[HN Gopher] Georgia Tech professors revolt over reopening, say c...
___________________________________________________________________
Georgia Tech professors revolt over reopening, say current plan
threatens lives
Author : tonyztan
Score : 133 points
Date : 2020-07-05 20:27 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gpbnews.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gpbnews.org)
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23726410
| ryandrake wrote:
| Title: "Georgia Tech Professors Revolt..."
|
| Reality: Georgia Tech Professors release a not-even-strongly-
| worded letter [1] to express their alarm and recommendations, a
| letter that doesn't even mention actions they might take if those
| recommendations are not followed. I guess this counts as a
| "revolt"?
|
| 1:
| https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdjyLGfLIncWtm8fntd...
| adamsea wrote:
| It's a news article headline; I don't think anyone clicked on
| the link with the expectation that the professors would be
| literally arming themselves or something ...
| perl4ever wrote:
| I would tend to agree with the parent comment - while they
| may not be engaging in _armed_ revolt nor are expected to, it
| seems to me that the line between revolting and not revolting
| is when you draw the proverbial line in the sand. When you
| say, "we are committed to working with...blah blah blah" you
| haven't revolted yet. Revolt doesn't require violence or
| anger but it does require saying "I/we are not going to do
| this thing we are being compelled to, period". Saying "we
| disagree strongly" is not making an ultimatum.
|
| They might be implying that they are considering revolting,
| though. If I were working there, I would think it better to
| be more blunt. I bet in private, people are.
| noirbot wrote:
| If you want to see some more direct anger, as well as some
| indications why they may not be taking that much public action,
| you can read some more here:
| https://twitter.com/ibogost/status/1279070755888738305?s=21
| [deleted]
| ryandrake wrote:
| I always thought the word "revolt" implied at least _some_
| kind of action rather than mere anger. The instant burial of
| my comment seems to indicate that the word 's definition must
| have changed recently.
| Anon1096 wrote:
| It also doesn't seem like anyone is actually confirming these
| staff members to be on board, as evidenced by the interesting
| signers such as "Mike Hunt" from the College of Cock among
| others.
| adamsea wrote:
| "Faculty were already feeling anxious about the upcoming fall
| semester, GPB News was told, but a recent decision by the Board
| of Regents and state university system to not require students
| wear masks in classrooms sent faculty over the edge."
|
| Allowing a gathering of 10+ people in an enclosed space without a
| mask sounds like a terrible idea.
| djsumdog wrote:
| It's been going on all around this country for over a month
| now. I think it's safe to say this thing was an gorse
| overreaction and it's on its way out. Let's stop the mass
| hysteria
| Symbiote wrote:
| To make a political post even more political...
|
| Do American university staff belong to unions? Including the
| faculty?
|
| Hopefully this can be resolved with words, but striking for
| better working conditions has a very long history.
| AlexCornila wrote:
| I am laughing inside...not at you but at the idea. Unions are
| illegal in GA not just that but a lot of academic staff are
| adjuncts very few are tendered professors. That means they are
| rehired or not every year or couple of years as needed.
| granshaw wrote:
| Union is a 4-letter word in the US, especially in red states
| stu2b50 wrote:
| They don't have the right to collectively bargain in Georgia
| (the state).
| bumby wrote:
| Is this because the are public sector employees?
| vkou wrote:
| No, because Georgia police officers, who are public
| employees, have unions.
| analog31 wrote:
| Likewise in Wisconsin. The state government did what they
| could get away with. They can deny union rights to public
| sector employees, but aren't required to treat all public
| sector employees the same.
|
| Still, formal union representation would not prevent a
| wildcat strike.
| [deleted]
| yummypaint wrote:
| In my mind a key part of what makes a university a university
| is that the faculty are the ultimate authority. Thats's the
| whole point of tenure. The administration is supposed to exist
| to handle details needed to facilitate the work of the faculty.
| That unionization of faculty (especially senior faculty) has
| apparently become necessary really speaks to the massive amount
| of administrative creep that has taken place, and the
| perversion of these institutions from academic centers into
| businesses. It still isn't too late for professors to reclaim
| their rightful authority, but many of them are too ground down,
| overworked, or willing to be just another employee at another
| big organization without understanding their broader
| responsibilities to education in general.
| hypersoar wrote:
| I'm not aware of any faculty unions representing professors.
| There are some academic student employee (inc. grad students)
| unions and a handful of postdoc unions.
| anonms-coward wrote:
| Makes a lot of sense. Professors of high age are at very
| increased risk. Students fit in tight spaces would for sure
| include asymptomatic careers. And any hope of expecting an entire
| student community to take utmost caution is simply futile.
