Last updated on 09/28/2021
9/28/2021 update: I reported yesterday, from UO’s covid tracking site, that there’d been only 1 covid case last week. Several readers pointed out they’d got an email yesterday saying there had been 29. Now the official count is up to 30. Note that they’ve also sorted the data on count rather than date, which is silly:
9/27/2021: With > 95% vax rates, only 1 new Covid case at UO last week:
From https://coronavirus.uoregon.edu/cases and https://coronavirus.uoregon.edu/vaccination-dashboard
Of course harvard business school is going online for a week because 1 percent of its vaccinated students are testing positive in their mandatory testing for everyone, traced back to off campus activities.
This says 1 case last week. Great. But today I get an email from UO Covid Central saying 29 positive or presumptive positive cases in the past week. wtf???Something seems a little off with the messaging here. Where is Jen Psaki when we need her? Or have I been breathing too much of that fresh air?
My guess is that the UO covid dashboard reports cases from its testing in real time, and then gets a weekly tally from county health about how many students or UO affiliates tested positive using non-UO testing and the dashboard then gets retroactively updated. It seems to be matching the 29 cases number now.
Most of the positive students are off-campus.
Ummm.
UO: “There were 29 members of the UO community who tested positive or were considered presumptive positive in the past seven days (September 20-26).”
Yeah that’s a bit different than what’s on the web link. Forward me the email?
Democrats fighting other Democrats. Love it. Trump will definitely win in 2024. And this time he’s never leaving!
This is as believable as the supposed vaccination rate.
Here’s what was in the email I got from [email protected]:
‘COVID-19 Cases
UO: There were 29 members of the UO community who tested positive or were considered presumptive positive in the past seven days (September 20-26).’
Was 1 positive and 28 quarantining because of exposure??? Whatever. Are they trying to imitate Fauci, Walensky, the FDA, CDC circus? Or the Trump/Fauci/etc. circus?
Thanks – and now the dashboard is reporting 30 for last week instead of the 1 they posted Monday: https://coronavirus.uoregon.edu/cases
30 cases is about 120 per 100,000 (assuming a total student+employee population of 25,000), which compares to 270 per 100,000 in Lane County as a whole for the week ending September 20 (https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/lane.county/viz/LaneCountyOregonCOVID-19CaseVisualizations-withPhoneLayouts/CurrentStatus).
For a supposed vaccination rate of 95%, that seems awfully high. Possible hypotheses:
1. People are fibbing about being vaccinated.
2. Delta is really bad.
3. Testing rates are higher among the campus population than the population at large, which means that the Lane County rate is an undercount.
4. We need some booster shots, possibly mixing and matching (i.e. get a J&J shot if you got Pfizer the first time) for diversity of immune response.
5. Some combination of the above.
Anas clypeata,
1. I have no doubt that people (employees and students) are fibbing about their vaccination status.
2. Delta *is* really bad.
3. All this free testing at Matt Knight Arena, most people in Lane County are unaware of this location for free testing while employees and now students are surely very aware. Plus, people are getting multiple tests (this employee included).
4. I think this is true.
5. Combination of the above extremely likely to me.
1. UO employees are definitely fibbing about being vaccinated, some with the tacit approval of their supervisors.
2. Nobody in admin has mentioned the UO employee who died of COVID this summer – even to acknowledge the loss of one of our own to the disease. There’s protecting the employee’s privacy and then there’s being callous about their death.
3. We should all brace ourselves for the inevitable “back to campus” surge.
in addition if we indeed had 30 for that week
we had 17 the week before, when less students were on campus
that suggests a continuation of a surge of cases for some future period (possibly short)
I don’t see how herding students into full, mostly poorly ventilated classrooms, helps in any way shape or form.
Note to faculty:
How can you tell if your classroom is poorly ventilated
a) the temperature in the room at the end of class is noticeably higher than at the beginning
b) you can smell the crowd usually at the end
Currently the numbers being cited fall well within the statistical expected probability of breakthrough cases for the delta variant.
Positive case rate is a misleading data point when not coupled with hospitalizations.
Zero positive cases is a nonviable expectation for any coronavirus. Please refrain from fear-mongering tactics moving forward.
Other countries have demonstrated the ability to maintain zero positive rates for extended periods of time. Please refrain from death cult arguments moving forward.
