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

[eigen]

Poly, experts don't recommend this anymore. You are an engineer, not an epidemiologist and it is pretty apparent you don't know what you're talking about.

You must be listening to very different experts than I am if your experts aren't recommending reduced contact (staying home), wearing a mask (and for long-duration contact, something to protect eyes as well) and washing hands regularly.

Also, just an aside, but Polly isn't an engineer last I checked. I frequently disagree on some things in her analyses, but she's been pretty spot on in her analysis of COVID spread risks.

[Caracal]

Poly, experts don't recommend this anymore. You are an engineer, not an epidemiologist and it is pretty apparent you don't know what you're talking about.

You must be listening to very different experts than I am if your experts aren't recommending reduced contact (staying home), wearing a mask (and for long-duration contact, something to protect eyes as well) and washing hands regularly.

That's not what Poly said. She said

"Stay home with people who also spend all their time at home, Wear a mask effectively for the fewest trips possible to the store and medical care and those are the only trips ever outside the home."

Overwhelmingly, as we have learned more about how this works, the focus has shifted to reducing close contact, especially indoors. Lots of people seem to have gotten stuck on the guidance from March and keep talking about "sheltering" and never leaving your house. Most of the epidemiologists I follow have pointed out the need to have guidance that emphasizes levels of risk. This is a particularly good piece https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/quarantine-fatigue-real-and-shaming-people-wont-help/611482/

They argue, persuasively, I think, that it doesn't help people make good decisions when you just tell them never to do anything. If you have no kids, don't have much need for in person human interaction outside of your home, and have a job that you can do from home "stay home except for essential trips" might be fine advice. For most people, however, it isn't feasible. Guidance emphasizing that the absolute safest thing to do might be to stay home, but that other activities fall on a spectrum of risk.  Guidance that says that "Enclosed and crowded settings, especially with prolonged and close contact, have the highest risk of transmission, while casual interaction in outdoor settings seems to be much lower risk" actually helps people figure out how to manage their lives. Telling them to go outside as little as possible is useless. It's the equivalent of "just don't have sex."

*And before it gets lost, I have no idea what this had to do with anything, since I wasn't advocating for in person classes in the fall, or against masks, or saying the risk was low, or any of those things.

[eigen]

You must be friends with different epidemiologists than I am.

Everyone I know who studies public health, epidemiology, virology, or other such areas is absolutely making personal choices and recommendations that mirror what Poly said.

The "only close contact is a problem" thing is, in my opinion, largely unsupported, especially when it comes to indoor contact. I see an increasingly large amount of it, especially in pieces written for public consumption. I do not see it mirrored at all in my discussions with colleagues who work in the field or in scientific articles. It seems to be almost completely borne out of a "people won't actually just stay home, so lets come up with something new to tell them that they're likely to follow to guide them". Outdoors certainly helps, but how "safe" it is depends a lot on how heavy transmission is in your area.

Chances increase with number of people, proximity, and time. The more you can minimize all of those, the better off you will be.

[polly_mer]

So, context and details matter when someone is really looking at the science to be used for decision making.  Yes, I agree.

Now cite real science papers or at least good social media discussion to back up the assertion that close contacts matter most.  It's true enough to be useful, but again misses much context and detail that will be important.

The short version of the HVAC answer that Downer asked upthread is what we know about ventilation more supports the notion of having few people gather together indoors for short periods of time rather than try to bring office buildings up to hospital specialty filters.  Significant air turnover from outside (the thing that is very energy-inefficient) is showing itself to be more practical to implement in the medium term.

I am an engineer by training.  My current biggest projects can be summarized as "explicate the mechanisms to provide decision makers with sufficient information to make high consequence decisions when the experiments can't be done in a timely manner if at all"'. I don't work directly on epidemiology projects, yet some of the most productive discussions come from my epidemiologist colleagues.

The consequences of being dismissive of the fatality rate of only a couple percent and statements like 80% are mild to moderate hit my annoyance hard because of my experiences in the defense industry.  It's a different mindset to think about greatest disruption to normal functioning instead of biggest deaths. 

