Is there an "appeal" process here - meaning can the university work withe state health department to revise this shutdown in a more targeted/logical manner?  It just seems rather heavy handed and arbitrary - how much actual interaction do these programs/staff have with each other?  It was stated the 15 people are known or suspected to be positive out of 2200+ individuals... how was this quarantine decided?  Did the state ask for input from university health officials and others who know the situation on the ground?

Also, this variant is already being detected across the state and the nation... which means it has already spread just about everywhere since the test for this variant highly lags the disease distribution.  If a student-athlete on campus is positive (really more than that), shouldn't all in-person activity on campus but shut down *if* there are to be such greater measures for this variant as opposed to all other strains of sars-covid?  And what about businesses and other activities in the county?  How serious are these extra-measures to be... at least for non-student athletes?

Don't know about you, but I'm pretty fucking pissed at the selfish asshole who decided to come back from there (where they've been under lockdown since before Christmas) and not take their own initiative and get tested.

So there was some talk about a failure to quarantine someone after international travel.  I believe it was Brian (though it could've been Ace) that wondered, rather vehemently, why nobody - federal, state, county, or school authorities quarantined the guy.  The answer is because that would be unlawful imprisonment.  The mandated quarantines are all self-quarantines, and they do not involve the government locking you in some facility.

Any quarantine action relies on the integrity of the individual involved.  If someone says 'yeah, sure, I'm self-isolating', and then goes out to Target to get some chips, well...  Not much any 'authority' can do about that.

Vaccinate the athletes if playing is deemed so damn important. Profitable.
  

Everyone needs to be careful, responsible, and considerate. Observing distancing, masking, and quarantine guidelines help keep the case numbers manageable and give the most vulnerable who do get it the best chance to survive. But all the finger pointing, blaming and shaming, and political activism around this disease is not helping.

The problem is the virus, not your neighbor. Until 90% of the population gets vaccinated, there is no way, short of literally locking everyone in their homes and not allowing any social contact for months, to eradicate this disease. Even people following all the rules and guidelines can still get the disease and unwittingly spread it to others. Testing is not fast enough nor accurate enough, even if people are getting tested every day, to catch every case and prevent spread. It can reduce the possibility of spread, but it cannot stop spread. And quarantining is only as good as the timeliness with which people learn about their exposure. If someone only finds out they were exposed 5-7 days after the fact, that can already be too late to stop a person from unknowingly spreading the virus to others.

This disease is going to spread. We need to do what we can to slow it down, but accepting that perfect compliance is no guarantee and that righteous indignation helps nothing is something we should try to promote. Accept that there will be disappointments, hold yourself accountable, keep your priorities about what is truly important in order, and support your neighbors as best you can even if you don't always agree or approve of their choices. Reasonable people have honest differences about what the best course of action is, and can look at the same data while coming to intelligent and well reasoned different conclusions about what sacrifices are worth making and what tradeoffs we should accept.

The truth is no one has a monopoly on wisdom or really knows the right answer to this problem. So some humility and grace by everyone would be a welcome approach for all of us to start using a bit more.

Is UM really still not testing everyone who accesses university buildings on at least a weekly basis with a daily screener about health and travel?  That's been the only thing that seems to have prevented broadscale outbreaks at universities (it's what my institution's done and it has so far prevented any big clusters, the highest we've had is 100 cases in a 2 week period out of 20000 tests during that time period).