What would be a reasonable approach to classroom teaching in the fall?

[Caracal]

If a student was sitting too close to someone, or came too close to you, you just ask them politely to move away. If they refused, or kept doing it, then you would handle it the same way you would anything else that is disruptive or unsafe in the classroom.

But this it at a MASSIVELY greater scale!!!!! And the consequences are far greater. The possibility of a student infecting another by not following guidelines where the infected student could die is astronomically more problematic than some student watching porn which distracts other students sitting nearby.

In a class with dozens of students, most of the class time could be taken up with just attempting to police behaviour. (Think of policing people entering and leaving the class two metres apart; how long will that take???)

That isn't how any of this works. You say two meters because you live in Canada.  In the US the guideline is six feet. The reason it doesn't matter is because there's nothing magical about the distance. It is just a rough guideline and people have an easier time thinking about it if it is a round number. Being within five feet of someone for a second is almost certainly less risky than standing seven feet from them for 20 minutes. Perfect adherence to guidelines isn't possible, but if the vast majority of people are trying to be responsible, that helps reduce the risk.

[the_geneticist]

We can't even get our students to take the "you must be wearing closed-toe shoes, long pants, and goggles during lab" seriously.  Or the "no eating, drinking, or gum chewing in lab".  I've had to tell so many students that they need to not have their water bottles out, to spit out their gum, to put their goggles on their face, or to NOT EAT their lunch in the lab classroom.  There is no way they will agree to also wash their hands, wear masks, wipe down all shared surfaces, and stay at least 6 feet apart at all times. 
Labs would have to be online simply due to me kicking out that many students from the labs.

[Stockmann]

I strongly disagree with the conclusion regarding quarantine shaming.  The problem is exactly that people know what they should do, but they don't do it because it's inconvenient or annoying or whatever. 

This is a pretty good illustration of the problem with this mindset. It is easy and emotionally satisfying to assume that people who do something that seems reckless to you are just lazy jerks. But, there's a failure of empathy and imagination here. Many of the people in the park that seems too crowded have probably been shut up in tiny apartments for months. They might be dealing with anxiety and depression and need to do something that feels a little normal. They may not live anywhere near a less crowded park. It isn't ideal, but at least they are outside and not at somebody's house party. If you shame them, you actually end up telling people that if you can't follow the rules perfectly, you might as well not try to reduce risk.

Except that others have the choice not to go to the park. I have the choice of staying in my apartment and not sharing the risk with the other people at the park. It's a very different scenario if I had to choose between my livelihood and not going to the park, which would very much also make it my problem if people at the park are choosing not to wear facemasks, etc.

[Penna]

...a fully united front by faculty, admin, and enough other students providing peer pressure to follow the rules.

This is one of many things I'm worried about at my institution.  We've already had faculty announce in meetings that they will not wear masks and nor require their students to do so.  Even if the faculty who do want to make that a requirement for their classes are full supported by the admin, the air and surfaces in a small, poorly ventilated classroom for one course will necessarily be impacted by the students and faculty who have used that same space for at least the previous couple of hours or so.

[Caracal]

I strongly disagree with the conclusion regarding quarantine shaming.  The problem is exactly that people know what they should do, but they don't do it because it's inconvenient or annoying or whatever. 

This is a pretty good illustration of the problem with this mindset. It is easy and emotionally satisfying to assume that people who do something that seems reckless to you are just lazy jerks. But, there's a failure of empathy and imagination here. Many of the people in the park that seems too crowded have probably been shut up in tiny apartments for months. They might be dealing with anxiety and depression and need to do something that feels a little normal. They may not live anywhere near a less crowded park. It isn't ideal, but at least they are outside and not at somebody's house party. If you shame them, you actually end up telling people that if you can't follow the rules perfectly, you might as well not try to reduce risk.

Except that others have the choice not to go to the park. I have the choice of staying in my apartment and not sharing the risk with the other people at the park. It's a very different scenario if I had to choose between my livelihood and not going to the park, which would very much also make it my problem if people at the park are choosing not to wear facemasks, etc.

I wasn't drawing a parallel, it was part of a larger conversation about the problems involved with shaming and binary thinking around safety and adherence to rules. You should assume as a given that adherence to the rules is not going to be total and complete. If we go back to school, my adherence to the rules is not going to be total and complete. I'm going to be trying, but I'm quite sure that if we have in person classes, I will walk around a corner too fast and come face to face with someone, or I'll get distracted during class and get too close to a student. I'm not planning to be a jerk, I would try very hard to be conscientious, but I'll mess up at some point. That's part of the larger risk, but I think it misses the point to spend so much time worrying about what students will and won't do.

[marshwiggle]

You should assume as a given that adherence to the rules is not going to be total and complete. If we go back to school, my adherence to the rules is not going to be total and complete. I'm going to be trying, but I'm quite sure that if we have in person classes, I will walk around a corner too fast and come face to face with someone, or I'll get distracted during class and get too close to a student. I'm not planning to be a jerk, I would try very hard to be conscientious, but I'll mess up at some point. That's part of the larger risk, but I think it misses the point to spend so much time worrying about what students will and won't do.