Thank you for writing unvalidated vitriol and not refuting a single point about appropriately analyzing data.
The argument would be better substantiated with specific examples of these countries you claim to maintain zero positive rates. In the era of delta and lambda variants, please verify your claim is still correct.
None of us want anyone to fall ill.
I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemies or administrators.
But it is borderline delusional to expect that zero positive cases is a real and tangible goal with the number of variants and mutations in existence.
Run it back.
A blunder from which they should be able to recover — they would do well to send out a correction/apology acknowledging the error.
30 cases/week translates to about 0.5% infectious (assuming two week contagious period and only half-counting of cases through testing. 1.0% might be a reasonable estimate too). That means in a big lower div class there is probably going to be an infectious person or two or even five in a really big class. An hour or so several times a week for the term. That would make me a bit nervous. I hope the vaxx works for everyone, I hope things stay this controlled, or get better, I hope the ventilation is sound — who really knows? — I hope … I wish everyone the best.
My colleagues stand ready to help with some powerful insights and methods.
Look at the X-axis….OMG. It’s ordered to show geometric growth.
Also among tested conducted, everything is holding steady at 1.5 percent or so.
Yeah I keep waiting for whoever’s in charge to notice the x-axis. Maybe next week?
Just for the record about records, the students would have a much harder time lying about their vaccine status, because it is part of their official health/medical records that they have to upload as part of their standard enrollment process. Faculty and staff, however, only have to check the proverbial box. That the faculty/staff rate is lower than the student rate, and is probably lower still than reported, is, frankly, embarrassing.
Meanwhile, 2 more weeks until the FDA will let me recharge my nanobot batteries.
Request proof from the employees. Now that they have stated they are vaccinated, not being could be cause for termination.
Termination has two possible meanings here, both would be correct usage.
Are you new here? Lying has never been cause for termination at the UO, especially at the upper levels.
I so miss the thumbs-up option…..
Anas clypeata —
Lying is totally cause for termination at the UO for working class employees. Lying has been a totally accepted behavior at the higher/highest level of employees.
Sure, a classified staff caught lying will be terminated. Administrators lying, well, we’ve watched that often enough.
indeed, its how you get promoted at the UO
bad news — from UO website, 55 cases in the week starting last Monday! This means probably 1% or more of campus population is or soon will be currently infectious. (This guesstimate agrees with Georgia Tech estimator.) This is as bad as Lane County as a whole. It looks like exponential growth since end of August. At what level does the curve flatten? If the campus really is as vaxxed up as claimed, this doesn’t speak so well of the vaccines as infection inhibitors. Give me classrooms with lots of windows to open!
Campus has a strange feel — is it just me? Seems mood is really dampened — it’s supposed to be so much fun with things “back to normal” — but everyone knows …. Hope it starts to come down soon. If it keeps going up, what next???
Is there a breakdown somewhere of vax rate by student type? Law/grad is probably different from undergrad. And since social connectivity has a big effect on the reproductive number, undergrad is probably a bigger risk for any given vax rate.
sounds very reasonable — but I don’t know of any place to get this kind of detailed information. For sure, the infection rates among students has been much higher than that among staff.
It looks like the numbers have changed since my last post — they are now saying 55 cases in the past 7 days. (Or maybe I just misread the graph? But they keep changing the graphs, e.g. the hilarious business about the x axis!) In any case, the numbers are not looking good.
the only measurement that matters is cases per student – if that is rising exponentially (don’t think it is yet) then we will move back
to remote. I don’t the the uo dashboard directly reports cases per student.
Its not exponential growth, please resubmit your flawed math.
WAY MORE STUDENTS ARE HERE. We’ve had an exponential increase in how many students live in Eugen, oh no, how can this be???!!!
Adjust for how many are here. What fraction of tests are positive? These are key things you would do when the number of students increases dramatically enough to shut down traffic for multiple days in town.
For the last two weeks the numbers of tests being conducted when from 2,300-3,300 yet the fraction positive decreases from 2.5 percent to 1.5 percent and the number positive stayed the same. There’s not a real increase in the number infected, just more students here. In the next week or two as testing and the number of students present stays the same, then we’ll be able to see if cases are increasing but they don’t appear to be yet.
