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Comment by djhaskin987 | Hacker News Reader

A waste management map from my county (Utah County in Utah) reveals that the three waste management districts that were servicing the two universities in the area were absolutely the red hot spots for covid-19. The two University presidents wrote a letter jointly telling the college students if they did not shape up The universities would be closed. Our governor applauded the letter and I don't think he was wrong. I don't care what anyone says. An 18-year-old is an adult and they need to take that responsibility seriously.

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At what point does the responsibility shift to the University Presidents if they can predict with confidence (and then confirm with data) that their students will never comply with their directives?

>wrote a letter jointly telling the college students if they did not shape up The universities _would be closed_

I think from this we could infer that they will take responsibility when they think it becomes clearer that students will not sufficiently comply with the public safety directives.

It just so happens that in your scenario the college makes more money by 'taking responsibility'.

My more cynical interpretation is that the school wanted to shift the onus onto the students, because more effective measures would have affected the schools ability to charge tuition at it’s full rate.

I don't think it's cynical. there is no way schools reasonably and realistically thought they could control COVID in a university environment. If they did they were negligent. It's 100% about cashing the checks before the withdrawal period. Who wants to pay $40,000 for online classes.

Young kids is completely different we aren't doing enough and there aren't a ton of other options but to open schools. But in person college for adults? not a necessity

Kick the students out, keep their tuition. Be done with it.

Yes, that's more or less their plan.

I mean, they aren't going to expel the students from their university, but they are going to drop the pretense of in-person classes.

this was the unstated purpose of calling all the students back to campus in the first place. if there is an outbreak on campus or in the community, just blame the students—not the adults running society.

Has the apparent spike in cases led to spikes in case rate for non-college students? Has it led to an increase in hospitalizations? Or do we need to "wait two weeks" for that? It's an extremely low risk population, it's very unlikely any of them will be harmed. As you said, they're adults, perhaps they are taking a calculated risk.

How much contact do you figure these university students have with the outside community? Or their families?

I disagree.

18-22 year old's in college are self-contained for the most part. They're around people their own age, not known for intermingling with senior citizens etc.

In Boulder the area that students living off campus is called the hill. It happens to be surrounded by the most affluent (read old) portion of Boulder. I’ve seen gangs of students walking up and down Pearl Street with no masks. The students are not isolating

That's even more ridiculous.

The people in your scenario that are most at risk are roaming the same area freely, so the solution is to ban the least at risk people?

The same people who are the least likely to follow the prohibition?

If you want to protect the most at-risk people and the only way to do it is to divide the high-risk & low-risk the far more logical route would to ban the high-risk people.

CU has a lot of elder care and nursing homes near it. These people are in poor health to begin with. Covid is not doing them any favors.

I know this because I have family in those facilities that I have not been able to see since this all started. We (low risk) have been banned from these facilities (high risk) for months now.

We are lucky in that we are still somewhat healthy in regards to my family near CU. Many other families in these facilities are not and have lost loved ones due to the pandemic. The bans are not working as well as hoped, especially since the start of the school year.

The decisions of the CU community in relation to the larger Boulder community are contentious at the moment. Many parts of the larger Boulder community do not appreciate CU's 'cavalier' policies.

I'm confused.

Do waste management districts handle epidemiology issues in Utah?

I cant make sence of this post - Waste as in household rubbish? What relevance does it have? How are students meant to "shape up" and what means were they given to do so?

To me this "adult" here reads like "old enough to be thrown under the bus"

Waste as in poop. They sample human waste and can determine how much rna coming from the virus is in the water. This can reveal trends in relative quantities of the virus between different waste management districts.

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