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Comment by wildmusings | Hacker News Reader

The chance of a college kid dying from coronavirus is exceedingly small. If they aren't sick in some special way (severe diabetes, HIV), then why are we even worried? Isn't this just an easy way to let the virus pass through a huge chunk of the population while they are away from their older, more vulnerable family members?

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Dying is not the only risk from Coronavirus. There are many people who survived but will never fully recover (link below). Many SARS victims were left with long term damage to their lungs, bones, or nervous system, and we're already seeing evidence the same may be true for Coronavirus.

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2020/05/29/cor...

The US military initially barred any coronavirus survivor from enlisting, for life, regardless of how long ago or their current health. That's something they never considered doing for the flu. They've since walked back on that, and I can't help but wonder if it's because they realized it would exclude too much of their potential recruitment pool.

You're talking about this US military policy like it wasn't just another panicked reaction at the height of the crisis.

The vast vast vast majority of young people with coronavirus don't have any of those long-term side-effects. Most of them don't get more than the sniffles, if any symptoms at all.

If you've looked at the anecdotes about how readily the virus spreads, you'll realize that avoiding people until a vaccine is ready is ridiculous. The public health plan, all along, has been for most people to get the virus, but at a slower rate ("flatten the curve"). Being this deathly scared of the virus for that long just isn't a feasible plan.

As long as the long term effects aren't even well understood because a) there has not even been a long term of a post-pandemic world yet, there's not even been a mid-term and b) research is in full swing, there will be any number of medical results and outcomes that may or may not happen to a particular group of subjects. Unless you're OK with being conciously part of a given subject group and/or want to be the first that gets it in this grand experiment, taking less risk still means taking less risk and/or delaying disease and possibly changing negative outcomes into positive ones.

You're forgetting about the increased risks to campus workers, administrators, staff, professors, people with compromised immune systems, people who live or near or with the elderly or people with compromised immune systems, and the workers at local businesses just to name a few.

It’s important to remember that death isn’t the only price to pay here. A sizable University outbreak might still see an unacceptable number of serious illnesses, and in Covid’s case, those cases can take months to fully resolve. The idea that healthy people aren’t seeing serious complications is dangerously false.

This is an interesting thought. However, the risk of spread to the communities that house said colleges is greatly increased. I got to school in Boston and can only imagine the spread via off campus activities, public transport, and use of community spaces. We could be sparing our parents and endangering a whole other population. But college students could be far enough removed from their communities for this to make sense, don’t know of anything to back that up though.

This is a USA-specific problem, but a lot of students are too poor to have health insurance. Getting covid for these young people would ruin their life permanently at a very young age.

Is this common for universities across the US?

The university I went to (USC) required that all students had to either submit proof of insurance or pay additional fees as part of their tuition to join the university's health plan. Not having health insurance was not an option if you wanted to enroll.

(This was about 15 years ago, though I just checked and they still have this policy.)

That’s a good point, but I thought laws were amended to allow them to start on their parents medical plan until 26 years old? While not the only cohort I imagine this is the bulk of university students

People attending 4 year universities generally have access to student health services and economical subsidized insurance-- in fact, are generally -required- to purchase the same as a condition of enrollment. (Not to mention any coverage they may get as part of staying on parents' health plans).

Even if the risk is objectively small, I think even those rare cases lead to an extreme response when you look at the way colleges react to other small risks. It would probably kill many times more students than alcohol poisoning does, to give some comparison. Alcohol poisoning deaths are incredibly rare but colleges spend a day teaching students about it. Scale that response up proportionately and it doesn’t surprise that a college shuts down to keep a few students from dying.

> It would probably kill far more college students than alcohol poisoning does, to give some comparison.

Maybe slightly more, but not drastically so. About 15 per 100,000 college students die each year from alcohol --- poisoning, motor vehicle accidents, other alcohol-related accidents. Compare to a death rate of about 30 per 100k people aged 18-35 infected with COVID-19 (and it's much lower in the 18-24 set than the entire 18-35 group, but we don't have a good number for how much lower).

And it's not like 100% of students are going to catch it in an academic year (some have already had it, herd immunity, etc).

I went to a college where students were required to live on campus and banned from having a car. My experience after attending multiple of these programs is that the numbers showing the dangers of drunk driving in the college age cohort are misrepresented as measuring the risk of alcohol poisoning among college students. Students were pretty much told that going to a frat party put them in mortal danger. In reality, every college student who dies of alcohol poisoning earns a local news story, and if the incidence were anything like 15 out of 100000 college students per year, the news would be full of such stories.

I worked as an RA - it was my job to enact policies addressing various risks facing the student body - and my perception is that extreme overreaction was the norm.

I sez: "About 15 per 100,000 college students die each year from alcohol --- poisoning, motor vehicle accidents, other alcohol-related "

But then you act as if I said they were all alcohol poisoning, when I was pretty explicit about the number.

Fatal alcohol poisoning (actually this is a number for unintentional poisoning in which alcohol is involved, so it's a tad broader than pure alcohol poisoning) in college is about 4 per 100,000 annually, for clarity. It is possible that the COVID-19 death rate could be lower than this in the college student cohort for 2020-2021.

> and if the incidence were anything like 15 out of 100000 college students per year, the news would be full of such stories.

Your point re: colleges with few students with cars is a good one, but survey data indicates that more college students aged 18-21 and 21-24 drive under the influence than the general population 18-21 and 21-24.

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