The Oregonian reported Saturday that student gatherings involving athletes and frats are responsible for the recent increases in Covid cases at UO and OSU. Whether that should lead to more restrictions depends on which public health official you prefer:
“State epidemiologist Dr. Dean Sidelinger said Friday that officials have identified “outbreaks” linked to three Greek life parties, one other off-campus party and social gatherings involving three athletic teams at the University of Oregon or Oregon State University. In all that’s 22 cases linked to UO and 13 cases to OSU, an official later confirmed.”
Or, if you’d rather,
“Patrick Allen, director of the Oregon Health Authority, did not explicitly discourage social gatherings but advised people to think about how to best do them safely.”
On the other hand,
“But Jason Davis, a spokesman for Lane County Public Health, urged all residents of Lane County to refrain from social gatherings with anyone outside their households because of soaring cases in the area. That includes University of Oregon students. “Until we can responsibly gather, I think the best course of action is, ‘Don’t do it,’” Davis said. … Davis said his department has identified seven outbreaks linked to University of Oregon students, college-aged students from other schools or people who are ages 18 to 28 but not enrolled in school who got together indoors and without masks.”
Don’t look to UO to report anything this specific. UO’s Covid reporting transparency, at https://coronavirus.uoregon.edu/cases, is still confusing. and omits most of the above details. It displays weekly positive results, apparently updated daily, broken out by off-campus students, on-campus students, and staff. Nothing as of yet about frat parties, or the rapid antigen tests for Ducks.
There’s a button above that which shows the daily tests and positive results for on-campus students, which takes you to what seems to be an only occasionally updated page, which shows very positive results about the small number of positive tests for on-campus students, here:
Then there’s another link that takes you to all this information, plus the daily info, which seems to be updated in the evening, here. They don’t report on those days there are zero positive tests:
Do the 18-28 yr olds really need warnings about the disease? They know, they just don’t care.
What’s more important to see how many cases are happening in Notre Dame or UIUC where there are in person classes.
Guess what. Barely any. It isn’t spreading in classrooms. It’s spreading at parties. It a few students were stupid and spread it for about two weeks, and then the idiots either got scared or herd immune.
Short story is we should be able to go back to teaching sooner rather than later if you you actually look at the data on spread from those univs.
That’s right, not spreading in classrooms or at parties. But you won’t hear about that on the news! Anybody below the age of 50 is less susceptible to COVID-19 than the flu virus. The difference in younger people is even more pronounced.
Are any of these policies (lock down, masks, distancing) informed by science/evidence? Not really. For example, there are a very large number of good randomized control studies of masks and respiratory viruses that show that masks have no effect at all. Viruses are just too small. It’s like trying to keep mosquitoes out with chicken wire. Masks also cause all sorts of problems when people (workers) are forced to wear them 8 hours a day (decreased blood oxygen levels, increased carbon dioxide levels, plus you breath in all of your own expelled viruses and bacteria). Very poor health policy!
Time to … and take names!
Anonymous, your interesting claims cry out for links to your sources. Please provide these, or don’t complain if I delete this.
you should delete it on the “merit” of the bs claims about “all sorts of problems” being caused by masks alone
They do cause baldness – I keep getting the strings caught in my hair.
check your privilege, you hair-ist.
It’s been many years since I could credibly be called a hair-ist, although 6 months of quarantine did produce some interesting growths.
Thanks for asking, Bill.
Here’s a recent article on the effectiveness of masks: https://www.globalresearch.ca/plain-truth-about-masks/5724961
This article discusses some of the adverse effects of prolonged mask use. There are many articles on this topic. Easy to google it.
