What does the college fall semester look like?

I think you're going to see a mixed bag, with different colleges taking different approaches, on-time start with social distancing and testing, delayed start, start online and move on to campus at midpoint, freshman only on campus for fall, cancelled semester, etc.  There might be some really interesting natural experiments in the making for epidemiologists.

The WHO is now saying Sweden was the right model. This could influence colleges. I can see distancing working in a classroom. I have trouble seeing it work in a lecture hall with 200+ students. 

It's 

@RJM posted:

The WHO is now saying Sweden was the right model. This could influence colleges. I can see distancing working in a classroom. I have trouble seeing it work in a lecture hall with 200+ students. 

That's why they have to be nimble. Those classes are likely to stay online but divide into small in-person discussion sections that can be taught by TA's.  It's going to be easier for LAC's with 20 person classes, especially in warmer, drier climates.

I read those items, and find some reasonable, while others a little out there.  We have to come up with contingency plans, but I still think it is too early to make a decision.  I'd anticipate that some courses will go online, some will be in person (especially laboratories), and they will have social distancing enforced with things like food service, sports, etc.  However, this is still four months away, and while interesting to comment on "what-ifs", we will all probably be wrong.

@RJM posted:

I can see distancing working in a classroom. I have trouble seeing it work in a lecture hall with 200+ students. 

I have even more trouble seeing how social distancing works in dorm rooms occupied by more than one person, in bathrooms and kitchens shared by multiple students, and at (the inevitable) parties and informal social gatherings that are going to occur when you put a bunch of young people together.  There are other issues, too.  Can dining halls can seat the necessary numbers of students six feet apart from each other?  Can labs and other hands-on work happen with one person assigned to each station (or every other station, depending on spacing), rather than the usual 2 or more per lab desk?  Colleges are set up to house and educate hundreds or thousands, with little or no thought to keeping students separated.  

And don't forget, if there is an outbreak campuses have no way to isolate substantial numbers of students who are sick or who have been exposed.

I'd like to see both my kids able to attend college this fall.  But every proposal I read leaves me with the same conclusion:  The only way that will work is if things can be at least pretty close to normal.   

And then there is the $70,000+ question:  Is a socially-distanced semester (in whatever form) worth the same price as normal college life?  The one thing that may save many schools is that fall 2020 gap year options also could be very limited (little chance to travel, few internships or jobs).  When I asked my daughter whether she wanted to continue taking classes online next year (she will be a junior) if that is the only option, she said "Sure, what else would I do?"   

Chico, we are hearing of plans for dining to be in shifts and/or take out. Classes could be in shifts too. Half the students are in person while the other half are remote on any given day, then they switch. We also hear that they could have half the students on campus at a time in order to have all rooms be single. And they have already leased enough space off campus to house a significant number of students.  I don’t know if that’s for potential quarantine or what. And of course they are talking about fast and frequent testing.  That’s a key part of any plan.

All of this is obviously going to be far  easier for a small college than a big university. 

There has to be a percentage of kids that just aren't coming back this fall no matter what they do for on-campus instruction. That makes their jobs a little easier.

To Chico's point on tuition, that's a lot of dough to shell out if you aren't fully bought into the value they are offering. If the degree from that institution is going to open doors that would otherwise be closed, I'd say yes. 

Fauci mentioned in one of the pressers a week or two ago that he was not wearing a mask because he was beyond 6' from the reporters. So does that make it acceptable to have classes with students closer than 6' as long as they are wearing masks? 

[Long post--sorry, have been thinking about this a lot.]

JCG, I don't want to be the voice of doom and gloom, but when it comes to colleges having students on campus and observing social distancing measures, I guess I am. 

