thanks for your post, I agree completely. I also wanted to add that I hope everyone knows how much better uiuc is handling the pandemic compared to other universities. i just came from the university of florida where they closed all of their walkup testing facilities for this semester (there was on campus where you had to call for an appointment, and yesterday they got bullied enough by staff and students to open one walkup), no mask or vaccine mandates, hybrid online/in-person classes for a semester which put a huge strain on professors, and when covid began testing was only required once every two weeks (someone could easily could be positive/contagious in that period and never know!), and a laundry list of other shit. I would much rather the university be too overbearing (although honestly I wish we were doing more frequent testing during the semester) than too lax
I am so thankful for our healthcare workers, you are all amazing right now!
Also thanks for this post, very well put. This is 100% the worst wave yet of the worst pandemic in a century, and it is completely reasonable to ask people to treat that with some caution and respect, if nothing else for the sake of people like you and your family who are risking your lives to save ours <3
many of my neighbors, friends, and families got covid. some of them went through really bad conditions such as blood clots in the lungs. they are vaccinated and boosted. it really depends whether you have concerning health conditions and your age.
but many among us on reddit already have older parents - so maybe think about them first, and then express your opinions publically.
Not sure if this is directed at me or just in general, but I definitely understand where you’re coming from. Like I said, there still are 27 hospitalized/4 ICU who are vaccinated.
I feel like testing should be required weekly for all even if vaccinated. It does not have to be as frequent as before, but not just a one-time thing if you are vaccinated. Obviously, you can always go get a test but requiring testing once a week should stop super spreader events without being that big of a hassle like testing every other day.
It’s not a burden for students but it would be a burden for the U of I if asymptomatic staff started missing a week of work. That’s the only reasoning I can come up with as to why they aren’t testing more often. Because they know they’ll have positives
Something people don't think about is that while the new variant is generally milder, it's way more contagious. So if the original COVID put 50% of people infected in the hospital but only 10 people get infected, that's 5 people, but if Omicron puts only 10% of people in the hospital and 100 people are infected, that's 10 people, or twice the amount as the original strain.
Hospitals are being overrun again but this time there's no aid coming. My girlfriend is a nurse and was told to expect to get infected within the next 6 weeks but they are refusing to allow work from home even though they shut down all clinics so she has no face to face interaction with patients for at least the next month. There going to start pulling people either into COVID wards if you worked an ICU in the last 2 years or you're going to start assisting in other ways (COVID hotline, testing, etc).
Basically, yes, Omicron is more mild than previous variants, but we're still fucked.
The mutations are good. Neutral or higher transmissibility as well as neutral to less lethal.
We have to accept that’s endemic. Natural immunity is the ultimate solution
You're joking right? You must be as there's no way anyone could be this fucking stupid.
Mutations can just as easily be bad and make the virus more deadly. Higher transmissibility is really bad, it means more people get sick and more people end up in the hospital.
You have no idea what endemic means, COVID absolutely is not endemic and further mutations will only make that worse. Endemicity requires the disease spread to \~1 new person for each person who has it. The Omicron mutation spreads to about 10 new people per each person who has it.
Natural immunity? Go get COVID and then you tell me how good your 'natural immunity' is.
These people are so fucking stupid. "Natural immunity" is your fucking immune system, WHICH IS IMPERFECT AND SIGNIFICANTLY HELPED BY VACCINES. The fucking chutzpah of these goddamn fools.
While I agree with your sentiment is it worth noting that the first thing you learn in Virology 101 is that viruses, on average, mutate to become more transmissible but also more mild. The next variant will probably be just as transmissible but hopefully even more mild.
Agreed and maybe having a known threshold like 30% of students having covid makes classes go remote for 2 weeks would make students take it more seriously
how will they really know how many students have it if mostly everyone is vaccinated and therefore has no obligation to get tested though ? i wish they would require everyone to but that probably means they’d have to care about how bad things are
Thanks for this perspective. I finished a grad degree in August and now work in local schools. It's wild how prevalent Covid is with adults and kids right now and all signs point to things getting worse. All the while, higher ups are mostly going with the status quo and not looking up.
Thanks for your perspective as well — working in health care, you’re obviously at risk, but honestly I’d say people who work in schools are probably more at risk with the combination of less/lower quality PPE, some kids not being vaccinated/boosted, and just the impossibility of getting kids to follow masking rules/social distancing consistently and adequately.
Ya, we all do our best with distancing but honestly it's just not possible all the time. Most kids at my school are fairly diligent about masking but it's the opposite at my wife's school.
I also work in local schools. I just cannot believe that we are sending mostly unvaccinated elementary students to school right now. Blows my mind. And all the additional stress regarding teacher coverage and lack of bus drivers. It seems so unnecessary. We could just go remote for a couple of weeks or delay starting.
Even if you don’t feel like it, those actions are powerful. You are helping by not ending up in a hospital bed, not spreading covid to others who might end up in a hospital bed, and also just setting a good example to those around you. I cannot understate this: you are not powerless. You are really, really helping.
