Doing some quick Googling about the scientists at the head of US public policy on the subject: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/covid-19-colleges...
The scientists seem to say 1) don't send students home and 2) contain them so they don't cause further outbreaks at universities. So the suggestion of ending youth public gatherings at a university seems in-line with the science.
It seems comically naive to expect that the population that faces virtually zero downside and has the greatest propensity for risky behavior would obey such an order.
(In case anyone isn’t certain, I do not support this line of thinking. But since authoritarianism is fashionable nowadays I fully expect it to happen)
I didn't get that out of the article you referred to. The article said that students mingling should be assumed inevitable:
"They're going to wander. They're going to visit each other. They're going to go into town. They're going to sneak off and have a party. This is what they do."
And that sick students should be grouped together, away from healthy students:
"Some colleges have the capability of a dorm or a couple of floors of a dorm where they could keep people who are infected,"
Sounds reasonable, better than sending them home, given the odds.
It's less questionable when you look at it a different way: this is one of the segments of the population most likely to behave irresponsibly. It's a common observation that people in this age range often unjustifiably act like they're invincible. Those feelings can lead to bad results for others, like in the case of a drunk driver killing someone else in an accident.
#1, I don't think it's relevant that you think that segment of the population is irresponsible. We are talking about adults and taking away their freedom. I personally would rather see objective facts, not opinion.
>people in this age range often unjustifiably act like they're invincible
#2, I think you are wrong about their invincibility in this case. 330 people under 25 died of covid as of August 20 [0] (most with comorbidities), out of a population of 104 million in the U.S. [1], that is 1 out of 346,000 (edit). This is not high on the list of dangers for that age group.
You should attempt to justify your imposition on them without smearing them. Young people are not in danger from this disease are being forced as a group to make significant scholastic, social, and economic sacrifices for those who are too afraid to self-isolate on their own.
EDIT: Maybe the focus needs to be on vulnerable populations, and not young people? What is the goal here? Are Colorado hospitals overwhelmed? There's no proof that lockdowns otherwise make a difference.
[0] https://fox8.com/news/coronavirus/new-cdc-report-shows-94-of... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...
And maybe a drunk driver really is invincible because he has a very safe car that will protect him in any accident. Does that mean he should be allowed to drive drunk?
That's a straw man: no one is proposing banning all gatherings forever. Drunk people are banned from driving when they're drunk, not when they're sober. People like these students will have to suffer some analogous restrictions during this pandemic, especially in hot spots like Boulder, but those restrictions will stop when the virus is under control.
But they're not just banning gatherings of sick people when they are sick, they are banning healthy people from gathering too. So maybe we don't ban driving every night, just New Years Eve and St Paddy's day, when there's a higher number of drunk drivers out?
Your analogy is just bad. Closer would be banning all drivers between a certain age rubric because possibly, maybe, some of them will get drunk and drive.
If anybody proposed that, it would be rightly derided, but here with politically motivated COVID panic based on still poorly understood evidence is somehow making this absurd restriction seem okay to an awful lot of people right here on HN.
You know we already ban all drivers "between a certain age rubric"? Try to get your driver's license from age 0-15.