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 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.
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.
K.
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.