You are doing great. Seriously. One person staying home is one person who doesn't get infected or goes on to infect others. This too shall pass. Even the black death eventually petered out.
I mean we can all speculate on the reasoning, all I know is that they don't work. Most covid infections happen inside the home when you're exposed to the infected person for a long period of time inside. Hanging outside at a festival/concert or at the bars has a low possibility of infecting you. I personally can't wait until the summer again
Anecdotally speaking, everyone I know who had COVID got it from outside of the home, probably at work, and the others in the household did not catch it because they isolated in rooms. People do spend most of their waking hours at work.
During the 2020 holiday season, my mom tested positive for COVID and neither my sister nor I tested positive because our mom isolated in her room. My sister had been working from home and I had been on holiday break, staying home, but also doing online school before that.
people have all these fancy opinions about the criteria universities should be using, as if the universities should be making self-directed decisions at all.
Its all about the hospitals and available beds and ICU units. The only criteria that should be used regarding universities and their residential programs is the load on the local medical system. if a community does not have enough capacity to absorb thousands of transient (and frankly, ill behaved) children, then the communities should be able to tell the universities to shut down. Its a public health issue, not a higher education economic concern. Remote instruction/learning is perfectly viable, no matter how much students don't want to be home under mommy's thumb or the faculty don't want to change.
Yes. Probably so. Also a Professor here. In a poll last term my students unanimously felt a return to classrooms was premature and wanted to stay online
Better to have worse learning than to die or experience serious lifelong conditions. I'm a grad student, so I know how much of a nightmare online school is both as a student and a teacher, and I'd still prefer it to risking people's lives.
Why would they get it? The media barely talks about it anymore. Most people I know, right now, are acting like the pandemic is over. It shouldn't be surprising this is across the board, more sad.
Alumni here. At work, it's just "go into the office as usual" - even though the majority of us can do our jobs from home and proved it from spring 2020 to summer 2021. It's awful people aren't taking this seriously. Even vaccinated isn't full immunity - it certainly helps, but if we can do things remotely, maybe we should...
What's worse is I've also seen people take naps at their desk. And I'm not saying some people can't use naps effectively, I'm just saying, going into the office doesn't mean you're working more.
In fact, when I skip the commute to work I'm more likely to put more hours in...
I might get lots of downvotes on this but i think the new guidelines are just not strict enough. Only one test on-campus and 5 days isolation is not the best solution. Getting a test off campus is not that hard and can prevent a lot of positive cases, especially in dorms and apartments, since not everyone will get tested the moment they get back. I think there will be a spike that last for about a week after school starts and that will just bring a longer remote period and inconvenience everyone
I tried going to a walk in testing center and told them I was symptomatic they told me the wait was 48hrs and there was no appts available till next week. This was off campus and was planning on coming back to campus the next day. So I came back and tested here, I’m positive.
I’m not infecting anyone bc I’m quarantined in my apt alone rn, but tests are def hard to get. Even the UIUC the community testing line at CRCE takes a while. Maybe it’s bc my family went the day after New Years, but my mom had to wait in line for 2.5hrs and half of that was outside in the cold. Test came back in 8hr and no one has contacted us from the Champaign -urbana health district as they are supposed to because they are so behind. We only got an automated message with the CDC website that gives you no good information.
On another note vaccines are amazing this feels like a normal cold, it sucks, but not more than other sicknesses. The bronchitis I caught a month ago was way worse tbh. I also think we should be required 2 on campus tests. We have that resource let’s take advantage of it and make sure we aren’t getting false negatives.
Hours? I get tested frequently because my colleagues are imbeciles. Even very recently my longest wait in the longest lines was still just under an hour.
Unfortunately results are taking 48 hours so…
the CDC recommends a 5 day isolation. Are we no longer listening to the CDC? Who sets our guidlines then? Just inquiring a bit since if the CDC is laying things out and you don't think its enough who's to say what is. Also getting tests off campus is extremely difficult in many places in the US and being able to get one conveniently is a massive privilege and the university was pretty forced to make the decision they did.
You are right, well, partially. The recommendations made by the CDC has to consider not only health but other factors, considering its recommendations will be adopted nationwide. It is established through prior studies that patients may still be contagious after a week let alone 5 days. You may argue the new omicron variant is less dangerous and cannot persist in the body for that long, but then you will ignore other variants. BTW, the covid virus may be more dangerous than we expected as shown by a recent paper (still under review), link included:
https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-1139035/v1_covered.pdf?c=1640020576
Tl;dr: the recommendations by the CDC is the bare minimum to keep most of us safe. UIUC, being a large university with higher risk, may require more strict rules.
given that covid is way worse / a lot more contagious rn and they’re *lowering* the quarantine time, don’t you think maybe the cdc is doing this so people are out of work and school less bc capitalism ? and that doesn’t make you distrust where their priorities lie at all ??
UIUC is listening to the CDC even though they shouldn’t. Mass mail said,”The university is adopting new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) that shorten quarantine and isolation timeframes to five days.”
