Notre Dame reports 29 Covid cases 1 week into school

Submitted by Malarkey on August 14th, 2020 at 12:48 PM

Notre dame did pre matriculation testing to isolate all cases before returning to campus

 

Unsurprisingly, this method didn’t work and now 29 cases have been spreading Covid through campus for the past week. 
 

UofM is following a similar approach, so I thought it was relevant to post here
 

https://here.nd.edu/our-approach/dashboard/

CompleteLunacy

August 14th, 2020 at 6:07 PM ^

Do you understand how percents work?

Let's give you choices: choice (1) is a virus that kils 10%. Choice (2) is a virus that kills 1%. Which is worse? If you have no other info but that one stat, it's easy to assume (1) is worse because duh, it's more deadly! 

But that right there is how easy it is to manipulate stats to fit an agenda. The true answer is you don't have enough info...

I didn't just randomly pick percentages, (1) is actually the death rate of the first SARS virus from 2002. Thing is, only ~8000 people caught it globally, of which about 800 died. (2) is more representative of covid*, and while it's less lethal on an individual basis  it is unequivicolly worse than SARS. Because so far there have been  21,000,000 confirmed cases and 760,000 deaths, with no signs of it slowing down anytime soon. 

So miss me with your misleading "survival rates" BS. Focusing on percentages misses the fundamental point of why this is fucking serious.

*because I damn well know somebody will say something about this...the true percentage is still unknown. 1% is a guess...it could be lower. Probably even is. But that doesn't change the fact that so far Covid has so far killed almost 1000 times the number that the first SARS did. 

leu2500

August 14th, 2020 at 1:44 PM ^

Testing lags symptoms

it can take up to 7-10 days to receive test results back

it takes about that long before the disease progresses enough/is severe enough to require hospitalization.  

Only a subset of hospitalized patients require ventilation

Deaths really lag positive test results/hospitalizations.  For ex, hermain cain was hospitalized for ~1 month before he died.

but sure. Knowing all this it’s reasonable to ask “how severe the cases are” only 1 week back into school.  

& you could check the indyStar or such to find out what the hospital situation is.  That you didn’t before you asked your question suggests you’re not serious.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

LSA Aught One

August 14th, 2020 at 1:17 PM ^

Sooo, I’m a freshman and my older brother Dan is a senior with off-campus housing.  Dan likes to get with the townies to party and I meet a girl at a party that isn’t part of the campus community.  She’s nice and I end up introducing her parts to my parts.  I get COVID and bring it back to the dorms.  How can they hope to stop it?

TIMMMAAY

August 14th, 2020 at 1:18 PM ^

Where are all the folks who were posting in the thread from a few days ago, using ND as the reason we should/would be fine to play foosball? 

Show yourselves! 

TIMMMAAY

August 14th, 2020 at 4:01 PM ^

Dude. This is math, it isn't that hard. 

There are (appx) 5mil known infected in the US as of today. 

There are (appx) 168k known dead in the US as of today. 

That does not, in any world, in any math discipline, equal a survival rate of 99.97%. 

Try 96.6%, you're just a little bit off. 

HHW

August 14th, 2020 at 6:03 PM ^

I'll have to find the article/study.  It was done by either Stanford or the CDC.  They didn't just calculate the number of known infected.  They extrapolated through the population and attempted to come up with a number that included unknown infected as well.  That's why my number is higher than your calculation of known infected/known dead.

 

 

TIMMMAAY

August 14th, 2020 at 7:48 PM ^

168,000 and counting. 

That's the Big House, and a pretty full Spartan Stadium full of dead people. 

And if we're extrapolating now, then we should look at the 200k plus "excess deaths" over given timespan as well. And all of the people who died with covid, but either weren't tested, or listed as "pneumonia" or "heart attack". You can make numbers say pretty much whatever you want them to say if you extrapolate enough. 

TIMMMAAY

August 14th, 2020 at 3:34 PM ^

After less than a week. It's extremely contagious, especially in a campus environment. This is the exact same argument "you people" were using when we had like 10k deaths nationwide, and started comparing to the flu. It's one thing to be wrong. It's another to refuse to learn from mistakes. 

crg

August 14th, 2020 at 1:31 PM ^

Not everything can be remote - some courses require a "hands-on" component.   Also, many students want the "campus experience" and prefer to come in despite the pandemic.  Mostly, colleges need the revenue from having the kids on campus, in the dorms, and doing other normal parts of college life.  The smaller universities are desperate, although the larger universities are feeling the effects as well.

BlueWolverine02

August 14th, 2020 at 1:30 PM ^

This is exactly what I said would happen.  Either you accept the risk and keep schools open, or you shut them down.  But if you are accepting the risk of schools open, having football isn't going to make a bit of difference and is just posturing.

BlueMan80

August 14th, 2020 at 1:35 PM ^

Indiana's test positivity was 9.5% yesterday.  Northwest IN has typically run higher than the state average.  That's a fair amount of COVID floating around in the area.  Hard to believe that can be contained even though ND's campus is kind of a bubble off to the side of South Bend.  People who work at ND live in the area, so there's a pathway.

I feel sorry for all students (K-12 and college) having to deal with this.  It's like life has become something from a sci-fi movie.

jmblue

August 14th, 2020 at 2:23 PM ^

People need to let go of the idea that we can actually prevent all infections from happening.  We are not New Zealand where the virus has just barely penetrated society.  We're at a point where we have to live with it, and it's a question of the tradeoffs we're willing to make to muddle through.

College-age people are statistically very unlikely to become seriously ill from this virus.  Here is the Washtenaw data.  Here, people under 25 have made up 22 % of known COVID cases but 1 % of hospitalizations and 0 % of deaths.  If the entire population responded to COVID the way young people did, there would be no restrictions on society at all. 

The issue here is more about how to ensure that these students do not infect those who are in vulnerable categories.  I would hope ND has policies in place for its older faculty, and is stressing to students that should they visit relatives, they get tested first.

Doctor Detroit

August 14th, 2020 at 2:38 PM ^

Do we know this actually spread? No masks?  Any numerous hospiliztions or deaths for all college students? 

Mitch Cumstein

August 14th, 2020 at 2:57 PM ^

Is 29 a lot? I read the tone of the OP as if this is a catastrophic failure. The expectation or rationale from the University couldn’t have been zero cases to justify the incremental value of in-person education. Did they actually say that was the expectation?

Do we also think all 29 cases were infected since returning to campus? I really just don’t know what to make of this stat. 

tomer

August 14th, 2020 at 3:03 PM ^

I'll assume you're asking in good faith.

The reason that people are pointing this out is the fact that this virus has shown exponential growth basically throughout the entire world. So while 29 may seem small, that is 29 in one week. The worry is that in another week it will be 87. A week later it will be 261. Within a month you could be looking at a quarter of the campus being positive.

Now with catching the positive testing and doing contract tracing hopefully they can prevent that from happening.

Mitch Cumstein

August 14th, 2020 at 3:10 PM ^

I am asking in good faith (I’m not sure where that came from).  I understand the exponential growth concern. So the implication is that all 29 of those cases were infected on campus in week 1? I agree that’s concerning.  

More philosophically, What first week number would have been “acceptable”? 10 or less? <5? 0?  I guess that’s what I’m asking, and sort of saying (Predicting) if the expectation is zero week over week, they will fail.