| mrtri wrote:
| they should visit third world country vietnam, how they managed
| to keep the corona deaths to zero. while across the ocean
| thousands die in the US with better healthcare and hygiene
| georgeburdell wrote:
| The Board of Regents are political appointees so I'm not
| surprised this is the policy they came up with. I'm generally not
| a fan of blanket shelter in place rules on freedom grounds, but
| the science is clear on the positive benefits of masks [0]. And
| there isn't really a down-side.
|
| [0]
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
| djsumdog wrote:
| There are a lot of downsides if asymptomatic spread isn't
| really true (the WHO said it wasn't and then walked it back ..
| reading a lot of the studies, I think there is a lot of
| evidence to suggest there is little to no asymptomatic spread;
| and the push to say otherwise is very political).
|
| Masks are very bad psychologically. They cause judgement and
| distrust, plus they're a pretty useless placebo effect. This
| virus is clearly no where near as dangerous as original made
| out to be, and I the normalization of the mask directly lead to
| an increase of violence during the recent riots all around the
| nation. They have the potential to lead people to take more
| risks and do things they wouldn't normally do[0].
|
| It's absurd to think masks don't have any downsides. They
| certainly do.
|
| [0]: https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/43402/
| [deleted]
| glofish wrote:
| What is not discussed there is that all these professors signing
| the document expect to be paid the same as last year.
|
| One might argue that if the lectures are online then the tuition
| (and professor pay) should be proportional to the value they
| produce - and that can't possibly be the same as last year.
| watwut wrote:
| Shouldn't salary be market based, theoretically? Salaries are
| not based on produced value typically. They are result of
| negotiations.
| joekim wrote:
| Yeah, agreed. The market sets the price.
| glofish wrote:
| Right, but those negotiations did assume face to face
| instructions. If they don't teach face to face then the terms
| need to be re-negotiated.
|
| All I am saying here is not that you should push faculty to
| do things they don't want - just to have everyone understand
| they can't get the same salary as before if they provide less
| value as before.
| joekim wrote:
| How would you calculate the reduction in value of lectures if
| given online?
|
| I'd argue the value of the lectures is about the same for large
| classes, it's the ability to ask questions or students ability
| to focus that gets harder online.
| noirbot wrote:
| And at the same time though, it's also generally more work to
| set things up for an online class, or at least it can be,
| especially for classes with labs, or ones that usually
| involved using a whiteboard. It may be a reduction in value
| to the students, but it's also an increase in work for the
| professors probably.
| glofish wrote:
| is that a good argument?
|
| This product if worth X amount for you, but I can only
| build it for 2X
|
| An online course that an average professor puts together
| will be much worse than what is already available on
| Coursera.
|
| This is what scares the administration, they know cannot
| compete with that, and bigger things are at stake, like the
| future of the entire institution.
| noirbot wrote:
| I'm not arguing it one way or another, but just saying
| that even if it's true that the class provides less
| "value" if it's online, it's almost definitely more work,
| or at least different work than most of the professors
| signed up to be doing.
|
| If anything, a lot of the cost of a college tuition these
| days isn't in the pay for the instructors anyway. It's in
| the campus, the labs, the sports, the social life/club
| funding and the like.
| glofish wrote:
| Ok, are you arguing that all courses will be online, but
| the campus, labs and sports will be in person?
|
| It seems like you are missing the point, if the student
| is not coming the professor can't get paid either. Do you
| thing GT will just print more money?
| glofish wrote:
| I think if they move all online, the university will have
| reduced income, that in turn will set the new salaries.
|
| It will in a way work out, all I am saying that I don't think
| these petitioners ever thought about it, or considered that.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| [I attended GT for Computer Science and signed one of these
| petitions]
|
| This comment seems to misunderstand professors and
| universities. Instruction is a relatively small part of
| professor responsibilities. Most tenured professors will teach
| perhaps one class a year, some one class a semester. Some do
| more, though often by choice and at least at Georgia Tech, much
| of the undergraduate instruction is done by lecturers, who are
| not tenure track faculty.
|
| So the value they produce won't decrease by much. In fact it
| might actually increase. Georgia Tech is, and has been, one of
| the leaders in online instruction through the OMSCS program.
| This allowed professors to be in many ways more valuable and
| teach more students per professor (with an increase in TAs).
|
| My experience is limited mostly to the College of Computing,
| but some courses taught by other Colleges (notably gen-ed
| physics I and II in the College of Sciences) have been
| optionally taught in mixed online form for years (I took an
| "inverted" Physics course where the lectures were online in
| 2014). This allowed in-lecture time to be much more tailored to
| specific student questions.
|
| So there's no a priori reason to believe that online
| instruction is less valuable. (This isn't the same, by the way,
| as the opinion that university education that is completely
| online is as valuable as in person, there are environmental
| factors that are advantageous for in person experiences).