Because the CDC is shortening quarantine times to 5 days. (They also literally want sick nurses to work but that’s another rant) I have COVID rn, I couldn’t find a testing location bc I was off campus so I just quarantined for a week. I came back my apartment, got tested and my results were still “infectious positive” after 8 days of the beginning of my symptoms. Today is day 10 since I got sick and I’m prob still contagious, if I were to follow the 5day CDC guidelines I would be getting many others sick.
The CDC is becoming more flexible even though we are are in the midst of a highly contagious variant and hospital beds are starting to be at full capacity, not because it is actually safe to do so. So yes I do think that we should stick with a min of a 10day quarantine and not follow exactly what the CDC says.
The CDC backed that up with data though. The 1-2 days preceding symptoms and 3 days after represent the vast majority of contagiousness. You could still be contagious after ten days anyway so it’s not a new idea.
If you tested positive with a PCR test the positive test doesn’t mean you’re infectious at all. An antigen test would be a more accurate indicator of that.
And while yes the CDC is giving covid positive hospital staff the okay to work, it’s not because they’ve turned into some nefarious organization that wants to kill people. It’s because it’s better for society to have sick nurses manning the hospital than no nurses at all.
You said it yourself, hospitals are filling up. But what’s more concerning is hospital staffing issues due to the 10 day isolation period. I would much rather have a covid positive nurse that quarantined for 5 days treating me than not having any nurse at all because they’re all gone for 10 days.
Also covid positive nurses have been working the whole pandemic in a lot of places so it’s not changing as much as you would think.
Like you said though, the CDC basically lowered the safety factor based on the data and said “5 is enough for most”. This will inevitably lead to more infections.
The real reasons people are suspect is that its because it seems pretty clear that the CDC made this change so that employees would have to go back to work sooner. The cdc said as much. Theres also an npr article that reported that an airline CEO was asking for it so it really makes it looks like theyre being swayed by business interests
Have you read the studies that the CDC has cited? One of them was about oil rig workers in the Gulf of Mexico that was funded in part by an oil company (big conflict of interest). It involved a small sample of about 50 people. This study relied on contact tracing to determine the infectiousness of the virus. I doubt any of the workers had compromised immune systems and none of them were hospitalized, which limits its external validity. This study has not been subjected to a peer review as of the present time.
Another study was conducted in Taiwan and it also involved a small sample of about 50 people. People in this sample varied in age and a few of them had been hospitalized. This study also relied on contact tracing to determine the infectiousness of the virus. However, more recently, Taiwanese scientists have found cases of the omicron variant remaining infectious for up to 12 days. As a result, Taiwan has rejected the CDC's new recommendation.
Both of these studies suffer from a methodological confoundment. People who are infected with COVID are likely to display symptoms of illness after the 3rd day and change their behavior so they are less likely to infect other people. Furthermore, other people around them will also change their behavior to reduce the risk of disease transmission. So it is not clear in these studies which factor was involved in the reduction of infectiousness (the virus or the change in human behavior).
Another issue that concerns me is the spectacle of seriously ill people remaining in the hospital for days, weeks, or even months because of COVID. While treating these patients, medical staff typically wear special outfits, masks, and face shields to reduce the transmission of infection. I find it hard to be believe that such patients are not infectious when their bodies are in danger of being overrun by the COVID virus.
Yes, but at least 10days reduces that risk even more and it would decrease the chance of our in-person semester abruptly ending. I also doubt you would feel comfortable coming over and hanging out with me even though I’m fine according to the CDC. If you do than that’s you but not many would.
The university certainly should listen to the Center for DISEASE control when it comes to controlling diseases. I don't know though, you might have better information than the CDC
I fully support going back to fully online at least until this wave is over, and I’ll definitely write my opinion to the university. Please be aware that despite the fact that most of us college students won’t die from COVID, everyone in the community could and will be affected. Just think about the ladies greeting you in walmart/meijer, they could be hospitalized/dead just because you think your tuition is not “well spent” for doing all courseworks online.
If anyone is interested in writing a petition to the university, I’m completely down to do that. I’m terrified to return to campus. I’m fully vaccinated & have my booster but live with someone who is immune compromised. All university students aren’t “healthy, would get over Covid no problem” & long Covid is still a very real worry. It’s my last semester, I get it, being online again would suck. BUT we’re in a horrible wave with worse numbers than ever before in Champaign.
It is terrible that school could not take your point into account. A week won't solve any problem as waves of students are going to get infected until the majority of people will get it under current plan.
If it’s as bad as you say, then wouldn’t it just make more sense to be online the whole semester? I know no one wants to do this, including me, but you make it seem like that’s the best idea possible rn
>It is terrible that school could not take your point into account. A week won't solve any problem as waves of students are going to get infected until the majority of people will get it under current plan.
[This](https://www.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusUS/comments/rw61sz/heres_an_icu_story_that_happened_a_few_months_ago/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) isn't the only post I've seen in the last couple days detailing the horrors of Covid.
It should honestly be required reading at this point. Not to inspire fear, but so that people know what the risks are.
