Alabama Administration Instructs Profs to NOT Inform Their Students if Classmate Tests Positive

Your right it really isn't sinister, at least on the surface due to HIPAA. But it would be nice to see the entirety of these letters over the cherry picking parts and highlighting what the actual response is from the University of Alabama to know if they are being sinister or not. If there is faculty complaining about it, it makes me think rather Alabama's response is piss poor or they did a piss poor job of informing faculty of how they will handle cases

Fair point, but if the reasoning was HIPAA-based, you'd think it would have articulated as much. 

Then again, maybe the Daily Beast selectively edited the instructions to create a more readable piece. Wouldn't be the first time.

In part that is correct.  The employees should not be disclosing personal information about who may be infected.  But most employers and institutions also feel that best practices include disclosing that one or more individuals have tested positive and usually describe the steps they are taking or have taken to keep the area safe.  Obviously the reporting here is vague but the school employees should not be keeping quiet on the general infection or positive case rates, they should only be keeping an individual's identity secret.  That's a big difference.  I agree that it's generally not the faculty's role to make announcements of this but the school admin should be actively doing it.  If not, it looks like an effort to "sweep things under the rug."

To be clear, HIPAA does not blanket cover all universities, only those with a healthcare services component for non-students. If a university does not provide medical services to the general public, it is generally accepted that it is not a covered entity as any student health information is considered educational records. As such, I do wonder (because I'm much less familiar with it) whether this would still fall under FERPA in those non-covered institutions, or BOTH under covered institutions. 

Of course, that distinction is beside the point for Alabama, as they do have a medical center and the university as a whole is a covered entity under HIPAA. 

I agree that there are HIPPA concerns, but at the same time I've read about a number of schools that have mediocre, at best, contact tracing and notification systems, and even in the official quotes by the UA administration they couch everything with "[i]f the established rules for masks and physical distancing are followed in the classroom, then the risk of transmission from the positive student is minimal, and it is not necessary to inform the rest of the class they may have been in the same room as a positive classmate". 

I just feel at this point universities are trying to be cagey because they don't have particularly robust systems in place, don't seem to have contemplated that students may, in fact, congregate in groups without masks and engage in college-student behavior, and largely downplayed pretty consistent concerns from staff and faculty that in-person teaching wasn't going to work and they were concerned about being exposed.  It's punting blame onto others and not recognizing that HIPAA compliance may require some additional flexibility during the pandemic.

It would be nice to see the letters sent, but as someone who worked in universities administrative offices before I'm a bit surprised that departments would be getting different types of letters (at least that's intimated by the reporting) discussing a situation that should have long-ago been considered.

This is not HIPAA-related, and sending out an email that a member of the class (unless it was like a 4 person class or something) had tested positive for COVID would not be in any violation of HIPAA. I've had several times since this has happened where we got an email saying a member of my son's swim team practice group had tested positive or that one of the counselors at my youngest son's after school care (when they were still open) had tested positive. This is all legal with HIPAA, so long as there are no patient identifiers included (you can say there is someone, you just can't say who). 

Considering most of these classes, especially at large state schools like Alabama, have many students in them (even if it's 25+), there is no HIPAA reason to withhold the info and if they're hiding behind HIPAA (I don't believe that they are) then that makes it worse.

Sign me up for that please. All the best states plus universal healthcare, poutine, and everyone saying “eh”.

That map is out of date. 
 

VA, CO, NM, NC and NV would be blue as well. Very cool purple at minimum. 

Oh, c'mon, do you think the Canadians really want Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Delaware?

Or even Michigan for that matter, what with half this board (which is presumably more educated than average) pounding the table for footbaw, consequences be damned.  I'm sure they'd deride it but whatever they think, Canada actually takes healthcare seriously.

I fully support this idea, but only if the United States of Canada gets to keep the Navy and all the nukes.  Because you just know the New CSA would start WW III over the Iron Bowl or something stupid.

Depends on which point of view you take, every civil war it's also to force the non-seceding side to leave.

The blue state “country” would just let all those people in and support them. Because we know the other “country” sure won’t.

And the republicans in California can leave if they so choose. Assuming the red states allow any “immigrants” in. 

I thought most of these salaries were funded through a special endowment or revenue from the AD, which doesn’t receive direct funding? Isn’t that why Harbaugh and the Ira Harris Head coach or whatever the name is? So while it’s true in a sense, the state isn’t directly paying him.