|
| There are some classes and subjects where this doesn't always
| work (Engineering courses often need specialized equipment for
| more applied course), but these aren't the majority of classes,
| and forcing a CS professor to lecture in person when the same
| course, often taught by the same professor, already exists as a
| MOOC is ridiculous.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| It's sort of wild you talking about taking those physics
| courses. I was one of the research scientists supporting Mike
| and Ed teaching those courses. I always wondered if people
| liked them or not. We only ever had surveys and such I never
| interacted with students one on one.
| glofish wrote:
| Are you seriously arguing that a professor teaching/working
| from home will produce the same value? And that the students
| should pay the same tuition as before? Why did we ever have
| in person classes then if the value is the same?
|
| (Later you also state that there are subjects where it cannot
| possibly work at all)
|
| I am not saying that online education is useless, just that
| it produces less value. I also believe that professors are
| not even remotely open to the idea that this could be
| reflected in their salaries.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > Are you seriously arguing that a professor
| teaching/working from home will produce the same value?
|
| Lecturing online vs in person, yes I think there's not a
| huge difference. From my experience at Tech, I think of all
| of the parts of the environment (other students, 1:1 time
| with professors, research opportunities, labs, lectures,
| random events, extracurriculars, etc.) lectures brought
| some of the least academic value, and are impacted the
| least by the move online. Class structures as a whole _are_
| impacted, but a professor lecturing into a chalkboard on
| how to take eigenvalues isn 't a better experience than
| what you can get on youtube today. The value I as a student
| got wasn't from the lectures, it was from everything else.
|
| And you _can 't_ provide the everything else anyway.
|
| > Later you also state that there are subjects where it
| cannot possibly work.
|
| Indeed, but that doesn't excuse not trying for the subjects
| where it can.
|
| > I am not saying that online education is useless, just
| that it produces less value, and I don't think that
| professors are even remotely open to the idea that this
| could be reflected in their salaries.
|
| And I'm saying that the opposite is likely true: the OMSCS
| program is cheaper tuition wise, but still an enormous cash
| cow for Georgia Tech. So if you mean value per student,
| maybe, but that has, again, little to do with the
| _professor_ , it has to do with the other services the
| university environment provides. In an online education
| scheme, the value provided by the professor actually
| increases, while the value to charge the student decreases,
| because the student no longer has access to all of the
| other valuable things that the university provides that
| have nothing to do with the professor (everything from the
| concrete: a world class weightlifting studio to the more
| nebulous: the ability to interact and network with other
| students, which is for example a key reason that schools
| can charge more for their MBA programs, it has little to do
| with the classes and more to do with the people, the other
| students, you'll meet).
| glofish wrote:
| > _I think of all of the parts of the environment (other
| students, 1:1 time with professors, research
| opportunities, labs, lectures, random events,
| extracurriculars, etc.) lectures brought some of the
| least academic value,_
|
| But you are not getting any of these either! You seem to
| focus too much on lectures. The learning experience
| obviously includes all that above.
|
| > _In an online education scheme, the value provided by
| the professor actually increases_
|
| ok this is so wrong, I don't even know where to start or
| if it is even worth discussing. Most of the professors
| there haven't got a clue on how to design an online
| course. That takes years of practice, a loop of
| evaluation, enthusiasm and hard work (I know because I
| developed an online course and it took me five years to
| get it right). What they produce will be a tedious,
| unwatchable hourlong expose that will be a burden to
| follow.
|
| Saying that a professor produces even more value online
| is absurd - perhaps relatively speaking since if students
| don't get to be there thus compared to nothing, or
| course, it is a lot.
|
| My opinion firmly stands, none of these universities can
| even hope to pay their professors the same if they teach
| online.
|
| This is why the administration wants the face-to-face so
| badly, do you honestly think that they have not thought
| about how insanely badly it makes them look? They know
| what the letter signers don't, there is no future if
| students are not there.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > But you are not getting any of these either! You seem
| to focus too much on lectures. The learning experience
| obviously includes all that above.
|
| I know, that's why I said "And you can't provide the
| everything else anyway." That has nothing to do with the
| professor. The professor's value doesn't affect the value
| one gets from extracurriculars. The professor shouldn't
| be paid less because the university can't provide
| extracurriculars, because, under your scheme _the
| professor is still providing the same value_.
|
| > Saying that a professor produces even more value online
| is absurd
|
| A single professor can, on campus, teach a course of at
| most ~200 students. Some universities can support more
| for a few courses due to larger lecture halls, but at
| Georgia Tech 2-250 is the limit. On the other hand, in an
| online course the same professor can teach thousands of
| students. Georgia Tech is the prime example here: the
| OMSCS program has professors teaching _tons_ of students
| per professor.
|
| > Most of the professors there haven't got a clue on how
| to design an online course.
|
| Indeed, and you'll see that many of the professors are
| complaining because they weren't given clear timelines.
| You overestimate the time component required for many
| subjects, I saw approximately 3 months to convert an
| existing on campus CS course to online, given the
| resources (which Tech has), which again, remember this is
| a university with the resources and experience to provide
| multiple masters degree programs entirely online, has at
| least one lab devoted to online education and MOOC
| research, etc.
