Posted on 01/04/2022 6:47:11 AM PST by Behind Liberal Lines
The college student in the age of the coronavirus is used to putting up with quite a bit: regular surveillance testing, vaccine (and now booster) mandates, mask mandates, remote classes, restrictions on social gatherings, the cancellation of university events and traditions. At the beginning of the pandemic, most students, myself included, were willing to accept these burdens, owing to the real risk Covid posed. However, now that we have vaccines, campus restrictions have taken on an increasingly absurd character — ruining the college experience in a (failed) attempt to control a virus that poses minimal risk to students. Indeed, all too many universities, including Cornell University, where I am currently a senior, seem dedicated to an unrealistic “zero-Covid” strategy that will prevent normal campus life from resuming for the foreseeable future.
On December 13, as final exams were beginning, the Cornell administration, facing an Omicron-driven outbreak that had seen over 1,000 students become infected (out of about 15,000 total), announced that the campus would be shutting down. All in-person exams would be moved online, and all student social gatherings, “formal or informal,” were to be canceled. These were the most stringent virus-related restrictions Cornell had imposed since sending students home in March 2020. The campus was stunned: Cornell mandated vaccines, required masks, and tested regularly, yet was having its worst outbreak thus far.
Buried within the frenzy over the number of student cases, however, was the reality that all of them were mild. Hospitalizations in Tompkins County, N.Y., where Cornell is located, had barely ticked up despite an exponential rise in cases. It placed in sharp relief the absurdity of Cornell’s case-centric strategy. What research we have suggests that the vaccines do not provide all that much protection against infection, but they do provide strong protection against severe illness and death. Considering that 18–22 year-olds are already at low risk from the virus, it makes little sense to obsess over every case in a young, vaccinated population.
Since the fall 2020 semester, Cornell students have heard countless times from the administration how adherence to the university’s policies would eventually allow campus to return to normal. In fact, in an email just before the fall 2021 semester, the Cornell administration promised to “discontinue [surveillance testing] for vaccinated individuals as soon as we are confident of low virus prevalence on campus.” Despite cases remaining low for most of the semester, the administration maintained the testing requirement and never explained what criteria would need to be met to drop it. Similarly, the administration has declined to say when, or even if, the indoor mask mandate might end.
So long as Cornell continues to test asymptomatic, vaccinated students, it is likely to detect enough cases to justify maintaining its restrictions. (And the claim that these restrictions work is designed to be unfalsifiable: If cases are low, the administration says it’s because the restrictions are working; if cases are high, they say it’s because students aren’t following the restrictions enough. Either way, the question of whether the restrictions actually work is never answered.) The new variants of Covid are extremely transmissible. Many well-vaccinated localities (including Tompkins County) are recording their highest case rates of the pandemic. Cornell, like many other institutions, is struggling to change its outlook to reflect the new reality.
A close examination of Cornell’s policies reveals how little sense they make. First, Cornell has been adamant that little to no transmission is occurring in classroom environments. It claims the vast majority of transmission is from off-campus gatherings. So it makes little sense to force students and faculty to suffer through masked classes all day all so they can pack together unmasked in bars, restaurants, and private residences.
Second, our testing policies make little sense. This year, vaccinated students must test once per week, a frequency that fails to detect cases early, but also finds enough cases to justify maintaining the restrictions. Many students who test positive do not even realize they are infected and most fear the consequences of testing positive far more than the disease itself. Given the proliferation of mild cases among the vaccinated, some institutions, such as the National Football League, are coming to the obvious conclusion that, at this point, testing asymptomatic, vaccinated people causes more harm than good.
Third, Cornell has used Covid cases as an excuse to cancel events that are safe to hold. For example, the administration announced that the outdoor homecoming weekend fireworks show would be canceled, even though that weekend’s football game would proceed at full capacity. The administration did not even attempt an explanation of how this made any sense.
So far, Cornell’s response to its outbreak has been to mandate the booster for the spring semester, doubling down on the same policies that have thus far failed. Considering that boosted individuals still regularly test positive, it’s very difficult to see the booster changing anything. Ultimately, no level of vaccination will produce the Covid-free environment the administration desires. The initial vaccination mandate was sold as a tool that would allow for a return to normal, but the mask mandate and testing requirement remained. It seems unlikely that Cornell will be lifting those requirements anytime soon, no matter how mild student cases are or how many doses of vaccine students receive.
The coming semester will mark the beginning of year three of Covid. Soon, very few students on campus will even remember a time before the virus. Because of case-centric policies that ignore the minimal risk Covid poses to vaccinated, mostly young, people, college students are facing the near-permanent diminution of their college experience.
City of Evil bump
Cornell had boots on the ground in Wuhan in 2019...
Anyone else wondering what Cornell knew and when it knew it...
And why it said nothing to the public about what it knew...
And the claim that these restrictions work is designed to be unfalsifiable: If cases are low, the administration says it’s because the restrictions are working; if cases are high, they say it’s because students aren’t following the restrictions enough. Either way, the question of whether the restrictions actually work is never answered.”
This is how the Soviet Union ran and talked about their economy....liberals, always the same, everywhere.
Fauci is a Cornell alum as well.
Lafayette College’s Covid info…Easton, PA
We like to go to their basketball games, but we probably won’t be allowed in with their Covid requirements.
Once you have bulldozed any free thought and debate from your campus (or state), then you wake up to find yourself ruled by self-certain idiots.
The article is correct that Cornell is still following a March 2020 attitude. Because they are a big, rich school with the infrastructure, they can manage a massive testing program.
What Cornell is finding, is that they are testing themselves into a pandemic. When you test constantly and everywhere, you WILL find the virus.
I know students at Cornell. The school is highly vaxxed (about 98%) and although the school doesn’t release figures, I believe a majority of students there have, by now, HAD covid - I know some who have had it twice!
Just the Med School—Holy Cross as undergrad, and Catholic H.S. I suspect that Ithaca is too much in the sticks for his taste.
Glad you’re still on alert for this stuff. Heard from a friend in Ithaca at Christmas who was lamenting the precautions her family is STILL TAKING - and blamed it all on Cornell and Ithaca College students. Their Christmas get together was going to be pared down and that’s with TWO DOCTORS IN THE FAMILY! Not one independent thinker in the bunch!
BTW - beautiful picture of the campus....Worked up there in the mid ‘50’s then left for CA.
I should have ADDED - all vaccinated!!!
it’s not on the CMA application
Wow! How did this Ivy League student learn to think for himself? He needs to be sent to the Biden re-education camp immediately.
Liberal universities love Covid.
We are demanding boosters by February 1. I’m on the Covid team. When I pointed out that some people won’t be eligible for boosters by Feb 1, everyone got quiet so I blurted it “This isn’t supposed to be logical, is it?”
Still wondering, considering it’s ties to China and Wuhan, what Cornell knew and when it knew it about CoupFlu back in late 2019 and very early 2020...
Note to po’d faculty and students: Discovery would be very interesting....
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