we had it. Some antibody tests done on a number of people in Ohio show that coronavirus was around back in late December early January .... months before the first “confirmed” case.
Somehow, people have gone from social distancing and shelter-in-place as “necessary to flatten the curve” to “a way to prevent infection” .... there is no way to prevent infection but to be lucky, or hope you had it already and had mild symptoms.
So which is it? “Reasonably” or “by all means”?
/JK
On a personal level, flatten the curve doesn’t mean “decrease the number of people who get covid overall.” It doesn’t mean “80% of us would have gotten covid, but now only 40% of us will.”
It means “decrease the number of people who get covid in the first couple months and spread it out so the pandemic lasts longer but we save more lives and don’t overwhelm the healthcare system.”
Most people will get it, despite shelter in place, masks, social distancing. We’re prolonging the pandemic to save lives. Not minimizing it or eliminating it. This article, from UofM, helps explain it. Note that in both curves, the AUC (area under the curve, i.e. the total number of people who get covid) is the same
Talking about “flattening the curve“ in such simplistic terms is not accurate. That was a made up phrase to communicate a policy direction only so that the general public can understand and buy into a set of self imposed guidelines. It is incorrect to try and use the term generally as you do to describe a specific policy. Rather, if you want to talk about policy level stuff, the discussion is about how different policies and tactics impact R0, where R0, the rate of infection, determines how flat the curve is.
You “can” kill out the virus by flattening the curve as other countries have by reducing R0 < 1. It all depends on how many measures you take to reduce the R0. Further, flattening the curve without killing it out as you understand it has plenty of grey area. This is where the R0 is between 1 and 2 and you can have different slopes depending on the R0. And as we know, a flatter curve down to some level reduces the burden on health care and pushes out the rate of infections.
No matter which flatten the curve approach we take, the lower the R0, the more time there is for the 1% death rate of people to survive until a vaccine is available.
From a policy standpoint SIP definitely has an impact on lowering the R0. A national SIP, or even a NY one, two weeks earlier would have saved 60K lives. Things like widely available real time testing can also significantly impact the R0. Eliminating gatherings definitely reduces R0 even without a SIP.
To summarize in these terms:
R0 < 1 policies: Kill it out like SARS and as other countries have done.
R0 > 1 and < ~ 1.5: Spread it out widely and minimize deaths until a vaccine.
R0 > 2: Let the virus loose over the next year prior to a vaccine being available. 2M dead in US.
Oh yah, R0 > 1.5 and < 2.5: Georgia
Ehh. Kinda. The term “flattening the curve” is definitely a recently made up term to simplify (or even oversimplify) mitigation of R naught (reproductive number) by prolonging the pandemic. But the idea of it isn’t new.
Even with shelter in place etc the SARS-CoV-2 Has a median R0 of 5.7 (95% CI 3.8-8.9) which is far bigger than the initial estimate of ~2.5 according to newly published research. SIP has helped most certainly, but this virus is insanely contagious and many of us will get it or already have had it by the time a vaccine is available, and even then, it may not be that effective.
If this is anything like the flu, the vaccine will be anywhere from 20% - 80% effective and we’ll be dealing with covid for a long long time. Meaning we’ll all get it at some point.
I think any talk of “eliminating it” and “if we just SIP until a vaccine we’ll be safe from it” is a pipe dream, and was never the point
You cherry picked the one R0 study on the far high extreme to support your point that mass infection is inevitable. The avg is still far lower. Whether you are or not, you don’t act like a scientist.
Source for the Georgia R0 claim? This site claims they're doing quite well. In any event, they have a slightly larger population than Michigan and haven't experienced anything on the scale of Detroit's outbreak.
This is a good effort to estimate, though as I understand this data it correlates to policies 2-3 weeks prior
Any data on confirmed cases is realistically a picture of 2-3 weeks ago, yes. But what source do you have for the claim of 1.5 - 2.5?
If you are asking about Georgia, that was my sarcastic prediction in 2-3 weeks from now.
But in general, any Ro estimates are based on highly polluted source data. If you read many of the articles it’s not so much an Ro where one person infects 2.5 for example. It’s more a situation where one person at a church service in South Korea infected hundreds. Or one person at a gym infected hundreds. Or there was an outbreak at a prison of hundreds. Or at a senior center. So when you look at data for a county or for a state or for a country you can start to understand that one outbreak which for that particular outbreak means one person infected 100, the rest of the country or county might’ve had an Ro of less than one. So because the data is highly variable, it’s very difficult to correlate an hour zero to an actual policy put in place for any one jurisdiction. I haven’t looked at all the studies, but there are a lot of anomalies that you would theoretically have to correct for.