|
| > My opinion firmly stands, none of these universities
| can even hope to pay their professors the same if they
| teach online.
|
| Sure, but _not_ because the professor is providing in
| less value, but because the _university_ is providing
| less value.
| AlexCornila wrote:
| nahhh this is the same as the opinion that online university
| education can be equally valuable as in person. It jus got
| exposed now for anyone still having doubts
| joshuamorton wrote:
| I don't disagree with that. In fact, I said as much when I
| stated
|
| > This isn't the same, by the way, as the opinion that
| university education that is completely online is as
| valuable as in person, there are environmental factors that
| are advantageous for in person experiences
|
| But that has nothing to do with professor salaries. A
| professor's value to a student is about the same whether
| they're lecturing in person or through a screen. The rest
| of the system however has less value to the student. But
| that the university can't provide as much value doesn't
| impact the professor's value. So if you're looking at this
| from a value-driven economy, the professor's salary
| shouldn't change, the university should profit less from
| the Prof's labor because the university is providing less
| value-add over just the professor.
| fcatalan wrote:
| Or maybe if the lectures are online they should be paid
| proportional to the effort involved, which can't be possibly
| the same if you have to come up with new materials, find new
| methods of teaching and engaging the students, etc...
| hysan wrote:
| You speak as if teaching in-person is an apples to apples
| comparison to teaching online where online is strictly easier
| and of less value. Having done both, this is far from an equal
| comparison. Putting student value aside, the skill sets needed
| are different. A professor that can teach in-person AND online
| equally well is not easy to find. So unless the university is
| willing to fire their professors and hire ones that are better
| trained for online teaching, I see no reason for the professors
| to take some sort of pay cut.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| mnm1 wrote:
| Reopening universities and colleges is also a major threat to the
| entire community. Here in WA over a hundred students tested
| positive this week after partying at their frat. In Alabama,
| students are intentionally trying to get infected. This will
| happen en masse if universities open their campuses and those
| infected will spread the infections into not only the immediate
| community but also the ones that many of them traveled hundreds
| of miles from to attend university. It would be pure madness to
| reopen or to pretend like university students will social
| distance and wear masks.
| charliepark wrote:
| Here's a pretty good thread from a professor arguing that the
| Alabama story is very likely made up:
| https://twitter.com/thrasherxy/status/1278703871053963269
|
| But I totally agree that the entire premise of colleges trying
| to function as an on-campus institution is absolutely absurd
| until there's a vaccine.
| djsumdog wrote:
| > until there's a vaccine
|
| Why do people think we're getting some magic vaccine?
| Gavi/Gates have pushed this "18 months" bullshit, where
| they're developing some magical vaccine for a family of
| viruses that's never had a vaccine before, and every previous
| attempt has been met with either bad immunopathic responses
| or immune enhancement syndrome[0].
|
| Vaccines takes decades to develop safely, and the techniques
| being proposed now have never led to a vaccine that made it
| through clinical trials before.
|
| There is no vaccine coming in any reasonable amount of time.
| The 100+ companies are take a lot of WHO/government money,
| and who knows if they'll actually produce anything.
|
| Safe vaccines for new families of viruses take a decade.
| There is still no vaccine for retroviruses (herpes, HIV,
| etc.) It's straight up Gates pipe dream to think a safe
| vaccine for this can be made in a year.
|
| [0]: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/this-is-not-a-time-
| of-hon...
| cglong wrote:
| I'm in a Georgia Tech Facebook group and this has been a really
| controversial issue, particularly among international students.
| They only provided 4-6 weeks notice before reopening, so not only
| is flying risky, it'll be expensive too. To make matters worse,
| some classes will be offered online, but students won't know if
| it is until after the semester has already started.
| AlexCornila wrote:
| I assume this is a $ issue for them, they won't be able to
| charge what they normally charge for online classes so they try
| to bring people in somehow edit: normally charge for campus
| joshuamorton wrote:
| That may be part of it, but a not-insiginificant part of the
| issue is that Georgia Tech, as an institution, isn't allowed
| to set the rules. The Georgia Board of Regents has relatively
| tight control (presumably through budgetary means, if not
| explicit control means) over the policies schools are allowed
| to implement. So even if GT leadership wanted to implement
| something like a mask-required or an online-classes-by-
| request, no questions asked rule, it isn't actually allowed
| to by the state.
|
| GT's leadership is still somewhat culpable, don't get me
| wrong the President could be doing better, but the buck
| doesn't stop with him in this case.
| dpeck wrote:
| This is right on, and just another example of GT (a top
| tier engineering school) being physically located in, and
| largely beholden to, a state that doesn't care about, or is
| downright hostile to all things "technology"/"smart".