Imagine a scenario where only 50 or 60 percent of students are on campus, and each can be assigned their own dorm room.  On every campus I know of, most of those kids still will be sharing bathrooms and showers, and possibly kitchen space as well.  No doubt the school will have those common areas cleaned more frequently, but who is to say cleaning 2x or 3x per week vs. 1x is safe?  More is better, I suppose, but you still will have many people sharing facilities.  You also will have 30 or 50 or 100 students in each dorm, and you are not going to stop a bunch of 18-21 year-olds from visiting each others' rooms, hanging out, hooking up and generally being social (sans distancing). 

The same concerns apply in dining halls.  Having students eat in shifts will be unpopular and they will try to get around it.  To the extent you succeed in limiting occupancy of the dining halls, it will be mighty hard to prevent people from congregating over meals even so.  And if they take out food, students will get together in other places to eat. 

I just don't think it is realistic to imagine a bunch of college kids adhering to social distancing.  Maybe for the first week or three, but things will break down pretty fast, if only because it won't be much fun to follow the rules and temptations to break them will everywhere, all the time.

TerribleBPthrower (great nym, btw), I do think the credential will have the same value even if classes are online.  I don't think at future job interviews anyone is going to say "Oh, you were at XYZ college during the COVID-19 years, so you didn't take real courses."  My concern is more about other things that I like to think I am paying for:  One is the quality of the education.  I teach at a state U. and every student and professor I have talked with agrees current arrangements, while better than nothing, are a poor substitute for in-person classes.  Online education would improve some this fall as everyone gets used to the new normal--but online just is not as good as IRL.  Beyond the classroom, there is value in meeting students and profs from all over the country, forming friendships, finding potential mentors...  And frankly, while I want my kids to study hard, college also is generally a pretty enjoyable halfway-point between being a child and being an actual adult.  You get some added responsibilities, plus a whole lot of benefits.  (Have you seen the gyms, student unions, etc. at today's schools?  Not to mention the chance to socialize with a huge group of people your age with whom you share many common interests and experiences.)  That package plus the credential may or may not be worth $70k+ per year; but I'd say the package of credential-plus-online-classes is definitely worth less than the college experience we thought our kids signed up for.

Having said all that, I expect both my kids will enroll online this fall if it comes to that.  But I will not be happy about writing the checks for full tuition. [End of rant.]  

There is also the issue that at many colleges, a large number of students live off-campus, and they won't be able to control what the students do at all.  If they bring students back, then they will get the virus, period.  The assumption has to be that most of the students will get through it safely (and those at risk won't come).  But, what happens when the professor gets sick and literally can't teach for 2-4 weeks (in the best case)? 

Many of these issues will be the same for K-12 schools.  Not the kids, but the teachers, staff, and families.  My hs son had a teacher out for weeks with a medical emergency in the family - that class was a learning disaster for him.  And that was before COVID-19.

@TerribleBPthrower posted:

There has to be a percentage of kids that just aren't coming back this fall no matter what they do for on-campus instruction. That makes their jobs a little easier.

To Chico's point on tuition, that's a lot of dough to shell out if you aren't fully bought into the value they are offering. If the degree from that institution is going to open doors that would otherwise be closed, I'd say yes. 

There are plenty of majors where all the student is really getting is that colleges brand of diploma. How many college classes directly relate to future work outside STEM? There are plenty of HR personnel without Organizational Behavior degrees. Or Investment people with unrelated degrees. Where you graduate from is as likely to open doors as a specific degree. But after a few years the “where you graduated” field is leveled by what have you accomplished as a professional? 

(please don’t list the anecdotal exceptions)

College also is generally a pretty enjoyable halfway-point between being a child and being an actual adult.  You get some added responsibilities, plus a whole lot of benefits.

My kids said if not for baseball/softball college would have been Club Med for four years despite being STEM majors. This is based their sense if how easy college would have been without the sports commitment and what friends said who didn’t play college sports. 

@RJM posted:

College also is generally a pretty enjoyable halfway-point between being a child and being an actual adult.  You get some added responsibilities, plus a whole lot of benefits.

My kids said if not for baseball/softball college would have been Club Med for four years despite being STEM majors. This is based their sense if how easy college would have been without the sports commitment and what friends said who didn’t play college sports. 