But the whole issue around "flattening the curve" is about slowing the infection rate enough to avoid overwhelming the healthcare system. So if it takes a year of students back in school before a majority have been infected, that's OK, but if it happens within a month, that will be a disaster.  Given that about *15% of infected people require hospitalization, if a campus has 10000 students that's 1500 people in hospital!!! Even if herd immunity is reached at half that number, then it's still 750 people in hospital. (And that's totally ignoring how many family members they take it home to on holidays.)

My guess is, student behaviour being what it is, by the end of one semester pretty much everyone on campus will be inftected. And vastly quicker if social gatherings start to resume.


*And of that 15%, 1/3 (5%) wind up in the ICU.

[spork]

Petition signed by ~ 900 Penn State faculty:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfRYMyUIUxYFS4qWLQadcZ6nvEsXymCn09c664cYVluDz3UBg/viewform.

As usual, the letter is too long and mixes apples and oranges.

[marshwiggle]

Petition signed by ~ 900 Penn State faculty:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfRYMyUIUxYFS4qWLQadcZ6nvEsXymCn09c664cYVluDz3UBg/viewform.

As usual, the letter is too long and mixes apples and oranges.

And it does the everyone-should-be-able-to-choose-anything-anytime thing.

[Cheerful]

Petition signed by ~ 900 Penn State faculty:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfRYMyUIUxYFS4qWLQadcZ6nvEsXymCn09c664cYVluDz3UBg/viewform.

As usual, the letter is too long and mixes apples and oranges.

Thanks.  Glad to see faculty acting collectively and being assertive.  Long overdue.

[Puget]

You should assume as a given that adherence to the rules is not going to be total and complete. If we go back to school, my adherence to the rules is not going to be total and complete. I'm going to be trying, but I'm quite sure that if we have in person classes, I will walk around a corner too fast and come face to face with someone, or I'll get distracted during class and get too close to a student. I'm not planning to be a jerk, I would try very hard to be conscientious, but I'll mess up at some point. That's part of the larger risk, but I think it misses the point to spend so much time worrying about what students will and won't do.

But the whole issue around "flattening the curve" is about slowing the infection rate enough to avoid overwhelming the healthcare system. So if it takes a year of students back in school before a majority have been infected, that's OK, but if it happens within a month, that will be a disaster.  Given that about *15% of infected people require hospitalization, if a campus has 10000 students that's 1500 people in hospital!!! Even if herd immunity is reached at half that number, then it's still 750 people in hospital. (And that's totally ignoring how many family members they take it home to on holidays.)

My guess is, student behaviour being what it is, by the end of one semester pretty much everyone on campus will be inftected. And vastly quicker if social gatherings start to resume.


*And of that 15%, 1/3 (5%) wind up in the ICU.

There are real concerns, but this is completely off base because you are ignoring age. The rate of severe disease in traditional college age populations is much, much lower:

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6924e2.htm

Among 20-29 year olds without underlying health conditions**, 2.7% of confirmed cases were hospitalized and 0.3% ended up in the ICU.  Among all patients 20-29, the rates are 3.7% and 0.5%, reflecting that although rates are much higher in those with underlying conditions (at 17.5% and 3.4%), these underlying conditions are pretty rare in this age range. Numbers are even lower for 10-19 year olds.

The rate of hospitalization doesn't approach 15% in all patients until age 50-59 (13.4%), and in patients without underlying conditions until age 60-69 (15.4%)

We should be worrying more about protecting older faculty and staff, and everyone with underlying health conditions, but you aren't going to see 15% of students hospitalized.

**CDC includes cardiovascular disease, chronic lung disease, renal disease, diabetes, liver disease, immunocompromised, and neurologic/neurodevelopmental disability in this category.

[the_geneticist]

We have FINALLY been told what we were suspecting all along: Fall classes with be online*.  Now to see if our enrollment goes into free-fall.

*With very, very few exceptions for upper division studio classes and labs.

[spork]

Simulation of the fall semester campus experience for a "high risk" student:

https://caitkirby.com/downloads/Fall%202020.html.

[downer]

From today's WSJ
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-exactly-do-you-catch-covid-19-there-is-a-growing-consensus-11592317650

Instead, the major culprit is close-up, person-to-person interactions for extended periods. Crowded events, poorly ventilated areas and places where people are talking loudly—or singing, in one famous case—maximize the risk.

I read stuff like this and think that a reasonable approach to classroom teaching is to stay out of the classroom.

[Aster]

Juniors and seniors are pretty much stuck with their existing institution. So I'm pretty confident about enrollments for upperclassmen not destabilizing too much at most universities.

It's the sophomores and the incoming freshman that are going to dawdle with signing up for classes this Fall. Especially the incoming freshmen. The graduating high school class of 2020 has been irrevocably scarred by a miserable capstone experience. I really don't know what's going to happen with that cohort. I don't think that most of them know what's going to happen to themselves either.

[downer]

The graduating high school class of 2020 has been irrevocably scarred by a miserable capstone experience. I really don't know what's going to happen with that cohort. I don't think that most of them know what's going to happen to themselves either.

At least in NYC, there has been basically a no-fail policy for the graduating class. Arguably that final semester doesn't make a whole lot of difference to students anyway, but I do wonder who those students will do if they go to college. Many of them did very little work since March.