|
| I love my alma mater, but I wish somebody over at Emory
| would have figured out a way to buy out the state at some
| point and have us as part of them.
| zbaylin wrote:
| > a state that doesn't care about, or is downright
| hostile to all things "technology"/"smart".
|
| I know this is a generalization, but I find it kind of
| egregious. Georgia is one of the only states left (AFAIK)
| where you can essentially attend an in-state college for
| free if you have a high enough GPA [0]. You can argue
| about the means by which that is achieved (the lottery),
| but as a current Tech student I know plenty of very
| talented students who wouldn't be able to attend college,
| let alone an engineering school, without these
| scholarship programs. I doubt that a state/government
| that truly was anti-technology or anti-"smart" would
| funnel what must be billions of dollars a year into
| academic scholarships.
|
| [0]: https://www.gafutures.org/hope-state-aid-
| programs/hope-zell-...
| davidtsong wrote:
| Kind of on the right track. As a student myself, we have
| realized the value of a college education comes from the on
| campus environment. So, if it's online, we will take gap
| quarters/years and universities will receive $0.(I am
| planning to take Fall quarter off because online is not worth
| it)
| AlexCornila wrote:
| please explain this to me how the value comes from the on
| campus education?
| sdesol wrote:
| I'm no longer in school (graduated a while ago), but I
| would make the same decision as the person you are
| responding to. What I liked about school was the social
| aspect that made learning easier/more enjoyable. It was
| nice walking into the library and recognizing a face from
| class to chat about what was taught. It was nice running
| into somebody while walking to class to chat about what
| was going to be taught/what was taught.
|
| There is a spontaneous social element to the learning
| process that I believe can't be replicated online.
| enchiridion wrote:
| While that aspect is nice, I firmly believe that
| basically any college class can be aced by attending
| lectures and more importantly, reading the book.
| atlgator wrote:
| Networking, engagement with peers, connections to
| incubators and startups.
| formercoder wrote:
| It's not just about class. It's about building your
| network and having experiences. Many aspects of class are
| also compromised online as well.
| xigency wrote:
| > they won't be able to charge what they normally charge for
| online classes
|
| I have two contradictory points for this.
|
| One, I applied for online graduate programs several years ago
| and found that the majority of programs had the same cost for
| online and offline tuition. The idea that online programs
| should be cheaper is not really supported in general. You
| could argue that as a whole college education is overpriced,
| but clearly the market will bear it.
|
| Two, the program I did select is Georgia Tech's online
| masters of computer science (OMSCS) which is: 1)
| significantly cheaper that on-campus tuition 2) really
| excellent in terms of quality and 3) a very enormous program
| with thousands of students.
|
| In this case it's unfortunate they aren't drawing from their
| experience in multiple successful OMS programs to create a
| high quality online experience for a large number of
| students.
| vkou wrote:
| Even if the cost of tuition is the same, these universities
| invested millions and billions of dollars into building on-
| campus amenities, that they can't charge their students
| for, if the students are learning remotely.
| abstrakraft wrote:
| They can and they do. I've paid Georgia Tech athletic
| fees while attending remote campuses with no amenities.
| Archit3ch wrote:
| Did the students fly to their home countries?
| pmoriarty wrote:
| I feel for the students, but reopening the school for in-person
| classes makes no sense.
|
| If a student flies home, they face one day of risk. If school
| reopens for in-person classes, then they'll face hundreds of
| days of risk.
|
| That single day of flying may not even be as risky as a single
| day of classes (never mind hundreds of days of classes),
| because not nearly as many people fly these days due to fear of
| the pandemic.
|
| Also, if classes reopen, many of the people that get sick
| (who'll be far more numerous than those that get sick from
| flying a single day) will spread the sickness to others,
| causing way more knock-on effects than those caused by a small
| number of students flying one day.
| djsumdog wrote:
| The risk is so incredibly low thought, especially since most
| of these students will be under 30! There is something
| important about in-person classes you don't really get online
| and I'd hate to be forced to be online only.
|
| We've lost a whole year, to a virus that is nowhere near as
| deadly as anyone thought it'd be, and it will likely die, or
| we'll reach herd immunity, long before any virus can be
| safely manufactured.
|
| I feel like a lot of this is fear, hysteria and an completely
| inability for humans to properly assess risk, mixed with just
| a plethora of bad and conflicting information.
| acalmon wrote:
| How about faculty? Professors are, on average, more than 40
| years old. Do you think they should teach in person?
| madiator wrote:
| > inability for humans to properly assess risk
|
| Would you be willing to entertain the same thought for
| yourself?
| tomohawk wrote:
| Taking a look at excess mortality:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid
|
| (scroll down to the Economist graphs)
|
| It would appear that the worst occurred in the April timeframe
| (Europe, New York), and that we've mostly reached a point of no
| excess mortality at this point.
|
| However, if another wave were to come through, the graphs are
| pretty sobering.
