It's hard not to be angry. So many folks—myself included—spent months begging colleges across the country not to reopen.
They reopened.
Now, 2 weeks into the fall semester, the NEW YORK TIMES reports that there are a minimum of *51,000* new COVID-19 diagnoses at 1,028 campuses.
They reopened.
Now, 2 weeks into the fall semester, the NEW YORK TIMES reports that there are a minimum of *51,000* new COVID-19 diagnoses at 1,028 campuses.
PS/ 51,000+ cases on September 5, just days into the fall semester, means *hundreds of thousands of cases* on college campuses in September 2020 alone—and possibly well over a million.
And this is a virus whose *long-term effects* on the health of victims we still *do not know*.
And this is a virus whose *long-term effects* on the health of victims we still *do not know*.
PS2/ There's simply no way whatsoever—and I say this with respect to all 5,000+ colleges and universities in the United States—for these institutions to be certain that they will not face legal liability if/when students suffer long-term health effects from returning to campus.
PS3/ And so when I say that it's hard not to feel angry, part of that is that those of us who are attorneys and who care about higher education were pretty universally saying the longterm risk not just to students but to *institutions* was too high to reopen. And we were ignored.
PS4/ No one doubts that college/university administrators across the country want to do what's best for both their institutions and for students. What was never explained was why schools couldn't take the extra 6 months to plan things out in advance of the *spring 2021* semester.
PS5/ Those extra 6 months would've allowed all of us an opportunity to work together to get a handle on the virus—i.e., increase testing and tracing and therapeutics, weather the coming flu season, and create national university reopening protocols. But the schools wouldn't wait.
PS6/ And if you think the undercount in the U.S. COVID-19 death toll is astounding—and it certainly is, given that it's now over 50,000—imagine how undercounted the college/university COVID-19 *infection* data is.
If what we know of is 51,000+ cases, the reality may be 200,000+.
If what we know of is 51,000+ cases, the reality may be 200,000+.
PS7/ I say that the fall semester is 2 weeks old, but that's only true at a very small number of colleges/universities. Many schools just finished up their first week of the fall semester, many others haven't even started the semester yet, and some have a planned very-late start.
PS8/ The result of all this, mind you, isn't just that millions of students will now get sick. They will bring that sickness to their families and to their communities and will extend the pandemic in the United States for 6 months or a year or even more. And why? For what reason?
PS9/ I know that in these hours before Proof of Corruption is released I am talking about my book quite a lot, but the fact is, *I wrote a book about the pandemic* and I still felt like I had no way to make my voice heard when I correctly said this whole reopening was a disaster.
PS10/ We're already living under the "leadership" of a cretinous orange moron. Somehow I thought that—after law enforcement and judges had let us down in so many ways during the Trump presidency—academia would demonstrate its intelligence and handle the pandemic right. It hasn't.
