COVID Update August 19: Pardon me, but sometimes we should stop midstream and ask WTF are we doing here?

Colleges who have launched in person may want to do just that.

Some issues around the pandemic are really challenging to figure out what to do. I increasingly believe this is not one of those issues.

Let's start at a high level. What is college for? What's the point?
-Learning
-Growing into adulthood
-Socialization
-Getting a degree
-Moving on to the next step in life
-Research
-The growth of our next generation

I'm going to go with that list though I'm sure there is more.

And I will add 2 other specialized things:
-For some, it may play a special role: an escape from a bad home life, a new start after a bad high school experience, housing for those housing insecure
-Attract some of the brightest minds in the world to our country

So let's agree that many of these objectives will be comprised.

But many of the more concrete objectives can be advanced on line: learning, moving towards a degree

The softer areas will suffer the most if there is no in person school.

Socialization certainly will. But socialization isn't supposed to be happening on campus according to the "compacts" (i.e., rules) of most of the campuses.

I won't deny the importance of these softer areas. And in fact for some students, these soft areas are quite important.

But what happens if they're postponed 6 months, or even a full year?

From the perspective on an 18 year old (we have one), it's no fun. It seems like a long time. It creates uncertainty they didn't have before. Its not how they pictured things.

But throughout our history we have had to ask 18 year olds to put off college, to go to war-- ostensibly to save lives. Many of them put their lives at risk. Many did not return. If you've been to Normandy you have gasped at the ages on tombstone after tombstone.

Postponing several months or even a year doesn't seem too terrible in light of what the impact will be.

These people-- mostly young-- will save many many lives & without risking their own.

I know President Trump has found the much esteemed new White House advisor Dr. Atlas, who may still technically be a radiologist, to say that there is no reason there shouldn't be "in person" college.

Dr. Atlas has argued we don't need the ACA & can replace it with "incentives."

Most stories about Dr. Atlas contain the phrase "While not an expert in infectious diseases," but fail to appreciate the time he has spent in a conservative think tank & writing about "the survival of radiology," encouraging subspecialization to maximize billing. Or "incentives."

Dr. Atlas notwithstanding, talk to people who live in Chapel Hill, NC; South Bend, IN; or Norman, OK. Ask them if they agree with Dr. Atlas.

Norman was adding 6 cases in June and began adding 300 cases as school began. Notre Dame has added 222 cases since August 3.

But wait! Atlasansians object. These are youngsters. They are not likely to die.

Recall in Florida when all those "only young people" were getting COVID. And then, well, only some hospitalizations. Now 10,000 people are dead.

But its not the cases at the schools we know about that are the problem. Those are schools that had the resources to do some amount of testing. Many, many don't.

At those schools, those outbreaks will be worse. They will be out of control.

We have friends whose daughter is attending a religious school, a good school. And the priest has told them they don't have sufficient tests but "prayer" is one of the components of their response to COVID.

The reason for science is just in case prayer doesn't work.

So how fair is it to put college students in a position to be part of creating clusters & hot spots that lead to deaths.

On top of that the schools harangue them for blowing it. Not abiding by the cruel rules of sit in your room, don't interact, dine, or go to class.

Now there are 744 students already moving out of UNC. What is this doing for: growing into adulthood, growing our next next generation, helping kids move to the next step of their lives.

How does this help young people? You know what it helps them do-- see the irresponsibility & frankly, idiocy, of their elders.

Schools motivated by money. Parents who don't want to be the bad guy. Setting them up to fail. Cruelly playing with their lives

We could have seen this coming. @profgalloway talked about it explicitly. And about how the only thing that made this make sense was money. Not learning. Not students. Money. http://smarturl.it/inthebubble 

It was amazing watching university presidents try to arrogantly bully Scott.

I've had the pleasure of listening to the self-righteous crowing of these universities, their faux concern for public health, their "disappointment" with students. But it was them.

It was them. They put their communities at risk. They set examples of greed & self-justification & intellectual dishonesty.

The other villians are the people who didn't plan for and build the testing schools needed to open. The people who hired Dr. Atlas to tell people to go to school, bit wouldn't do the work to make that safe.

The many colleges that are still open need to send people home. Put your energy towards a real plan, with real testing, and a real focus on education. Get ready to do it better in January.

Show us you can learn a lesson.

Less focus on what schools mean by development. More focus on actual development.

Less listening to phony experts. More focus on data.

Now I'm going to hang out with my homebound son!