Your point about numbers is well taken — I said it “looks like” exponential growth which it does — but of course that depends on how many students are around at a given time — bro Gangsta says I should re-take Math 111. Most of the cases are among off-campus students — I don’t know how many of them are here throughout September. (How many of the traffic jammers were in dorms? I dunno.) The numbers from say Sept 27 onward will be worth watching closely. I hope cases level off and indeed fall.
me too.
They did it again this week – 40-something cases as of yesterday and then they added another 8 or so from the weekend as of this morning.
And does anyone else have a problem with the lack of reporting of where on campus these “on campus” and “off campus” students have been during their infectious periods? They can say the buildings where employees were, but not the buildings where these students were? I assume they went to classes, the EMU, the gym, maybe even the library… “Off campus student” was bad enough in the summer when students probably weren’t coming to campus much, but now…
OK, the numbers in their graph and the numbers in the email they sent yesterday match. Good. 46 cases in the past week, presumptively with everyone back. Not so good, daily case rate at UO about 24 per 100,000. Not so much less than Lane County, about 2/3 as high. I figure infectious rate at UO something like 0.7% – 1.0%. If you are in a class of 30, fair chance someone is infectious. If 200, odds are 1 or 2 or more. I hope the windows are open, or if that is impossible, that ventilation is good! Stand back! Who the hell knows about the latter. Here’s hoping the case rate drops. My prediction, for what it’s worth: slow drop through term, much like Lane County. I want that booster soon!
You know Lane county is at its steepest decline since pandemic started right?
Key thing, discourage sick people coming to class. Focus more on saying don’t come if sick, vs come when sick wearing a mask. I’d have no problem asking a student to leave if they’re wearing a mask.
It’s gradually declining from by far its worst peak. After hitting a good low point in late August. The state loosened up just in time for the delta. It looks like it might take about 10 weeks from now to get back down there. Just in time for the Christmas surge? I hope not. I wonder if UO will go down with students socializing. The vaccines help with reducing contagion but they are no panacea, alas, due to delta. A nasty foe. I expect another surprise in the next 6 mos. Maybe even something good. I won’t predict beyond gradual decline for next 6 weeks. Stay safe!
Gradual or not, it is at it’s steepest decline since the pandemic started, even with schools opening up again in the fall (with expanded testing programs for children not present before, mandated testing at some jobs instead of vaccination), and no kids vaccinated yet. That’s the only big plus I see coming. When the vaccine is approved for those 5 to 11, the states vaccination rate will see it’s biggest jump in months (even if only 50 percent of kids get it), which should help overall immunity and reduce spread.
The key question we all face next is how much do we societally continue to care about spread, if increasingly it has reduced consequences (as a greater fraction of the population is vaccinated, or has natural immunity or both, and as treatments improve reducing hospitalization and death). Cross immunity is a real thing (meaning vaccination and exposure leading to an improved long term immune response), and given Covid is endemic, it might be a matter more of when rather than if you will get Covid.
The other key question is how much longer will we stick to 3-4 week second dose windows which have been shown to be too close together.
Also the only place without a big delta surge is basically South Dakota and maybe CA. So you either need a LOT of natural immunity and ok vaccination or a lot of vaccination and ok natural immunity.
Oregon had good vaccination but awful natural immunity rates (and there’s similar Delta bumps for even higher vaccination places like VT, with low natural immunity).
delta or not I don’t know, but South Dakota has had a big (for its population) surge in cases. As for cross immunity, I believe in it, but I think I’ll pass, thank you, and get the booster instead, in a couple of months. One way to get cross immunity is to get covid and end up in the hospital and maybe dead after you’ve been vaxxed. Another way is to get exposed to covid enough that you build up more immunity but not enough to feel any symptoms. I wish I knew how to calibrate that. Instead I more or less remain cautious about exposure to other people, while still trying to live my life. Re exposure: I see how the students are packed in to lecture halls here, and I cringe. Seats filled, kids with masks on to be sure, and probably vaccinated. But I know that the vaccines aren’t so great at stopping contagion, and I know that the delta is terribly transmissible. I wish everyone the best. But now I’m kind of thinking maybe the current not-so-low level of contagion in UO may continue that way for a long time. the students were a danger earlier in the contagion, and they may be so again, given their irrepressible sociability. Of course, I hope I’m wrong about the contagion.