|
| For 65+, excess deaths peaked at 35k/week extra
|
| For 45-64, excess deaths peaked at 2.5k/week extra
|
| For 15-44, excess deaths peaked at .8k/week extra
|
| So, most students returning is a negligible risk, but for some
| professors, it could be daunting, if there were to be another
| wave.
| hef19898 wrote:
| You mean another one than the one currently happening in South
| America, India and the US?
|
| Also, it is not just deaths. The less at risk groups infect
| others, that can be more at risk.
| tomohawk wrote:
| It's unfortunate that the excess mortality is not a metric
| that is rigorously collected at this time. As a result, it
| lags quite a bit. We'll know in a week or so how June looked.
|
| You're right that it is not just deaths, but morbidity.
| Someone who gets on a vent due to covid may never regain the
| life they had previously.
|
| However, we've learned a bit since April. Wearing masks works
| with social distancing, but requires administrative
| enforcement.
|
| Sweden has kept their schools open during this time (through
| high school) and offers an interesting point of comparison.
| It hasn't appeared to cause any problems for them. The main
| problems they've had are in the immigrant communities (220%
| higher rates of covid) and in elder care facilities.
| vkou wrote:
| > It hasn't appeared to cause any problems for them.
|
| By which you mean, it is neck-and-neck with the United
| States and Brazil in daily cases per capita, and is soundly
| leading both countries in deaths per capita?
|
| Their strategy of 'isolate the vulnerable population and do
| little else' worked great, except for the part where it
| hasn't worked at all because... The vulnerable population
| is getting sick and dying.
| tomohawk wrote:
| If you look at the linked data, you'll see that Sweden
| reached zero excess mortality by the end of May. This is
| a very good indication that their approach is working as
| they expected it would. Their execution has not been
| perfect, but they've been transparent about that and are
| working to address the known issues.
| fabian2k wrote:
| Given the current numbers in the US, it does not seem likely that
| you can reopen universities in any kind of safe way. Anything
| that puts a lot of people into small rooms is problematic, and I
| really can't see anything that is close to the regular operation
| being possible in the fall.
|
| The only way to be able to reopen inherently risky activities
| like this is to suppress the virus sufficiently that you can
| handle the remainder with mask mandates, contact tracing and
| prohibiting mass events. I'm in Germany where the number of cases
| is drastically lower than in the US right now, and I doubt we'll
| be able to reopen universities fully in the fall. With the
| dramatic numbers from the US right now, it does seem extremely
| unlikely that they could be controlled enough in the fall to make
| any kind of reopening safe.
| daseiner1 wrote:
| or, just let what will happen, happen? i hear a lot about case
| numbers, almost nothing about mortality rates
| CyanLite4 wrote:
| I think you missed the whole reason to "flatten the curve".
| The hospitalization rate is the problem, not mortality rate.
| 20-30% of people who get the virus end up in the hospital
| since there are no known treatments available. For now, if we
| have hospital capacity you're very likely to survive
| COVID-19. If we run out of supplies and overwhelm the limited
| medical staff the mortality rate is going to skyrocket and we
| will run out of places to store the dead bodies.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Mortality is not the only thing that matters. We don't know
| what this virus does to survivors, even potentially
| asymptomatic ones. The little that we do know appears to be
| alarming (potentially permanent lung damage, some potential
| cases of brain damage).
|
| We already know about viruses that sit inside people
| asymptomatically for years and years before wreaking havoc.
| Of course we cannot live permanently paralyzed by "what ifs,"
| but planning that focuses entirely on mortality rate is
| ignoring a huge, huge piece of this equation.
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| Many survivors are left with permanent health effects.
|
| You may not die, but you may not be able to practice your
| favorite sports ever again because of permanent lung
| scarring.
| standardUser wrote:
| There is no evidence that there are significant long term
| health implications for the vast, vast majority of people
| infected by this coronavirus. If you have citations that
| state otherwise, please share.
| gdubs wrote:
| This shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. Absence of
| evidence is not evidence of absence.
|
| The parent comment may be referring to the growing number
| of "long haulers" who have "recovered" yet seem to be
| suffering from chronic symptoms. [1]
|
| This may be anecdotal, but it's a growing number of
| people and worth taking seriously. This is a _novel_
| virus, after all.
|
| 1: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/06/cov
| id-19-...
| geofft wrote:
| There are stories coming out of people who have not died but
| certainly have not "recovered" in the sense most people would
| expect. See this for instance:
| https://twitter.com/DaniOliver/status/1279155358666305541 I
| don't really know how you expect students to complete their
| education if they're ill like that.
|
| Also, even if that weren't the case and everyone did recover
| completely after two weeks, missing two weeks out of a
| 15-week college class is quite a bit. So _even if_ your plan
| is to have your students get covid at some point in the term,
| have some fraction be asymptomatic, some fraction recover
| from it, and a couple of them die, you still need some sort
| of coherent educational plan for the large fraction that are
| going to be in the campus ICU for a couple of weeks.