To get the biggest disruptions, one would want major enough injuries to enough individuals that getting care will take healthy individuals out of their routine so they don't do their real jobs as they take the injured to the medics.  However, one would want those injuries to be minor enough there's a near certain recovery with medical care so the healthy individuals will try to save their colleagues instead of sticking to their posts.

Thus, any assertion that the fatality rate is very small or that most people will experience minor disruptions misses the bigger picture of the community results will be with near certainty.  Opening the classrooms in a population with any noticeable cases in the community is near certain to result in much wider spread and therefore much wider disruption of everything.

Allowing people to return to almost normal behaviors will also result in far more illness and death than necessary.  AIDS is no longer a death sentence because of decades of research on better treatments, not safer sex.  The thing that saved us with AIDS is how hard it is to get infected with the virus, unlike an air-borne virus that asymptomatic people can spread.

In terms of providing relevant information to decision makers who are only going to read the summary of the report they commissioned, one cannot stop at just the bare facts.  As the subject matter expert, one must provide the consequences in stark enough terms that the decision maker will take a good action (pay for changes to airflow rates and more outside air for HVACs, keep as many people at home for as long as possible) instead of the easy, but wrong message of "wear your masks and don't spend more than X minutes with any one person and nearly certainly you'll live through it as a young, healthy person".

[Cheerful]

Chances increase with number of people, proximity, and time. The more you can minimize all of those, the better off you will be.

+1  The more everyone minimizes all three right now, the better off our society will be.

[eigen]

I am an engineer by training. 

For some reason based on your posting I always had you down as more of a natural/physical scientist.

I guess now I have to move you to the dreaded "E" side from the "S" side in my mind. At least you're not T or M.

[Stockmann]

Telling them to go outside as little as possible is useless. It's the equivalent of "just don't have sex."

No, the equivalent of "just don't have sex" would be "never leave your home or allow anyone to visit your home." The  equivalent of polly's summary would be "always use a condom when having sex, except possibly if you and your partner are in an exclusive relationship and are both disease-free."
Yes, social distancing fatigue is very real. I live in a hotspot and this place has been a hotspot for quite long now, so I'm well aware of that from personal experience. Unfortunately that doesn't really change the facts of contagion.

[Caracal]

So, context and details matter when someone is really looking at the science to be used for decision making.  Yes, I agree.

Now cite real science papers or at least good social media discussion to back up the assertion that close contacts matter most.  It's true enough to be useful, but again misses much context and detail that will be important.

The short version of the HVAC answer that Downer asked upthread is what we know about ventilation more supports the notion of having few people gather together indoors for short periods of time rather than try to bring office buildings up to hospital specialty filters.  Significant air turnover from outside (the thing that is very energy-inefficient) is showing itself to be more practical to implement in the medium term.

I am an engineer by training.  My current biggest projects can be summarized as "explicate the mechanisms to provide decision makers with sufficient information to make high consequence decisions when the experiments can't be done in a timely manner if at all"'. I don't work directly on epidemiology projects, yet some of the most productive discussions come from my epidemiologist colleagues.

The consequences of being dismissive of the fatality rate of only a couple percent and statements like 80% are mild to moderate hit my annoyance hard because of my experiences in the defense industry.  It's a different mindset to think about greatest disruption to normal functioning instead of biggest deaths. 

To get the biggest disruptions, one would want major enough injuries to enough individuals that getting care will take healthy individuals out of their routine so they don't do their real jobs as they take the injured to the medics.  However, one would want those injuries to be minor enough there's a near certain recovery with medical care so the healthy individuals will try to save their colleagues instead of sticking to their posts.

Thus, any assertion that the fatality rate is very small or that most people will experience minor disruptions misses the bigger picture of the community results will be with near certainty.  Opening the classrooms in a population with any noticeable cases in the community is near certain to result in much wider spread and therefore much wider disruption of everything.