Depends on the school.  Depends on the student. Depends on circumstances. I have students carrying a full load of classes while working full-time and raising a child. Sone kids slide by doing as little as possible, others work their tails off. With apologies to Tom Lehrer: College is like a sewer—what you get out of it depends on what you put into it. 

@RJM posted:

College also is generally a pretty enjoyable halfway-point between being a child and being an actual adult.  You get some added responsibilities, plus a whole lot of benefits.

My kids said if not for baseball/softball college would have been Club Med for four years despite being STEM majors. This is based their sense if how easy college would have been without the sports commitment and what friends said who didn’t play college sports. 

That REALLY depends on the school. There are some out there that test your limits of endurance, resilience, intelligence, and imagination. Baseball is what they do to have fun.

Luckily we do have the Sweden model to assess and use a viable option. I hope there can be a mix of on and off campus learning & housing to keep social distancing intact.

@anotherparent posted:

But, what happens when the professor gets sick and literally can't teach for 2-4 weeks (in the best

This is where you have backups for faculty members (we had contingencies set up for the Spring before everything was closed down).  Also, a faculty member can generally social distance from students more easily than students from one another, so I would expect that this can be controlled to an extent.  I don't think I have gotten sick from a college student since I started, and with more caution, I think it can be pulled off.  The only somewhat close contact is in office hours, and different strategies could allow for social distancing.  Lectures can be designed to not come in direct contact with students.  Laboratories are usually handled by graduate students with broad oversight by a faculty member.  Some creativity can go a long way.  Where I am most concerned, personally, is if my own kids get it, then I have little chance of not getting it.

K12 is actually much more difficult in my opinion, and that will be the toughest nut to crack.  I'm still holding out hope that in 4 months they'll have treatments/understanding to allow us to do more with less risk.

@Viking0 posted:

This is where you have backups for faculty members (we had contingencies set up for the Spring before everything was closed down).  Also, a faculty member can generally social distance from students more easily than students from one another, so I would expect that this can be controlled to an extent.  I don't think I have gotten sick from a college student since I started, and with more caution, I think it can be pulled off.  The only somewhat close contact is in office hours, and different strategies could allow for social distancing.  Lectures can be designed to not come in direct contact with students.  Laboratories are usually handled by graduate students with broad oversight by a faculty member.  Some creativity can go a long way.  Where I am most concerned, personally, is if my own kids get it, then I have little chance of not getting it.

K12 is actually much more difficult in my opinion, and that will be the toughest nut to crack.  I'm still holding out hope that in 4 months they'll have treatments/understanding to allow us to do more with less risk.

I agree that students are a bigger problem than faculty and staff--at least when it comes to numbers of folks exposed and numbers of exposures.  But if an outbreak starts among the student population, I fear you are whistling past the graveyard if you assume faculty and staff won't be at significant risk also. The communal living arrangements at many colleges are ideal for the spread of a novel pathogen.  The question IMO is:  How much can you limit risks in those environments, given the makeup of the population and other factors?    

When an employee gets sick, they can go home and isolate themselves--from that point, they pose no further risk to others at their workplace.  In many cases, sick students will have to return to a dorm environment--schools have very little ability to isolate them.  (If you require sick students to leave campus, many will need to get on a plane or bus.  Bad idea.)  

Getting students to comply with safety rules is going to be much harder than getting employees to do so, IMO.  We are talking about a population of mostly 18-22 year-olds with very little "adult supervision."  For example, many workplaces that require multiple people to be in a single room plan to have them wear masks when they return to their jobs.  Will colleges be able to get students to wear masks consistently in classrooms and labs?  I also think it is worth considering that there likely will be an inverse relationship between strictly enforcing student compliance with social distancing rules and students' satisfaction.  Yes, schools could mete out punishments to students who don't wear masks, or who have parties, etc.  But rightly or wrongly, many college students (and their parents who pay their bills) view themselves as "consumers of higher education", not as young people subject to a school's in loco parentis supervision.  I think strict enforcement of health-related rules might lead to a parade of angry parents in a college president's office.  That situation will be hard to sustain.  (I'm not saying that is how things should be; just trying to be appropriately realistic/cynical.)  And it's an open question how much control a school can even theoretically assert over the lives of students living off campus.  Parties can just migrate from college-administered buildings to local apartment houses.  My assumption is that large numbers of college kids living in the same vicinity will find ways to be college kids.  That is antithetical to social distancing.