Hallelujah! I truly don't understand why people can't get this concept that flatten the curve is simply a way to either delay the spread enough such that our health care systems are not overwhelmed or until we have a vaccine or an effective therapy is developed. In the first instance, the area under the curve will remain the same. Likewise, if a therapy is developed, the area under the infection curve will also remain the same, but the area under the mortality curve will fortunately be reduced. In the case where a vaccine is developed relatively early, then the area under both curves will be reduced. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that an effective vaccine will be developed, let alone soon enough to have a significant effect.
the curve of infections cannot be flattened
An important point: the curve we're supposed to be flattening (at least, according to the original justification in March) is of hospitalizations.
Younger, lower-risk individuals getting infected isn't necessarily a burden for the health system and even can be beneficial in the long run (toward building herd immunity). The issue is protecting the higher-risk people. Policies should be in place to screen those low-risk people who interact with high-risk people. But if college-age people are just mingling amongst themselves, it's not that big of a concern.
Exactly. It’s a highly highly contagious virus. We’re not reducing the number of people who get infected overall. We’re reducing the rate of infection, which is prolonging the actual timeframe of the pandemic, so that the healthcare industry can keep up and save more lives.
I think bluemk1690 either misspoke or doesn’t know what he’s talking about
Drjaws: “There’s no way to really contain it regardless.”
facts are not your friends!
You do know that Doc is an actual scientist/phd, right? He's talking about something in his professional wheelhouse. You might want to rethink the condescending snark.
I know many doctors with a variety of opposing views. It’s quite common. I’ve been an editor for a well known academic mathematics journal where I had to validate and edit submissions by professors from all over the world.
Whether scientist or not you can’t just say he is right because he says he is scientist. His initial statement is false. There are many levels of what might be called scientific “fact”. And the lowest level would be suggesting something is true because someone has a title. Even less so on a blog. The next level might be a theory with no effort to support it or site sources. The next level might be research by a qualified team. But mistakes happen at all these level. Further, the level of bias that can impact any study can be quite surprising. I am personally aware of a medical breakthrough that was bashed by respected professionals but later validated by other studies. The highest level scientific fact might be a peer reviewed publication by a respected scientist, but even those are not facts unless mathematically or scientifically proven
I have no idea who this doctor may be. He may well credentialed. But this is an anonymous blog. And In addition to making a false statement that is easily refuted, his responses were that of a BSer and not a scientist.
Frankly it pisses me off when i see this BS, thus the snark.
Your background explains your unwarranted arrogance. Humility is a much better trait. Suggest an apology to the doc, it makes you look like a great guy
XM,
You don’t know my background.
I’ve seen your posts and respect most if not all. There is no arrogance here. Like many on here, and unlike your Dr, I never stoop to share my background to make a point. I did hesitantly make an exception to provide an example from experience to discuss bias. Not that we need an example these days to understand subconscious bias
The Doc seems legit in many posts and has many good POVs. But, there are now a few too many BS red flags.
1). Using insults and slights to undermine critics instead of facts and data. We all see that too often.
2). Cherry picking sources to support a position.
3) Touting his doctor credentials. Or even just putting Doc in his user name. That’s a red flag. The scientists I know would never do that.
And this only started when I noticed that the Doc insulted and spoke down to somebody else who criticized him. I joined in and pointed out that his statement was wrong. And I received a bunch of BS responses of slights and cherry picked data. I’m pretty sure you’ve met many in your career that do the same.
No, you seem to misunderstand the point of science. The goal of science is to explain why we need longer lockdowns. Anybody who claims to be a scientist that doesn't support longer lockdowns is not actually a scientist at all.
Sorry bud .... facts and many peer reviewed published reports support what I’ve been saying
Look you may be legit, but responses like this make you look more like RDT. That’s exactly what a BSer would say.
This is about your statement “there is no way to contain it”. There is no study to prove otherwise. That would be impossible.
I would concede that it is very difficult. But it has been done in this case and in other cases. I would also agree that in the United States where each state has a different often ad hoc set of policies it would be impossible without any consistent national effort.
but your statement “there is no way to contain it“ is false.
I got both antibody and viral load tested in Michigan within 24 hours last week. My total wait time for both was well under an hour.
I don't understand why there isn't a better marketing campaign for testing in Michigan. Everyone can and should be getting tested in Michigan.
Is that a shot at Midland right now?
Remote classes always seemed the most likely; this article doesn't get into whether or not dorms will be open (I assume not), which might cause issues given the fact a decent number of UC-system students don't live in CA year-round and could be many timezones away. Will be interesting to see how they're all handled.