Allowing people to return to almost normal behaviors will also result in far more illness and death than necessary.  AIDS is no longer a death sentence because of decades of research on better treatments, not safer sex.  The thing that saved us with AIDS is how hard it is to get infected with the virus, unlike an air-borne virus that asymptomatic people can spread.

In terms of providing relevant information to decision makers who are only going to read the summary of the report they commissioned, one cannot stop at just the bare facts.  As the subject matter expert, one must provide the consequences in stark enough terms that the decision maker will take a good action (pay for changes to airflow rates and more outside air for HVACs, keep as many people at home for as long as possible) instead of the easy, but wrong message of "wear your masks and don't spend more than X minutes with any one person and nearly certainly you'll live through it as a young, healthy person".

The reading comprehension is still not going well, huh? I've highlighted all the things you implied I said that I did not. Not sure what the term is in your field, but I'd describe it as "intellectually dishonest garbage."

[Caracal]

Telling them to go outside as little as possible is useless. It's the equivalent of "just don't have sex."

No, the equivalent of "just don't have sex" would be "never leave your home or allow anyone to visit your home." The  equivalent of polly's summary would be "always use a condom when having sex, except possibly if you and your partner are in an exclusive relationship and are both disease-free."

Not really, no. For example, I'd  argue that getting COVID at a park or a beach, if you keep your distance, is more or less like the chance that a condom fails. Yet you still see all these stupid pictures in newspapers underneath stories about rising cases showing people at beaches, usually far apart from others not in their household.

[Aster]

This looks super fun.

"What will college classrooms look like in the fall? Case Western Reserve University shares simulated spaces"
https://www.cleveland.com/news/2020/07/what-will-college-classrooms-look-like-in-the-fall-case-western-reserve-university-shares-simulated-spaces.html

[eigen]

Telling them to go outside as little as possible is useless. It's the equivalent of "just don't have sex."

No, the equivalent of "just don't have sex" would be "never leave your home or allow anyone to visit your home." The  equivalent of polly's summary would be "always use a condom when having sex, except possibly if you and your partner are in an exclusive relationship and are both disease-free."

Not really, no. For example, I'd  argue that getting COVID at a park or a beach, if you keep your distance, is more or less like the chance that a condom fails. Yet you still see all these stupid pictures in newspapers underneath stories about rising cases showing people at beaches, usually far apart from others not in their household.

Particles from your breath don't magically disappear just because you're in a park or on a beach. They do disperse more rapidly, sure, depending on wind. They can also be much more easily spread to those "downwind" from you.

Similarly, jogging "distanced" on a park trail where you're constantly running through someone else's exhalations is not as low chance as you seem to making it out.

Being outside helps, sure, but I feel like you're edging into dangerously magical thinking territory with how much.

[spork]

This looks super fun.

"What will college classrooms look like in the fall? Case Western Reserve University shares simulated spaces"
https://www.cleveland.com/news/2020/07/what-will-college-classrooms-look-like-in-the-fall-case-western-reserve-university-shares-simulated-spaces.html

The last paragraph is exactly what I've been saying for months to faculty and admins at my employer. But "synchronous remote instruction" is part of the facade of "campus will be open," and that's more important than pedagogical outcomes.

[Anon1787]

As the subject matter expert, one must provide the consequences in stark enough terms that the decision maker will take a good action (pay for changes to airflow rates and more outside air for HVACs, keep as many people at home for as long as possible) instead of the easy, but wrong message of "wear your masks and don't spend more than X minutes with any one person and nearly certainly you'll live through it as a young, healthy person".

The subject matter expert has no particular expertise as to what constitutes a "good action" (which is a normative policy judgment that must balance many factors) and should stick to their own knitting. If the supercilious subject matter expert wants to make those decisions, then the expert should get the job of being the decision maker.

[Caracal]

Telling them to go outside as little as possible is useless. It's the equivalent of "just don't have sex."

No, the equivalent of "just don't have sex" would be "never leave your home or allow anyone to visit your home." The  equivalent of polly's summary would be "always use a condom when having sex, except possibly if you and your partner are in an exclusive relationship and are both disease-free."