Remember, too, that faculty have much more autonomy than most employees.  If profs don't feel safe, they are going to resist being in classrooms or other environments they feel put them at risk. 

I feel like I'm being Debbie Downer here.  Because I am, I guess.  I'd very much like to be wrong about this.  And I'm glad I am not a college president planning for fall 2020.  

Wow, a lot of detailed contingency discussion on this thread.  Based on what I'm reading we should remain quarantined until at least 80% of the population is vaccinated. And even then the other 20% will remain at risk.

We'll also have to require vaccination by law in order to reach 80%. That will be an interesting debate in Congress.

Because if you don't get infected by the end of this fall or winter you will still be at risk in the spring of 2021 or later.

Or, just maybe, we'll all come to our senses sooner rather than later.

The data shows decent current declines in Covid and the models predict a summer without severe coronavirus.  Many models show virtually no cases in June, July and August.  I do understand that colleges will have to make the call of virtual vs in person in the next two months.    If its late June, there are no real new cases (or very low numbers) and none expected for months, the economy is coming back online and you are looking at massive losses as an institution if you go online, I have to think most will decide to bring all kids to campus in fall.  I think this is what it will look like in 6-8 weeks too.  

How you operate once kids are on campus is the trick, what you do if covid breaks out on campus, how you protect professors and students..... It's these plans I will want to hear from college administrators.  

Disclaimer:  This is my opinion given what things look like now, where I believe things will likely look over the next few months and my understanding of the crunch these administrators are facing.     If things play out in this manner I would send my son and daughter back to school.  If school is online I will reluctantly have both stick with their colleges and do online learning but I know quite a few parents who will defer for a year if online.

Absorber, the sarcasm doesn’t become you. Colleges present unusual risks. They are going to have to address those—both because it’s the right thing for their students and employees, and because they are going to risk truly gigantic liabilities if they don’t. I expect they will reach some different conclusions, although most will land on similar plans (whatever those turn out to be). 

I noticed you don’t point out any reasons you think my concerns are incorrect.  The issues I mentioned may or may not prove decisive, but they are real and I assure you every U.S. college’s legal and administrative staff is thinking about them.  

(And btw, many vaccinations ARE required by law, with increasingly limited exceptions. Those are state laws, and Congress has no part in them. There would be nothing even slightly unusual about a state law requiring students to be vaccinated against C-19.  And private colleges have the power to require additional vaccinations, which many do.)

Great post, Gunner.

I agree, in August things may look very promising. Winter could mean new outbreaks. That is what concerns me most: If you bring thousands of students to campus and an infection cluster emerges, you have little way to isolate those who have been exposed, but you also can’t easily transport them home (nor will their home communities be happy to welcome exposed people). Again, a different set of issues than that facing most workplaces. 

Schools may attempt to institute policies that cover their liability but that doesn't change the fact that we are fooling ourselves if we think these policies will prevent virus spread. Why do you suppose the virus continues to spread? Do you really think having a policy where seating students in a chemistry lab 6' apart is going to stop virus spread? Do you thing accepting that bag of your favorite carry-out or grabbing the mail out of your mailbox is virus-free? 

Viruses don't stop spreading. Why do you suppose the swine flu has been so prevalent this flu season? It doesn't go away.

I don't dispute the fact colleges are thinking and planning for these things. It doesn't change the fact that it is ridiculous to think they will have any affect whatsoever on whether somebody contracts COVID-19. In the end they will look to our country's response as their defense of liability. If the entire country is opened up, they will open up.