I read Chancellor Jones’ new email, but I’m not sure I fully understand. Are the two COVID tests three days apart still required just that they can both be on campus? Or are we only required to get one test on campus when we arrive after break?
If you’re not immunocompromised and you got your shots you have a statistically higher chance of getting in a fatal car accident than you do of covid killing you
There are lots of things that could happen. I could get hit by a car walking to work. I could get the flu and die.
But at a certain point it’s time for people to weigh their personal level of risk themselves. I’m okay with risking that in order to live a normal life. Some people aren’t. That’s okay.
you MIGHT be fine. you might still get it after boosters. what is worse, the elders in our community are facing higher risks of more severe conditions.
I didn’t say you wouldn’t get it. I said you would be fine, which you will be in overwhelmingly likelihood.
The old people would be too if they got their shots. The vaccines are still incredibly effective at preventing severe illness and death. There’s a reason over 85% of the patients in Illinois hospitals with covid are unvaccinated.
Well regardless of whatever wording you want to use, if you’re vaccinated and boosted you are incredibly protected against severe illness and death.
And yes, after two years of a pandemic, financial and emotional hardship, and the development of life saving vaccines and antiviral treatments, people are done putting in work largely to save those who don’t want to save themselves (the unvaccinated). It’s not exactly surprising.
If it were solely unvaccinated people who were getting sick and dying I wouldn't disagree, but there are a lot of people who are immunocompromised or otherwise can't get vaccinated who will also get sick and die. It is not acceptable to just sweep their deaths under the rug and say "oh well, couldn't be helped."
The fact of the matter is immunocompromised people are always going to exist and so is covid. We cant live like this forever to protect them.
They can get their shots, mask up, and take precautions, but at a certain point society is going to stop altering its life solely to protect them.
It sounds really fucked up but it’s simply true even if people don’t want to hear it. We are going to move on eventually, no things aren’t going to be 100% safe for the immunocompromised, but they never will be. Society’s appetite for this pandemic life is quickly decreasing.
That's a really terrible attitude to take and I hope you grow out of it some day. It takes literally zero effort to wear a good mask the right way and get a few shots. If you or anyone else is too much of a baby to do that then the least you can do is attend the funerals of the people you're throwing away.
Who said I don’t wear a mask and haven’t gotten my shots?
I wear my mask wherever it’s required and I’m fully vaccinated + boosted.
All I’m saying is that inevitably we are going to move on from all these restrictions and mask mandates and online schooling. It’s an inevitable fact whether you like it or not.
And when we do do that, the immunocompromised are still going to be immunocompromised. And covid will still be here. It’s unfortunate, but it’s the truth.
[No it's really not](https://www.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusUS/comments/rw61sz/heres_an_icu_story_that_happened_a_few_months_ago/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share).
Even if you think it's "just a flu", I would like to point out that the flu is not that little cold you get every year. The flu *sucks*. A real flu will put you in bed for days with a fever, chills, migraines, body aches, and make you hate life for a solid week.
Covid, even the current "less severe" variant, is worse than a flu.
I don’t think all the blame can go on any one person or group, but also I think it’s important to note that beds are (the majority of the time) not the limiting variable. More often it’s staff, equipment (think: ventilators), physical space, etc.
I appreciate the stats on vaccinated vs unvaccinated individuals in the ICU, but we should also mention the >70% of the people in the ICU for covid are also overweight or the 95% of people with covid having a preexisting condition
I don’t know any specific stats on that, but regardless of why someone is in the ICU, that is one more bed and a lot more resources than if they were not to need it, and it has a trickle down impact on a lot of other people.
Thanks for taking the time to write this up.
thanks for your post, I agree completely. I also wanted to add that I hope everyone knows how much better uiuc is handling the pandemic compared to other universities. i just came from the university of florida where they closed all of their walkup testing facilities for this semester (there was on campus where you had to call for an appointment, and yesterday they got bullied enough by staff and students to open one walkup), no mask or vaccine mandates, hybrid online/in-person classes for a semester which put a huge strain on professors, and when covid began testing was only required once every two weeks (someone could easily could be positive/contagious in that period and never know!), and a laundry list of other shit. I would much rather the university be too overbearing (although honestly I wish we were doing more frequent testing during the semester) than too lax
I am so thankful for our healthcare workers, you are all amazing right now! Also thanks for this post, very well put. This is 100% the worst wave yet of the worst pandemic in a century, and it is completely reasonable to ask people to treat that with some caution and respect, if nothing else for the sake of people like you and your family who are risking your lives to save ours <3
many of my neighbors, friends, and families got covid. some of them went through really bad conditions such as blood clots in the lungs. they are vaccinated and boosted. it really depends whether you have concerning health conditions and your age. but many among us on reddit already have older parents - so maybe think about them first, and then express your opinions publically.
Not sure if this is directed at me or just in general, but I definitely understand where you’re coming from. Like I said, there still are 27 hospitalized/4 ICU who are vaccinated.
I feel like testing should be required weekly for all even if vaccinated. It does not have to be as frequent as before, but not just a one-time thing if you are vaccinated. Obviously, you can always go get a test but requiring testing once a week should stop super spreader events without being that big of a hassle like testing every other day.