| djsumdog wrote:
| What specific numbers? Everything I've seen shows way more
| people have been exposed than though, a vast majority of them
| don't even generate anitbodies, and the overall fatality rates
| all across the board are dropping.
|
| Just go to the beaches in Indiana and Florida and you'll see
| thousands of people out on the beaches, and it's been that way
| for a month and there's no spike in Fatalities (and please
| don't go on about cases. Those numbers include PCR, antibody
| and everyone who is getting test now for regular procedures at
| hospitals who are testing positive but have had no or minimal
| symptoms).
| nradov wrote:
| Safety is not a binary condition. Since eradicating the virus
| is no longer a feasible option in most places, the risk level
| going forward is inevitably going to be higher than it was a
| year ago. Even the development of a vaccine won't fundamentally
| change that reality. So we're going to have to lower our
| expectations of safety.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > So we're going to have to lower our expectations of safety.
|
| We really don't. In-person classes at a university are _not_
| something one should risk infection for. Yes, remote classes
| are not ideal. Dying, killing others, and having a lifetime
| of potential complications, are all worse.
|
| > Since eradicating the virus is no longer a feasible option
| in most places
|
| You have cause and effect backwards. Eradicating the virus is
| harder _because_ of continued failures to maintain measures
| keeping it under control.
| H8crilA wrote:
| Given how many people have gone through the disease (nearly
| everywhere it is < 5%, so essentially no difference vs
| February) you can't really open anything anywhere safely, not
| without a plan for fast shutdown and accurate measurements to
| trigger that shutdown. Unless there's a vaccine. This is just
| basic SIR modelling, epidemiology 101.
| monoideism wrote:
| Compartmental models are not typically covered in an
| introductory epidemiology course.
|
| Usually not covered until an advanced methods course.
| H8crilA wrote:
| :)
|
| But do you disagree with the main point?
| HeavenFox wrote:
| My alma mater recently sent out an email of their plans to
| reopen campus this fall. Their reasoning is a study done by the
| operations research department found that even if they do
| classes online in fall, many students will return to campus
| anyways, only without monitoring and testing in place.
| Reopening campus would at least give the university some
| control over student behavior.
| vkou wrote:
| That's like saying that all the WFH firms should herd the
| employees back into the office, because their employees are
| out and about visiting friends and shopping for groceries,
| anyways.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| This comparison isn't quite accurate, because we're talking
| about students relocating physically, which isn't as likely
| to happen in an employee WFH situation.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The goals are different, though. US universities don't hope to
| find a reopening plan that won't spread the virus at all; they
| just want to find a way to keep it from spreading too much.
| ethanbond wrote:
| I don't get the impression that _anyone_ expects anything to
| be 100% safe. This is a straw man. Everyone agrees the goal
| is to prevent it from spreading "too much," but any proposed
| school reopenings (from kindergarten up to university) look
| like they'd land way above the line of acceptable spread.
|
| Maybe a line we can all agree on is: If the expected
| resulting R_0 is above 1, it's probably not a good plan as it
| _will not_ be sustainable. Since you probably can't know
| whether it'll result in an R_0 above 1 before doing it, then
| in order to reopen you _must_ have robust surveillance in
| place to quickly detect the R_0 _and_ have a plan to shut
| back down in the case it reaches 1.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| There's quibbles about whether the boundary needs to be
| _exactly_ 1, but yeah, I agree with your core point. A
| reopening plan needs a strategy for how to scale back if
| something goes wrong, and it 's hard to imagine how you
| could scale back transmission in a dorm full of college
| students.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Yeah, I think there's maybe a more general solution of
| the form: Places can publicly declare their R_0 threshold
| for shutdown and their surveillance mechanism to detect
| when it's hit.
|
| I would imagine that, given a detailed surveillance
| mechanism that's strictly adhered to, you could calculate
| the maximum "time to detection" of how soon after hitting
| that threshold you'd know about it.
|
| Post those 4 things: R_0 threshold, surveillance
| mechanism, time-to-detection, and shutdown plan then
| people can choose if they want to sign up for that risk.
|
| Of course in the education case specifically, the real
| crux of the issue is the differential between the
| educators' (generally older) risk tolerance and those of
| the students/the needs of students families (in the pre-
| university case).
| fabian2k wrote:
| I don't think that is possible in situations that are
| suitable for SARS-CoV2 transmissions. The most extreme
| example is probably the meat processing plants, it spread
| like crazy in those conditions. Another example is the choir
| practices that also infected a lot of the participants.
|
| Anything that happens under the conditions suitable for
| superspreading events probably can't rely on any half-
| measures.
| stu2b50 wrote:
| I'd add that Georgia Tech is asking for Out-of-State and
| International Students to come in on July 24-26th, which is 2
| weeks after the announcement was made (very recently). Which
| seems kinda absurd.