So let's get to it.

@ABSORBER posted:

Do you really think having a policy where seating students in a chemistry lab 6' apart is going to stop virus spread? Do you thing accepting that bag of your favorite carry-out or grabbing the mail out of your mailbox is virus-free? 

Viruses don't stop spreading. Why do you suppose the swine flu has been so prevalent this flu season? It doesn't go away. 

"Stop virus spread"?  No.  Do you really think nothing can be done to reduce the rate of transmission? 

Your position seems to be that you don't think the disease is very serious and/or that you see no benefit in slowing its spread.  I disagree with both of those assumptions.  Which doesn't necessarily mean I don't think both my kids will be at college this fall.  But "damn the torpedos, full steam ahead" isn't a public health policy many folks (including me) will sign on to.

@Chico Escuela posted:

"Stop virus spread"?  No.  Do you really think nothing can be done to reduce the rate of transmission? 

Your position seems to be that you don't think the disease is very serious and/or that you see no benefit in slowing its spread.  I disagree with both of those assumptions.  Which doesn't necessarily mean I don't think both my kids will be at college this fall.  But "damn the torpedos, full steam ahead" isn't a public health policy many folks (including me) will sign on to.

So you agree that it cannot be stopped. How long do you think reducing the rate of transmission needs to be in place? You can't say "until it's gone" because we both agree it is not going away. So how long?

Thankfully many other states are opening up so I guess it's "damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead." Sure, they may announce continuing some mitigation measures but that's just to comfort people. The reality is these mitigation measures will seem much less important as we return to normalcy; they will not survive.

We've already reduced the rate of transmission (which was only supposed to prevent our hospitals from being overwhelmed) which has come as an unmeasurable cost to our country. In the end history will decide whether it was worth it.

My local paper reported this morning that "76% of N.C. voters support [the Governor's] extension of the stay-at-home order" to May 8th, and 78% support the decision to cancel public school classes for the rest of 2019-20.  Although three of the four states that border us are moving ahead at a less cautious pace, so it may not matter.

As for slowing the spread:  I don't want to get this thread closed, but for example, on Friday the FDA issued emergency approval for remdesivir as a C-19 treatment.  That drug may not prove effective, but I'd rather be admitted the hospital (if at all) as late in the game as possible, to get the benefit of any learnings before I got sick.

Beautiful day here and I am heading out to the backyard.  As always, I value the chance to "talk" (or vent) with folks here--best to you all, and stay well.

We have friends with kids at Purdue.  They said they got a very long letter/email, explaining in detail how Purdue thought it would work, and they felt o.k. about it.  But, I wonder whether Purdue also sent a letter to all the residents of the town, explaining that 40,000+ students would be arriving, that they would be getting infected, and that the virus would now be all over town?   This is not at all the same as opening businesses that employ people who already live in the town, this is encouraging people to move around and come into close contact.

I agree that students are very very low risk, they know it, and that makes them act like it doesn't matter.  At most schools, a majority of students live off-campus, and will have parties and act how they want.  I even agree that it would be best if a majority of them get it, and that the college lay out a detailed plan about what they're going to do with those sick students, that they have plenty of tests and treatments, etc.  But that still doesn't do anything for the faculty and staff who are at higher risk; honestly, if you are in a class in a smaller room, you are going to be exposed, end of story.  So, faculty may choose to teach online, even if students are on campus.   

"Opening up" the economy is relative, what really matters is whether large numbers of people are getting together in enclosed spaces, whether subways and buses, or classrooms.  I think K12 is a bigger issue than colleges, because it affects more people.  The key is not to rush; yes, it was about flattening the curve, and we now know how important that was and still is.  But also, knowledge is increasting, treatments are coming; the later that people get sick, the better their fate will be.

Thanks, Chico - realized you were typing while I was.