BTW, as of Sept 22, 37 US universities have recorded 48,300 “positive covid tests”, ONE reported hospitalization and ZERO reported deaths: http://markcrispinmiller.com/2020/09/as-of-9-22-37-us-universities-have-reported-48300-covid-19-cases-one-hospitalization-and-zero-deaths/
There are problems with the PCR test which was never meant to be used as a diagnostic test. Here’s an excellent article in the NYT in which they worked with 3 hospitals to show that “up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus …”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testing.html
If you want to get a sense of how the country is actually doing, you can go to the CDC website and look at the all-cause death rate (scroll down to see the graphs). Look at excess deaths. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
Finally, here’s an excellent video which explains the science behind this and other viruses (how it’s really no different from other viruses), how policies of lock down and mask wearing are ineffective, and the actual basis of the so-called second wave (warmer climates get hit with the virus later in the season).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UvFhIFzaac
In conclusion, the policies we have in place are not science based.
Enjoy!
Thanks for the links, Anonymous. I haven’t looked at the rest, but I checked your link to the CDC data on excess deaths. I didn’t do the integration, but it looks like the excess is at least the widely cited 205K number for Covid deaths. Why do you think this link supports what you said above?
.
Also, please adopt a screen name, in the interests of keeping some order in this thread.
The CDC data on excess deaths supports the notion that we are back to an average state of affairs in terms of death rates. BTW, it’s estimated that only a portion of the excess deaths are due to covid-19. Many are due to consequences of the lock down policies: people dying because they didn’t seek normal medical care; increase in lock down related suicides and murders.
The covid-19 death count is probably inflated. The vast majority of covid related deaths were associated with other conditions (comorbidities). Other deaths were deaths with covid, meaning that after death a person tested positive for the virus even though the virus may not have contributed at all to their death. Finally, on March 24th the CDC stopped requiring hospitals to test for covid-19 in order to claim a death as a covid death. A large portion of the New York City deaths that were counted as covid deaths were never tested.
In terms of integration of deaths over time, the last youtube link presents data on this, comparing covid-19 to the impacts of other viruses. I highly recommend that link for a better understanding.
The death rate from the virus was initially highly over estimated. The estimate from the WHO was 3.4% which would have resulted in millions of deaths in the US. The actual death rate as determined by epidemiology studies is estimated at 0.2% which is in the range of the flu virus. Results from some of these studies have been available since April. This information, however, does not make it into the mainstream “news”. From reports in the media, one would think that most medical professionals support the lock down measures. This is not the case. Here’s an example open letter from doctors and medical professionals in Belgium:
https://docs4opendebate.be/en/open-letter/
Many American doctors have also been very out spoken, but tend not to get media coverage or are disparaged in the media.
Here’s what may be the first death https://www.foxnews.com/us/appalachian-state-student-19-dies-covid-19-report
“Viruses are just too small. It’s like trying to keep mosquitoes out with chicken wire.”
Anonymous should get a prize for this intelligent remark.
Sadly, the dumbness of the metaphor cannot be credited to Anonymous as it is amazingly prevalent copy-pasta from right-wing sites.
Google: mask mosquito chicken wire
About 3,490,000 results (0.65 seconds)
Sure sounds like most of the cases in off-campus housing. Most of the cases in indoors gatherings. A lot of jocks? I don’t know how to stop this. Maybe some schools are doing it well, could UO learn? I’m afraid these irresponsible people, by no means the majority, are going to ruin it for everyone, including the livelihoods of a lot of us.
I do see indications that UO is not teaching the students very well how to behave safely. Lots of groups outside, mostly wearing masks. Good, they are trying! But not distancing, mostly three, even two, even one foot apart. This tells me UO not getting the message across. Fortunately, if outside, probably not too dangerous. Is UO getting the message across about how much more dangerous inside is? (probably a factor of 20 or a hundred or more!) Are they propagandizing about ventilation? I just don’t see it or hear about it. The results certainly not looking good. The results = the bottom line.
@TheDude:
It’s as if “a few students were stupid and spread it for about two weeks, and then the idiots either got scared or herd immune.” ????
Dude, look carefully at that bar graph…. the last bar represents the week of Sept. 28. The week that began the day UOMatters posted this. I think by the end of this week that bar’s going to be a whole lot fuller.
thedude is referring to other schools that had spikes and recovered.