Not really, no. For example, I'd  argue that getting COVID at a park or a beach, if you keep your distance, is more or less like the chance that a condom fails. Yet you still see all these stupid pictures in newspapers underneath stories about rising cases showing people at beaches, usually far apart from others not in their household.

Particles from your breath don't magically disappear just because you're in a park or on a beach. They do disperse more rapidly, sure, depending on wind. They can also be much more easily spread to those "downwind" from you.

Similarly, jogging "distanced" on a park trail where you're constantly running through someone else's exhalations is not as low chance as you seem to making it out.

Being outside helps, sure, but I feel like you're edging into dangerously magical thinking territory with how much.

This isn't correct. This article does a good job of explaining the dynamics.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/4/24/21233226/coronavirus-runners-cyclists-airborne-infectious-dose
Here is a Virologist explaining why it is pretty hard to get infected by a runner or while running.

"The risks of virus transmissibility in the air outdoors is likely quite low in those contexts, although this risk hasn't been definitively measured," Rasmussen said. "Outside, things like sunlight, wind, rain, ambient temperature, and humidity can affect virus infectivity and transmissibility, so while we can't say there's zero risk, it's likely low unless you are engaging in activities as part of a large crowd (such as a protest). Solitary outdoor exercise is likely low-risk."

Here is a pathologist in the same article talking about risks
Asked if she could offer a way to assess the risk of various activities in terms we can easily wrap our minds around, Kasten said to consider the difference in the risk between taking a stroll through the park on an even path versus climbing up a steep cliff face.

"Asked if she could offer a way to assess the risk of various activities in terms we can easily wrap our minds around, Kasten said to consider the difference in the risk between taking a stroll through the park on an even path versus climbing up a steep cliff face. Sure, you could slip, fall, strike your head, and die on that path in the park. Likewise, you could free-solo successfully to the top of El Capitan. But most of us would accept the risk of the stroll and not accept [the risk of] dangling from the cliff," she said. "Breathing in someone's sneeze cloud, close by, without a mask — that's the cliff face. Jogging several feet away, or getting the mail — that's the park."

The article explains the factors that go into this in far more detail. Basically, you need to think about effective dose, which is why things like the density of the gathering, how long you spend in the vicinity of any particular person, and masks make a difference.

There's something weird going on here. Various people on this thread, not just Poly, seem to keep thinking I'm implying things I'm not writing. You just accused me "of dangerous magical thinking" for repeating something that is completely widely accepted by every actual expert I've ever read, that limited and distant contact outside is low risk. I think what is happening here is that lots of people are dividing the world into people who are concerned enough and not concerned enough. However, the only way you get on team concerned is to be equally concerned about everything. Otherwise, you're cavalier.

If I seem offended by this kind of accusation, it is because I am. I'm not addressing this to Poly, who I think is perfectly happy to accuse me of indifference to human life, if she thinks it would be a good rhetorical point, but for everyone else. I'm not cavalier.  I've modified my life hugely to try to reduce the risk to myself and others. However, perfect safety isn't feasible, so I try to balance out risks. I also think that basic kindness and understand is really important here. That's true, even for people engaging in really risky activities, but it is especially true for people doing things that are relatively low risk. From a practical standpoint, it is also just a waste of time. The virus isn't spreading through people at beaches , or having socially distant family gatherings outside, even if you personally have chosen not to take on the risk of those things.

[polly_mer]

I am an engineer by training. 

For some reason based on your posting I always had you down as more of a natural/physical scientist.

I guess now I have to move you to the dreaded "E" side from the "S" side in my mind. At least you're not T or M.

By practice, I have spent most of my time at the intersection of computational physical chemistry and computational chemical physics.  My graduate degrees state 'materials engineering'.  My BS states 'basic sciences with concentrations in chemistry and engineering'.

My current job title is scientist and I am officially categorized as on the physics side working as part of the interface with engineering.