If I lived in that town I’d personally rather have a letter that the students were coming back in town rather than one saying they weren’t and I’d have to close my business permanently or move to a new town to find a new job. 

@TerribleBPthrower posted:

If I lived in that town I’d personally rather have a letter that the students were coming back in town rather than one saying they weren’t and I’d have to close my business permanently or move to a new town to find a new job. 

The question is whether the economics justify the risk.  Your small restaurant would make more money if you didn't have to keep the kitchen clean, but we impose sanitation rules for the sake of others--even if the added costs mean you can't stay in business.  Those kinds of trade-offs are the stuff society is made of.  And getting this one right is going to be really hard--IMO there don't seem to me any obvious good answers.

Colleges are basically giant incubators for pathogens.  That is why schools started requiring meningitis vaccinations.  Schools can make rules to try to limit the risks from coronavirus somewhat, and maybe can succeed in enforcing those rules reasonably well (maybe...).  But it's not clear to me that it's a good idea to intentionally create large islands of potential C-19 infections.  This is the same logic that is making sports leagues contemplate playing with no fans in attendance--big groups mean high risks of transmission.

Some prisons have seen large outbreaks of C-19.  College students are younger and generally healthier than prison populations; but in terms of living environment, universities are basically prisons where the inmates can go into town on weekends.  Choosing to have 20,000+ people live and work in close quarters could have effects far greater than just opening restaurants and hair salons.  

I had ducked out of these arguments here for a while.  Not sure why I fell off the wagon today.  It was fun (really), but think I'm going to go back to lurking.  

Texas State University announced today that they would resume in person on campus classes with the start if the second summer session.

https://www.statesman.com/news...erson-classes-july-6

Several other Texas schools have announced plans to resume face to face courses in the fall.

Did I just see Oregon extended their lockdown to July 6th? What in the world???

@Chico Escuela posted:

The question is whether the economics justify the risk.  Your small restaurant would make more money if you didn't have to keep the kitchen clean, but we impose sanitation rules for the sake of others--even if the added costs mean you can't stay in business.  Those kinds of trade-offs are the stuff society is made of.  And getting this one right is going to be really hard--IMO there don't seem to me any obvious good answers.

 

"I respect the way you made your points.  But the assumption that this is the choice between economics and saving lives couldn't be more wrong.    This is a choice between saving lives of those afflicted by Covid-19 and saving the lives of those afflicted by the shutdown.  That's right the shutdown is costing lives.

What should be most concerning to everyone is that this has split along political lines, where it wasn't in the beginning.   This tells tells you the threat of the virus is now outweighed by it's use as a political football.  

 College campuses and prisons are not a great comparison but let's address it.  The biggest prison outbreak we know of came in Tennessee where Trousdale Turner showed that over 1300 of 2400 tested positive.  98% had 0 symptoms,  died.  Find the news article below: 

https://www.newschannel5.com/n...ositive-for-covid-19

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a nationally respected physician and epidemiologist from Stanford who has been much more accurate with his projections from the beginning, back in mid March, is about to release his paper from the 10,000 employees of MLB for Antibody (Ab) studies.  He  is not releasing the data until his paper is complete because he got blasted by uninformed media for disagreeing with Dr. Fauci, who has used this pandemic for his own notoriety and destroyed lives in the process. 

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal....ction-rate-of-virus/

Dr. John Ioannidis, also a Stanford physician, and author of the Santa Clara paper, got blasted for his preliminary work that showed the infection rate was 50-85 times what we initially thought, meaning the lethality of the C-19 is on par with seasonal flu.  Ioannidis acknowledged some difficulties in collection due to haste in an evolving pandemic and accounted for it.  He was attacked by the uninformed media and other researchers with something to gain in this.  Dr. Ioannidis has been our country's most respected researcher, shooting holes through garbage papers (like the stuff produced by Fauci) for nearly two decades and teaching proper ways to collect and analyze data.  He invited criticism of his data in the Santa Clara study so that he could make improvements.  