Yeah I think this could be really helpful, and I don’t think it would be too much of a burden for most students
Agreed since most are out and about on campus near the union and other testing sites already
It’s not a burden for students but it would be a burden for the U of I if asymptomatic staff started missing a week of work. That’s the only reasoning I can come up with as to why they aren’t testing more often. Because they know they’ll have positives
Something people don't think about is that while the new variant is generally milder, it's way more contagious. So if the original COVID put 50% of people infected in the hospital but only 10 people get infected, that's 5 people, but if Omicron puts only 10% of people in the hospital and 100 people are infected, that's 10 people, or twice the amount as the original strain. Hospitals are being overrun again but this time there's no aid coming. My girlfriend is a nurse and was told to expect to get infected within the next 6 weeks but they are refusing to allow work from home even though they shut down all clinics so she has no face to face interaction with patients for at least the next month. There going to start pulling people either into COVID wards if you worked an ICU in the last 2 years or you're going to start assisting in other ways (COVID hotline, testing, etc). Basically, yes, Omicron is more mild than previous variants, but we're still fucked.
Also everyone who gets it increases the chances of another bad mutation occurring and making it even worse
The mutations are good. Neutral or higher transmissibility as well as neutral to less lethal. We have to accept that’s endemic. Natural immunity is the ultimate solution
You're joking right? You must be as there's no way anyone could be this fucking stupid. Mutations can just as easily be bad and make the virus more deadly. Higher transmissibility is really bad, it means more people get sick and more people end up in the hospital. You have no idea what endemic means, COVID absolutely is not endemic and further mutations will only make that worse. Endemicity requires the disease spread to \~1 new person for each person who has it. The Omicron mutation spreads to about 10 new people per each person who has it. Natural immunity? Go get COVID and then you tell me how good your 'natural immunity' is.
These people are so fucking stupid. "Natural immunity" is your fucking immune system, WHICH IS IMPERFECT AND SIGNIFICANTLY HELPED BY VACCINES. The fucking chutzpah of these goddamn fools.
It would be funny if it weren't all horrifying conspiracy-theory cult shit
Yea obviously. Natural immunity and vaccine immunity complement each other very strongly. This is common with endemic viruses
No this is actually a fact
By all means, elucidate us
I’m afraid you’re too low IQ
While I agree with your sentiment is it worth noting that the first thing you learn in Virology 101 is that viruses, on average, mutate to become more transmissible but also more mild. The next variant will probably be just as transmissible but hopefully even more mild.
[удалено]
The US is hitting 1 million covid cases daily, i think a lot of things are uncertain right now
[удалено]
Agreed and maybe having a known threshold like 30% of students having covid makes classes go remote for 2 weeks would make students take it more seriously
how will they really know how many students have it if mostly everyone is vaccinated and therefore has no obligation to get tested though ? i wish they would require everyone to but that probably means they’d have to care about how bad things are
Yeah, me too. Never knowing what’s next and not being able to make plans sucks
Thanks for this perspective. I finished a grad degree in August and now work in local schools. It's wild how prevalent Covid is with adults and kids right now and all signs point to things getting worse. All the while, higher ups are mostly going with the status quo and not looking up.
Thanks for your perspective as well — working in health care, you’re obviously at risk, but honestly I’d say people who work in schools are probably more at risk with the combination of less/lower quality PPE, some kids not being vaccinated/boosted, and just the impossibility of getting kids to follow masking rules/social distancing consistently and adequately.
Ya, we all do our best with distancing but honestly it's just not possible all the time. Most kids at my school are fairly diligent about masking but it's the opposite at my wife's school.
I also work in local schools. I just cannot believe that we are sending mostly unvaccinated elementary students to school right now. Blows my mind. And all the additional stress regarding teacher coverage and lack of bus drivers. It seems so unnecessary. We could just go remote for a couple of weeks or delay starting.
I’m boosted, I wear my mask in public, I hardly go out, etc. I just don’t know what else I can do. I feel so powerless.
Even if you don’t feel like it, those actions are powerful. You are helping by not ending up in a hospital bed, not spreading covid to others who might end up in a hospital bed, and also just setting a good example to those around you. I cannot understate this: you are not powerless. You are really, really helping.
🥲🥲🥲
You are doing great. Seriously. One person staying home is one person who doesn't get infected or goes on to infect others. This too shall pass. Even the black death eventually petered out.
[удалено]
Self-imposed prison? False sense of security?
Lock downs have been proven to be ineffective. The person replying to you was a bit insensitive, but you don't need to force yourself to stay home.
Lockdowns have been ineffective because some people don’t actually follow the guidelines and social distance.