|
| >If you have secured, or expect to have secured your visa, and
| plan to enroll for the fall semester on the Atlanta campus, you
| should plan for in-person, residential instruction.
|
| >You will be asked to arrive in Atlanta between July 24-26 and be
| required to follow quarantine guidelines.
|
| >Per guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and
| Prevention, any individual who is traveling to the U.S. from an
| international destination should quarantine for 14 days upon
| arrival, monitor their health, and practice social distancing.
| This guidance should be followed by students planning to live in
| either on-campus housing or private housing located off-campus.
| molmalo wrote:
| In some universities in Spain, they have mandatory antibody
| tests, and they divide students in 3 groups: the ones with
| antibodies, the ones without and sick people that can follow the
| classes online.
|
| To enter the buildings in the campus, you need to get a
| "passport", after completing antibody test and lots of
| questions... Some preconditions, like being asthmatic
| disqualifies you (so you need to follow classes online). Also,
| they have several new rules, like using only stairs to move
| across floors, minimum distance, thermal cameras, etc.
|
| It's a new world in many aspects.
| luxurytent wrote:
| Reading this, I can't believe how far behind North America is
| with respect to this virus. When it comes to day to day life,
| we have very little new, quality information compared to March.
|
| I'm not saying what Spain is doing is great, but it feels like
| an iterative step to remove a few top layers of anxiety
| umvi wrote:
| Air Force Academy has already re-opened with next semesters'
| students already there. They are marching socially distanced and
| with masks and elevated hand washing.
|
| On a side note - several USAFA cadets committed suicide due to
| lockdown-induced mental health issues a few months back... so
| it's pretty safe to say that the cure is more deadly than the
| illness (at least currently... 0 cadets have died from covid-19
| while 2 have died from suicide).
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| > several USAFA cadets committed suicide due to lockdown-
| induced mental health issues a few months back.
|
| My condolences. The Air Force Academy is a golden ticket to
| become an Air Force pilot. I can't imagine what it would take
| to override that prospect in one's mind to the point of
| bringing them to the brink of suicide. I understand that forced
| isolation sucks, but not to this point.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://www.airforcemag.com/usaf-suicides-skyrocket-in-2019/
|
| > A total of 137 Airmen took their own lives in 2019--a 33
| percent increase from the 103 suicides in 2018 despite service
| efforts to tackle the problem.
|
| I'm not sure you can conclude much from two.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| What's wild is Georgia tech has a very successful online master's
| program that apparently everyone forgot about because it could be
| a great starting point to do everything online.
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| Online degrees that are marketed as online degrees carry a
| stigma among employers, because they are perceived as being
| lower quality than not-online degrees, and the stuff of diploma
| mills.
|
| My final semester will be entirely online, but I couldn't care
| less, since my degree isn't an online degree.
| xigency wrote:
| Georgia Tech issues the same diplomas for their online and
| offline masters degree programs.
| just-juan-post wrote:
| > Online degrees that are marketed as online degrees carry a
| stigma among employers, because they are perceived as being
| lower quality than not-online degrees, and the stuff of
| diploma mills.
|
| Do you have some survey results or where are you getting this
| "fact"?
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| Sure.
|
| > In 2009, Norina L. Columbaro and Catherine H. Monaghan,
| researchers at the Cleveland State University, published an
| article analyzing dozens of studies and popular articles on
| employers' perceptions of online degrees. By and large,
| they found that "gatekeepers"--for example, employers and
| hiring managers--"have an overall negative perception about
| online degrees." In their survey, Columbaro and Monaghan
| also found several recurring concerns about online degrees.
| These concerns ranged from a perceived lack of rigor to
| concerns about the increased potential for academic
| dishonesty. Not surprisingly, the fact that online degrees
| were still associated with an earlier generation of diploma
| mills was also a concern.
|
| https://news.elearninginside.com/have-online-degrees-and-
| cre...
| perl4ever wrote:
| I think this may be context dependent. My impression is
| that a lot of people who are mid-career or changing
| careers get degrees that are online or otherwise don't
| appear to be top tier, because they simply need to pass a
| requirement that they get _a_ degree. I think teachers in
| particular, face requirements to get masters degrees. If
| you have a statutory or other rule that says you _must_
| get a degree, and it 's basically a checklist item, then
| it's in your interest to go for the cheapest, easiest,
| most accessible option, and not worry about the pedigree
| or mystique.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| It's an online masters in _computer science_ , a lot of
| engineering and science courses require labs that aren't
| feasible without being present. And even if most of your
| courses are lab free, from my experience there, I had a lab
| course most semesters, even if it was just one.
| AlexCornila wrote:
| the online classes for the master program are better than the
| campus ones I took some of those that overlapped with my campus
| ones because they were shitty.
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