OT(?):UConn send warning email to transition to online classes/ closing campus.

[Hans Sprungfeld]

When the universities were shut down during spring semester 50 years ago...

Student strike of 1970 - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

...and the Beach Boys weren't just fun, fun, fun...

 

[McLovin]

You might not be serious, but this gets at a very serious issue, which is child care.

If schools and daycares close, you're going to have a ____load of parents who are all of a sudden unable to work, or split working time with their spouse, because they have to take care of their kids. The economy works only because school and daycare free up time for working parents to, you know, work.

That's gonna shine an awfully bright light on an issue (affordable childcare) that gets basically negligible attention in our political discussions. And I say that as someone paying 3K/month for daycare.

You can pay a live at home nanny less than 3 grand per month, as a public service notification.

 

[ctchamps]

I'm not a Dr, but I don't believe I'm overly gullible either...Do you REALLY believe that > 25% (%based on 1918 #'s) of the current world's population will die if we go out in public places??? REALLY?? With today's medical knowledge? More people died from the flu THIS YEAR ALREADY in the US alone than have died from this GLOBALLY!

There have been MANY Dr.s saying more people than have been reported had the virus and didn't even know they had it and weren't even showing symptoms....so this thing does not have a 25% mortality rate. my guess is it doesn't even have a 1% mortality rate. The wife and kids of the hospitalized NY lawyer aren't showing any signs even though they are infected. "She has also tested positive for the virus, as has their 20-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter, Gov. Cuomo announced on Wednesday...Other than Lawrence no one else in my family has been sick other than a slight cough." I saw an interview with a woman in her 60's that was in quarantine because of cruise ship infection and she said she felt fine and only had a temp spike to 100.3 for 12 hours...

I'm doing what I can to avoid it. My hands have never been cleaner or covered in more Purell, but I'm living my life...I just came back from a ski trip...the plane was full. I'm going to the gym tonight. But if I get it I don't expect to be a fatality.

Why don't we report every flu case and every flu fatality and panic the hell out of people too? I've not read anything that clearly explains why this is worse...but I've heard Dr's say corona virus is what causes the common cold, but this is a new variant. I'm sorry, the modern media cycle and politics are playing this up big time IMO.

Of course there are people with an agenda that has little to do with the problem.

Please reread what I wrote. I’m not advocating a position. Understand variants of the corona virus were the cause of SARs and MERs. Those diseases were extremely fatal but fortunately not very contagious. If they had the same contagion rate as the flu that would be catastrophic.

You might also note I never wrote the mortality rate in the 1917 flu pandemic was 25%. The number of deaths was estimated between 25 million and 50 million which was a 2% mortality rate compared to the 0.1% mortality rate of the flu in a mild year. That number still results in 450,000 deaths worldwide.

I feel the knee jerk reflex of immediately dismissing the danger of these outbreaks is just as wrong as the exploitation of them.

Personally I’m following events in Italy. Their outbreak appears to be different than ours. If the numbers of deaths in Italy turns out to be minimal than your position is most likely correct.

 

[CTBasketball]

The whole scare tactic is a scheme by white collar workers so they can work from home and for industry to show why automation is safer than humans in factories. Machines don't catch and spread corona. This is class warfare using "health" as a conduit to affect change in industries. Needless to say those whose skillset requires them to physically show up to work will be most affected by this scare.

On a less serious note, I expect close to 100% of all high school and college students to fully support online classes and 100% of working parents to support sending kids back to school. 8-10 hours per day of tax payer funded daycare is a helluva social construct we have going right now.

Yet another scorching hot take.

 

[Dream Jobbed 2.0]

I love people who are “tougher” than Coronavirus. Same people tougher than EEE, hurricanes, and blizzards. I wish I was that tough.

 

[Edward Sargent]

Considering that college age kids rarely have anything except mild cases of coronavirus it seems to be an abundance of caution. The focus needs to be on nursing homes and assisted living.