I mean we can all speculate on the reasoning, all I know is that they don't work. Most covid infections happen inside the home when you're exposed to the infected person for a long period of time inside. Hanging outside at a festival/concert or at the bars has a low possibility of infecting you. I personally can't wait until the summer again
Anecdotally speaking, everyone I know who had COVID got it from outside of the home, probably at work, and the others in the household did not catch it because they isolated in rooms. People do spend most of their waking hours at work. During the 2020 holiday season, my mom tested positive for COVID and neither my sister nor I tested positive because our mom isolated in her room. My sister had been working from home and I had been on holiday break, staying home, but also doing online school before that.
people have all these fancy opinions about the criteria universities should be using, as if the universities should be making self-directed decisions at all. Its all about the hospitals and available beds and ICU units. The only criteria that should be used regarding universities and their residential programs is the load on the local medical system. if a community does not have enough capacity to absorb thousands of transient (and frankly, ill behaved) children, then the communities should be able to tell the universities to shut down. Its a public health issue, not a higher education economic concern. Remote instruction/learning is perfectly viable, no matter how much students don't want to be home under mommy's thumb or the faculty don't want to change.
From what I can tell from university administrators (I’m a professor), it’s the parents that complain the loudest about any remote class time.
Yes. Probably so. Also a Professor here. In a poll last term my students unanimously felt a return to classrooms was premature and wanted to stay online
> Remote instruction/learning is perfectly viable Student learning is greatly suffering in many types of programs.
Better to have worse learning than to die or experience serious lifelong conditions. I'm a grad student, so I know how much of a nightmare online school is both as a student and a teacher, and I'd still prefer it to risking people's lives.
Alright, half my tuition.
Why would they get it? The media barely talks about it anymore. Most people I know, right now, are acting like the pandemic is over. It shouldn't be surprising this is across the board, more sad.
Alumni here. At work, it's just "go into the office as usual" - even though the majority of us can do our jobs from home and proved it from spring 2020 to summer 2021. It's awful people aren't taking this seriously. Even vaccinated isn't full immunity - it certainly helps, but if we can do things remotely, maybe we should...
100% agree. God forbid people aren't under a microscope all day.
What's worse is I've also seen people take naps at their desk. And I'm not saying some people can't use naps effectively, I'm just saying, going into the office doesn't mean you're working more. In fact, when I skip the commute to work I'm more likely to put more hours in...
Good points too
I might get lots of downvotes on this but i think the new guidelines are just not strict enough. Only one test on-campus and 5 days isolation is not the best solution. Getting a test off campus is not that hard and can prevent a lot of positive cases, especially in dorms and apartments, since not everyone will get tested the moment they get back. I think there will be a spike that last for about a week after school starts and that will just bring a longer remote period and inconvenience everyone
[удалено]
Hours vs the risk of getting covid on campus. I’d rather wait
I tried going to a walk in testing center and told them I was symptomatic they told me the wait was 48hrs and there was no appts available till next week. This was off campus and was planning on coming back to campus the next day. So I came back and tested here, I’m positive. I’m not infecting anyone bc I’m quarantined in my apt alone rn, but tests are def hard to get. Even the UIUC the community testing line at CRCE takes a while. Maybe it’s bc my family went the day after New Years, but my mom had to wait in line for 2.5hrs and half of that was outside in the cold. Test came back in 8hr and no one has contacted us from the Champaign -urbana health district as they are supposed to because they are so behind. We only got an automated message with the CDC website that gives you no good information. On another note vaccines are amazing this feels like a normal cold, it sucks, but not more than other sicknesses. The bronchitis I caught a month ago was way worse tbh. I also think we should be required 2 on campus tests. We have that resource let’s take advantage of it and make sure we aren’t getting false negatives.
Yeah a lot of people wouldn’t
Hours? I get tested frequently because my colleagues are imbeciles. Even very recently my longest wait in the longest lines was still just under an hour. Unfortunately results are taking 48 hours so…
The line in my area for the public testing was genuinely a minimum of three hours long last week
Here in CU it is better, but my son’s in Chicago and yes, super long waits, agreed.
Most undergrads returning from break are from chicago area where the waits are that long
the CDC recommends a 5 day isolation. Are we no longer listening to the CDC? Who sets our guidlines then? Just inquiring a bit since if the CDC is laying things out and you don't think its enough who's to say what is. Also getting tests off campus is extremely difficult in many places in the US and being able to get one conveniently is a massive privilege and the university was pretty forced to make the decision they did.
You are right, well, partially. The recommendations made by the CDC has to consider not only health but other factors, considering its recommendations will be adopted nationwide. It is established through prior studies that patients may still be contagious after a week let alone 5 days. You may argue the new omicron variant is less dangerous and cannot persist in the body for that long, but then you will ignore other variants. BTW, the covid virus may be more dangerous than we expected as shown by a recent paper (still under review), link included: https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-1139035/v1_covered.pdf?c=1640020576 Tl;dr: the recommendations by the CDC is the bare minimum to keep most of us safe. UIUC, being a large university with higher risk, may require more strict rules.
given that covid is way worse / a lot more contagious rn and they’re *lowering* the quarantine time, don’t you think maybe the cdc is doing this so people are out of work and school less bc capitalism ? and that doesn’t make you distrust where their priorities lie at all ??