It’s happening, I really think things are headed back to a somewhat normal just with masks and an increased consciousness to stay clean.
To an extent yea, it’s inevitable. I myself will still not be going to restaurants, will be wearing a mask in public, etc until the rate of new infections is very low. I think many of us will be changed, our behavior changed, by this for a long time. Normalcy in the coming years is not going to be what normalcy was in the fall of 2019
Other than going to Ann Arbor classics like Ashley’s or Pretzel Bell I really have no burning desire to get back out to a sit down restaurant. Eating at home is nice and much cheaper.
Same. My company also has no plans to bring us back to the office before the fall. And they strongly implied that working from home may be the new normal for many of us.
Things went remarkably well considering thousands of people were moved out of office towers and other buildings in about 2 weeks time.
I wonder if commercial real estate will take a hit eventually? We have at least 3 huge buildings that could be sold.
My company was almost exclusively opposed to remote work and after the success of the last few weeks they are considering selling off their office spaces and letting everyone work remotely for the sheer costs savings
Worked from home once since this went down. Thankfully I work in a building with labs full of biology/chemistry/toxicology/pharmacology PhDs and MS so back in March we were all wearing masks and doing twice daily wipe downs of all faucets, light switches, door knobs, printers, etc. with biocidal wipes proven effective against covid.
I work in commercial real estate, sell shopping centers and single tenant deals. Pricing hasnt moved “yet”. For each asset and attributes of the offering, there will be a correction in pricing. But a lot of folks are anxious to get back into Acquistion mode.
Hatter brings up an interesting point.
Society is going to open back up and regardless of government directive, I think social distancing will have some progression ranging from things like the Topless Jeep bash in Texas to people continuing to work from home or just not having interest in going to a restaurant.
We really need to see school leadership step up and make plans to move forward. Protect those at risk. It seems unavoidable that more people than not are going to contact Covid. I hope we don’t see shutdowns to business and schools if they have one positive test. We will never get anywhere doing that.
Yes it will be
With all the options of places opening up, my wife and I are gonna do some traveling this first week of June. Dont know where but I'm excited to get out .
This is a bit of a surprise considering that the CSU system decided to remain largely closed this fall. I don't know how students are going to be able to use residence halls (as just one example) without spreading the virus widely. Anyone who believes that social distancing and mask requirements are going to be widely followed on a college campus has evidently never been to college, is suffering from some kind of magical thinking, or both.
When the much-dreaded "second wave" of Covid-19 starts heading toward the shore this fall, it will be interesting to see how the UC administration reacts.
I doubt that the Spanish flu completely went away between waves though...
much like the flu, corona, could and some think most likely, has some seasonal component so a 'second wave' could just be the virus following a pattern that is similar to the flu and getting passed around more when we all head back in doors in the autumn and winter.
There is usually a second wave (1918, 1957, 1968, 2009), sometimes more or one wave that goes on (1968, 2003). The assumption that there will be a second wave is a global assumption and it is possible that the experience here is more like one ongoing wave before it eventually becomes an endemic disease.
We don't do boots on the ground public health very well here, at least not at scale, not after decades of disinvestment. We are still the most likely to crack the code and cure this, if that is possible (though China will give us a really strong run now), but we are among the least likely to be able to control it well and protect our most vulnerable. As someone who has worked with public health data for almost 30 years, this was fairly predictable to me. It's sad, and this is not a partisan position, even with a different administration making different decisions I still think we would have been more than a day late and a dollar short in responding.
No, with a different administration that didn't hate the federal government and hate the idea of actually taking responsibility and doing something, we would have been much better off. This was a bad time to have these people in charge.
Well, yeah, believe me after dealing with Federal contracts for 30 years I am well aware of the lack of competence in this administration compared with others. But I still think a different administration - let's face, the one that lost! - would have been behind the curve and fighting with Congress about what to do while things got really worse.
But you look at two states with governors and major city mayors from the same party - CA and NY - and you see that there is a limit to partisan explanations. London Breed made a gutsy early call to close her city after actually listening to scientists, and Newsome supported her as long as she coordinated with the surrounding counties. Hats off to her for having the guts and to him for having her back. Meanwhile, here in NY, we have a mayor who actively fought with his health commissioner, openly couldn't decide what to do, and a bully governor whose only real interest initially was putting that mayor in his place. I can barely write about it, it brings me to tears. My wife is a nurse in Queens and at least seven of her co-workers are dead. and those two idiots have blood on their hands.
Odd that your wife would have so many coworkers over the age of 80. Because I have it on good authority, from this very blog, that covid is really only killing the elderly.
I hope you and your wife make it through this.
Thank you.