The problem is that the younger asymptomatics can act as carriers and spread the virus to their parents and grandparents who might be at higher risk of more adverse effects. Quarantine is meant to reduce the spread of the virus. If we had a vaccine or even treatment we could prevent the spread by vaccination. Take the flu for example. The flu like coronavirus hits elderly and infirm harder than young and healthy. Every year a flu vaccine is made from the previous years strain. In evaluating the effectiveness of the vaccine, we look at coverage which is a measure pf how effective the vaccine is in preventing the flu. In most years it is pretty good at 60-70%. It is never 100% which is why you will hear "I am never getting the flu shot as it doesn't work anyway". Last year the virus mutated in January and the coverage went from 60% to less than 10%. Even after vaccination in November I got the flu in February. I had what was described as a mild case probably mitigated by vaccination. It still resulted in a vicious cough that led to double hernia which I had repaired later in the year. I am 68 I do not want to get coronavirus at this stage of my life. Without a vaccine for coronavirus we have no coverage so the only way to prevent spread is to reduce contact. That is what we are doing by cancelling large gatherings, closing schools etc. I was supposed to go to the Society of Toxicology meeting next week in Anaheim however it was cancelled. I had already made the decision not to go. I actually think maybe more schools will find online learning better than the classroom and maybe just maybe the overall cost of an education can be reduced. I also hope that companies will find the relaxed work from home policies will also reduce the cost of maintaining large office buildings. You never know necessity is the mother of invention!

 

[andy34]

The whole scare tactic is a scheme by white collar workers so they can work from home and for industry to show why automation is safer than humans in factories. Machines don't catch and spread corona. This is class warfare using "health" as a conduit to affect change in industries. Needless to say those whose skillset requires them to physically show up to work will be most affected by this scare.

On a less serious note, I expect close to 100% of all high school and college students to fully support online classes and 100% of working parents to support sending kids back to school. 8-10 hours per day of tax payer funded daycare is a helluva social construct we have going right now.

I disagree that the pandemic is a "scare tactic" given how most of our media, especially the media outlets who are the most business/industry-friendly have consistently downplayed the danger. But you're right that it has revealed a class divide in terms of who gets to (and can afford to) work from home and who gets to take paid sick leave. And you're right that it will likely have some impact on the transition towards automation in certain industries, though there are many forces already pushing in this direction.

Most colleges will probably try to move to online classes, but there are many professors who are not ready to make this change and don't have the technical know-how to really manage a class online. It'll be a rocky transition. It'll be even tougher for public schools to do this - some high schools will be able to, especially ones that have a 1-to-1 technology program (each kid has an iPad, for instance), but many won't for various reasons. Either students won't have a suitable device for online schooling (a phone alone isn't really enough), won't have consistent, high speed internet access, or won't have a home environment suitable for productive study. Some public school teachers can manage online classes, but many just can't, especially older folks. And obviously most elementary and middle school students need constant supervision to be productive - online just isn't an option.

 

[Edward Sargent]

I disagree that the pandemic is a "scare tactic" given how most of our media, especially the media outlets who are the most business/industry-friendly have consistently downplayed the danger. But you're right that it has revealed a class divide in terms of who gets to (and can afford to) work from home and who gets to take paid sick leave. And you're right that it will likely have some impact on the transition towards automation in certain industries, though there are many forces already pushing in this direction.

Most colleges will probably try to move to online classes, but there are many professors who are not ready to make this change and don't have the technical know-how to really manage a class online. It'll be a rocky transition. It'll be even tougher for public schools to do this - some high schools will be able to, especially ones that have a 1-to-1 technology program (each kid has an iPad, for instance), but many won't for various reasons. Either students won't have a suitable device for online schooling (a phone alone isn't really enough), won't have consistent, high speed internet access, or won't have a home environment suitable for productive study. Some public school teachers can manage online classes, but many just can't, especially older folks. And obviously most elementary and middle school students need constant supervision to be productive - online just isn't an option.

There are a lot of professors who don't manage an in room class either!!