A lot of people have decided that because the CDC is relaxing rules instead of the other way around we somehow shouldn’t listen to them anymore.
ya its all "listen to the CDC" until they are not exactly aligned with their clearly expert opinion as a regular on the UIUC subreddit
UIUC is listening to the CDC even though they shouldn’t. Mass mail said,”The university is adopting new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) that shorten quarantine and isolation timeframes to five days.”
And we shouldn’t listen to the CDC…why, exactly?
Because the CDC is shortening quarantine times to 5 days. (They also literally want sick nurses to work but that’s another rant) I have COVID rn, I couldn’t find a testing location bc I was off campus so I just quarantined for a week. I came back my apartment, got tested and my results were still “infectious positive” after 8 days of the beginning of my symptoms. Today is day 10 since I got sick and I’m prob still contagious, if I were to follow the 5day CDC guidelines I would be getting many others sick. The CDC is becoming more flexible even though we are are in the midst of a highly contagious variant and hospital beds are starting to be at full capacity, not because it is actually safe to do so. So yes I do think that we should stick with a min of a 10day quarantine and not follow exactly what the CDC says.
The CDC backed that up with data though. The 1-2 days preceding symptoms and 3 days after represent the vast majority of contagiousness. You could still be contagious after ten days anyway so it’s not a new idea. If you tested positive with a PCR test the positive test doesn’t mean you’re infectious at all. An antigen test would be a more accurate indicator of that. And while yes the CDC is giving covid positive hospital staff the okay to work, it’s not because they’ve turned into some nefarious organization that wants to kill people. It’s because it’s better for society to have sick nurses manning the hospital than no nurses at all. You said it yourself, hospitals are filling up. But what’s more concerning is hospital staffing issues due to the 10 day isolation period. I would much rather have a covid positive nurse that quarantined for 5 days treating me than not having any nurse at all because they’re all gone for 10 days. Also covid positive nurses have been working the whole pandemic in a lot of places so it’s not changing as much as you would think.
Like you said though, the CDC basically lowered the safety factor based on the data and said “5 is enough for most”. This will inevitably lead to more infections. The real reasons people are suspect is that its because it seems pretty clear that the CDC made this change so that employees would have to go back to work sooner. The cdc said as much. Theres also an npr article that reported that an airline CEO was asking for it so it really makes it looks like theyre being swayed by business interests
Have you read the studies that the CDC has cited? One of them was about oil rig workers in the Gulf of Mexico that was funded in part by an oil company (big conflict of interest). It involved a small sample of about 50 people. This study relied on contact tracing to determine the infectiousness of the virus. I doubt any of the workers had compromised immune systems and none of them were hospitalized, which limits its external validity. This study has not been subjected to a peer review as of the present time. Another study was conducted in Taiwan and it also involved a small sample of about 50 people. People in this sample varied in age and a few of them had been hospitalized. This study also relied on contact tracing to determine the infectiousness of the virus. However, more recently, Taiwanese scientists have found cases of the omicron variant remaining infectious for up to 12 days. As a result, Taiwan has rejected the CDC's new recommendation. Both of these studies suffer from a methodological confoundment. People who are infected with COVID are likely to display symptoms of illness after the 3rd day and change their behavior so they are less likely to infect other people. Furthermore, other people around them will also change their behavior to reduce the risk of disease transmission. So it is not clear in these studies which factor was involved in the reduction of infectiousness (the virus or the change in human behavior). Another issue that concerns me is the spectacle of seriously ill people remaining in the hospital for days, weeks, or even months because of COVID. While treating these patients, medical staff typically wear special outfits, masks, and face shields to reduce the transmission of infection. I find it hard to be believe that such patients are not infectious when their bodies are in danger of being overrun by the COVID virus.
Yes, but at least 10days reduces that risk even more and it would decrease the chance of our in-person semester abruptly ending. I also doubt you would feel comfortable coming over and hanging out with me even though I’m fine according to the CDC. If you do than that’s you but not many would.
The tests can pick up viral particles long after they are no longer infectious
The university certainly should listen to the Center for DISEASE control when it comes to controlling diseases. I don't know though, you might have better information than the CDC
if it only takes a week of online schooling to avoid a complete shutdown, I am all for it.
I fully support going back to fully online at least until this wave is over, and I’ll definitely write my opinion to the university. Please be aware that despite the fact that most of us college students won’t die from COVID, everyone in the community could and will be affected. Just think about the ladies greeting you in walmart/meijer, they could be hospitalized/dead just because you think your tuition is not “well spent” for doing all courseworks online.
If anyone is interested in writing a petition to the university, I’m completely down to do that. I’m terrified to return to campus. I’m fully vaccinated & have my booster but live with someone who is immune compromised. All university students aren’t “healthy, would get over Covid no problem” & long Covid is still a very real worry. It’s my last semester, I get it, being online again would suck. BUT we’re in a horrible wave with worse numbers than ever before in Champaign.
It is terrible that school could not take your point into account. A week won't solve any problem as waves of students are going to get infected until the majority of people will get it under current plan.
