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This might sound strange or depressing, but I was talking with someone on Thursday morning who was commenting that his mental timeframe for the current global pandemic was 7 years. Note this was not necessarily based on any kind of deep scientific insight. While yes, that seems long, on the other hand I found it useful, because right now there is still so much turmoil happening on all kinds of levels and sometimes it's hard to forecast the days ahead, let alone the weeks, months, and years. I can't say I fully knew what to expect for fall #2 of the pandemic, but at this point it's clear this is long-haul for humanity and not going away. Seven years is far enough ahead to think, "Wow, we aren't going to be able to sprint our way through this" but still short enough to know that things will change eventually. For those who are parents, 7 years is a LONG time but might also help with thinking about priorities differently.
One friend's gentle reply: I hope you are safe this fall.
My more lengthy response:
I hope so too but I am not particularly optimistic about what is going to happen on my campus this fall. Sure, almost everyone is vaccinated, but there is no universal indoor masking requirement, and from what I've observed so far during orientation activities already, well. Wearing my own KN95 indoors only goes so far; what's particularly frustrating is that this is a relatively simple measure for individual people to take to still protect each other, and yet.
I heard yesterday from someone at another small college in this region (3h away) that they're having to shut down a lot of activities already. They have a 98% vaccination rate, and are conducting surveillance testing. We have extremely dialed-back wastewater testing (first test in 2 weeks) and that's it for testing.
As I would hope most people realize, the vaccines are great for preventing people from dying. But there appears to be a lag in understanding when it comes to things like appreciating breakthrough infection rates and differences between earlier strains and Delta.
And from a nearly 3-hour faculty meeting yesterday, it sounds like on at least this one thing an overwhelming majority of the faculty may feel similarly to me. We'll know more on that after a survey closes Monday evening. But as I noted, it's already too late.
--
Honestly, for most things I don't feel quite so strongly inclined to broadcast the details across social media platforms. This case feels different. I don't expect it to make much of a difference to other people; I just need to say these things out loud, if that makes sense.
One friend's gentle reply: I hope you are safe this fall.
My more lengthy response:
I hope so too but I am not particularly optimistic about what is going to happen on my campus this fall. Sure, almost everyone is vaccinated, but there is no universal indoor masking requirement, and from what I've observed so far during orientation activities already, well. Wearing my own KN95 indoors only goes so far; what's particularly frustrating is that this is a relatively simple measure for individual people to take to still protect each other, and yet.
I heard yesterday from someone at another small college in this region (3h away) that they're having to shut down a lot of activities already. They have a 98% vaccination rate, and are conducting surveillance testing. We have extremely dialed-back wastewater testing (first test in 2 weeks) and that's it for testing.
As I would hope most people realize, the vaccines are great for preventing people from dying. But there appears to be a lag in understanding when it comes to things like appreciating breakthrough infection rates and differences between earlier strains and Delta.
And from a nearly 3-hour faculty meeting yesterday, it sounds like on at least this one thing an overwhelming majority of the faculty may feel similarly to me. We'll know more on that after a survey closes Monday evening. But as I noted, it's already too late.
--
Honestly, for most things I don't feel quite so strongly inclined to broadcast the details across social media platforms. This case feels different. I don't expect it to make much of a difference to other people; I just need to say these things out loud, if that makes sense.
