Why a return to campus is a bad idea
People Who Are at Increased Risk for Severe Illness | CDC - https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-at-increased-risk.html via @CDCgov
“It might be time for parents to get into the conversation about reopening college campuses. University administrators are deciding they’re going to go for it, which is exactly the same thing as saying, ‘We’re going to do what we can, hope for the best, and gamble that infection rates will be low enough to justify the unavoidable threat to the students.’
“For sure, the data tells us that the health threat of COVID-19 increases the older you are. So in aggregate, across the broad sample set of students, the laws of large numbers might work out to the advantage of the university.
“Not so for the students who become victims of reopening decisions driven by economics over the well-being of the people paying for the privilege of becoming subjects of a large, uncontrolled laboratory experiment in the age of pandemic infection.
“So far, university presidents are suggesting that they can create safer classrooms, and therefore, provide a safe campus. That’s a dangerously flawed premise, which willfully ignores everything we know about social distancing.
“Parents, you know this. Human nature is an irresistible force. The inconvenient truth is that the public health issue has very little to do with safer classrooms. Adjusting classroom instruction is the easy part. What about the other 21 hours in the day of every student on campus?
“Even if every other enterprise in America can reopen with some semblance of reasonable social distancing in place -- a sketchy proposition, at best, CONTINUE READING: glen brown: Why a return to campus is a bad idea