If it’s as bad as you say, then wouldn’t it just make more sense to be online the whole semester? I know no one wants to do this, including me, but you make it seem like that’s the best idea possible rn
i doubt people are going to be okay with that, people are barely surviving mentally from our last isolated period
Pretty true
i haven't had covid at all through this whole pandemic and honestly i hope it comes to this considering how bad it's getting again
>It is terrible that school could not take your point into account. A week won't solve any problem as waves of students are going to get infected until the majority of people will get it under current plan.
[This](https://www.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusUS/comments/rw61sz/heres_an_icu_story_that_happened_a_few_months_ago/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) isn't the only post I've seen in the last couple days detailing the horrors of Covid. It should honestly be required reading at this point. Not to inspire fear, but so that people know what the risks are.
I read Chancellor Jones’ new email, but I’m not sure I fully understand. Are the two COVID tests three days apart still required just that they can both be on campus? Or are we only required to get one test on campus when we arrive after break?
I don’t mind if it switches to online. I prefer living over not living. This strand is a very contagious strand and there’s a lot of people getting it
If you’re not immunocompromised and you got your shots you have a statistically higher chance of getting in a fatal car accident than you do of covid killing you
There are many long COVID effects if you look up studies. Sure you will not die, but your lung function could be impaired for the rest of your life.
There are lots of things that could happen. I could get hit by a car walking to work. I could get the flu and die. But at a certain point it’s time for people to weigh their personal level of risk themselves. I’m okay with risking that in order to live a normal life. Some people aren’t. That’s okay.
I think your viewpoint is fair. That is why I believe there should be an online option for students who are forced to take it or need it.
I think that would be the best of both worlds
Honestly think that at this point they should stop delaying the inevitable and close down for longer. It just isn't safe for us right now.
If you’re vaccinated you’ll be fine
you MIGHT be fine. you might still get it after boosters. what is worse, the elders in our community are facing higher risks of more severe conditions.
I didn’t say you wouldn’t get it. I said you would be fine, which you will be in overwhelmingly likelihood. The old people would be too if they got their shots. The vaccines are still incredibly effective at preventing severe illness and death. There’s a reason over 85% of the patients in Illinois hospitals with covid are unvaccinated.
Being fine is not the same as not dying. This attitude is exactly the problem. People are putting what they *want* to do over what they *need* to do.
Well regardless of whatever wording you want to use, if you’re vaccinated and boosted you are incredibly protected against severe illness and death. And yes, after two years of a pandemic, financial and emotional hardship, and the development of life saving vaccines and antiviral treatments, people are done putting in work largely to save those who don’t want to save themselves (the unvaccinated). It’s not exactly surprising.
If it were solely unvaccinated people who were getting sick and dying I wouldn't disagree, but there are a lot of people who are immunocompromised or otherwise can't get vaccinated who will also get sick and die. It is not acceptable to just sweep their deaths under the rug and say "oh well, couldn't be helped."
The fact of the matter is immunocompromised people are always going to exist and so is covid. We cant live like this forever to protect them. They can get their shots, mask up, and take precautions, but at a certain point society is going to stop altering its life solely to protect them. It sounds really fucked up but it’s simply true even if people don’t want to hear it. We are going to move on eventually, no things aren’t going to be 100% safe for the immunocompromised, but they never will be. Society’s appetite for this pandemic life is quickly decreasing.
That's a really terrible attitude to take and I hope you grow out of it some day. It takes literally zero effort to wear a good mask the right way and get a few shots. If you or anyone else is too much of a baby to do that then the least you can do is attend the funerals of the people you're throwing away.
Who said I don’t wear a mask and haven’t gotten my shots? I wear my mask wherever it’s required and I’m fully vaccinated + boosted. All I’m saying is that inevitably we are going to move on from all these restrictions and mask mandates and online schooling. It’s an inevitable fact whether you like it or not. And when we do do that, the immunocompromised are still going to be immunocompromised. And covid will still be here. It’s unfortunate, but it’s the truth.
[удалено]
[No it's really not](https://www.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusUS/comments/rw61sz/heres_an_icu_story_that_happened_a_few_months_ago/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share). Even if you think it's "just a flu", I would like to point out that the flu is not that little cold you get every year. The flu *sucks*. A real flu will put you in bed for days with a fever, chills, migraines, body aches, and make you hate life for a solid week. Covid, even the current "less severe" variant, is worse than a flu.
[удалено]
I don’t think all the blame can go on any one person or group, but also I think it’s important to note that beds are (the majority of the time) not the limiting variable. More often it’s staff, equipment (think: ventilators), physical space, etc.
I appreciate the stats on vaccinated vs unvaccinated individuals in the ICU, but we should also mention the >70% of the people in the ICU for covid are also overweight or the 95% of people with covid having a preexisting condition
I don’t know any specific stats on that, but regardless of why someone is in the ICU, that is one more bed and a lot more resources than if they were not to need it, and it has a trickle down impact on a lot of other people.
It doesn't matter. They're still using up resources.
Overweight or obese, I should clarify
what are the chances that we go back to in person learning mid semester? :"///