Those of us in medicine that understand data, have looked at it for ourselves, don't require the nightly news to tell us what is happening, and are capable of an unbiased opinion will tell you the Stanford researchers have been much more accurate than anything being played out in the media.  Not one of them is saying this isn't serious, but the societal lives lost to the lockdown are exceeding the threat of the virus, BY A LOT - increased substance abuse/dependence, spousal abuse, suicides, child abuse, lack of care for treatable chronic conditions due to fear of going to the hospital/doctor.

Students back to school in the classroom, sports back on TV with some in attendance, people back to work, returning to necessary doctor visits,  -  let's save some lives.

Pedaldad, that was a well argued, data-driven post--kudos for that.  But I take issue with the characterization that "[t]hose of us in medicine that understand data" share your conclusions.  I am not a doctor.  Two family members are--and both teach at major medical schools.  Both have shared very different opinions with me than yours.  To say opinions differ about the data is fair; to imply everyone with expertise shares your view is not at all.  See, for example, Fauci, Birx and the heads of most state public health agencies.  

We are being told boys are reporting July 5.  My son's teammates at other schools are being told the same and we got the email the other day that instruction will be on campus.  If Sweden is the right model, there is no reason we shouldn't return. Although, I almost prefer the WHO to disagree...they've been wrong about everything so far.

Sorry for the second post, but one more thing:  The TN prison tests Pedaldad cites were released two days ago (May 1).  Given that it takes up to 14 days for an infected person to show symptoms, the fact that 98% of those testing positive are asymptomatic as of Friday is encouraging, but not conclusive.  On the other hand, it's one more indicator that we should have a lot of additional useful data in the next couple of months, which ought to inform college's decisions.

@James G posted:

Did I just see Oregon extended their lockdown to July 6th? What in the world???

The state of emergency was extended.  That gives the governor authority to continue the lockdown, but doesn't mean she has to do so.  Seems to just be a catch-all to provide for additional measures in months ahead--though it's probably going to cause some consternation.

Did everyone see the CDC adjust the total deaths down by 30K?  We need to go back to school and back to life.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm

@baseballhs posted:

Did everyone see the CDC adjust the total deaths down by 30K?  We need to go back to school and back to life.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm

Others can correct me if I'm wrong but as I understand it, the technical notes at the bottom of the page explain that these data lag other reporting.  The CDC's death count is still over 64,000 (https://www.cdc.gov/coronaviru...tes/cases-in-us.html).   Johns Hopkins appears to show 61k (chart at bottom right of page:  https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/us-map    

I believe the numbers at the CDC link I gave are considered provisional.  The link you gave has the final, official numbers eventually--but they do not include all deaths as of the date they are displayed--give them a couple of weeks before you rely on May 1 figures.  From your link:

"Our counts often track 1–2 weeks behind other data for a number of reasons: Death certificates take time to be completed. There are many steps involved in completing and submitting a death certificate. Waiting for test results can create additional delays. States report at different rates. Currently, 63% of all U.S. deaths are reported within 10 days of the date of death, but there is significant variation among jurisdictions. It takes extra time to code COVID-19 deaths. While 80% of deaths are electronically processed and coded by NCHS within minutes, most deaths from COVID-19 must be coded manually, which takes an average of 7 days. Other reporting systems use different definitions or methods for counting deaths."

*edited to fix link into which autocorrect inserted an emoji

In CT here are the facts. 39% of cases are over 60 but that group represents 94% of the deaths , the majority of which have been in nursing homes. With a 97% “mild or no symptoms “ rate it’s pretty clear that the vast majority of us should be starting to ease back to living life with good hygiene while the older population needs to be protected or stay home still. We are killing our economy and our overall well being for something that in the end will probably resemble something  slightly more than the flu. It’s tough to build “herd immunity” without a herd. This includes students going to back to college in most settings with reasonable hygiene methods. There’s just not a lot to tell you it shouldn’t happen.