161–170 of 605 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Be fined? Is that in a contract? Seems odd with private companies being able to fine people.
Public university
> to slow a spreading virus like COVID-19 The naming of this thing is such a disaster, even MIT can't get it right. - the virus is called SARS-CoV-2 (like HIV) - the disease it causes is named COVID-19 (like AIDS) - pretty much everyone calls both the virus and the disease coronavirus
That's because COVID-19 looks like a JIRA ticket, and people shudder a bit when they type it out.
The "empty out campus" bit seems a bit overmuch to me. What's the epidemiologists' take on something like this? I can see asking students who left for spring break not to come back. But asking students currently on campus to leave, and even demanding that they travel internationally, seems like it might just increase everyone's risk of exposure, and spread it around. Especially considering that, at least according to…
Not an epidemiologist, but a Boston resident. Generally, people under 30 completely ignore anything about the coronavirus here. You have people hitting a different nightclub each night, going to parties, and that sort of thing. A college town full of students who see their risk as 0.1% is not what you want right now. Now, a more sensible thing might be to close the nightclubs, bars, and parties. But the city hasn't d…
By forcing people to go home, rather than shelter in place, everyone has increased contact with others and public infrastructure where the virus could be.
is this move to protect the students or the faculty?
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Many universities are either municipalities in their own right, or have delegated municipal powers from the city government. Universities are their own small towns - they provide food, housing, have police forces, a large staff, etc. Put it the other way around, does it make more sense for a city official to be calling the shots, when campuses have their own special context?
> have police forces Literally their own police forces? How does that work? Where do they get the authority to be police from? Who are they sworn to?
> Undergraduates who live in an MIT residence or fraternity, sorority or independent living group (FSILG) must begin packing and departing this Saturday, March 14. We are requiring undergraduates to depart from campus residences no later than noon on Tuesday, March 17. This is strange. Isn't the travel they are forcing quite possibly a cure worse than the disease? And are they really expecting students (many of them…
The dorms have shared bathrooms, often shared rooms with doubles, triples, and quads, and shared living spaces (lounges, study rooms, laundry, etc.) in addition to the dining halls. Moreover, in our dorms, we have effectively no way to eat if the dining halls close down. Since mine has a dining hall for us to eat, it has only one kitchen for the entire dorm, which is ~500 people.
Edit: It's also worth pointing out that MIT students are at very low risk right now. Sending us all home before we're at a medium/high risk level is the right move, so students aren't bringing it home with them. Nobody on campus has tested positive yet (as far as we know), and once it reaches the campus it would spread like crazy. Better to preempt it and send us away now.
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Young adults interact with people who are not young adults. Young adults that need not be ill might end up in an ICU unit that an older person with a weaker immune system could have used to their advantage. As long as there is no vaccine this is going to be a huge exercise in resource allocation.
Wouldn't it make sense for high risk individuals to self-quarantine and for the rest of society to carry on? There may not be a vaccine for at least another year. They've never successfully produced a vaccine for any coronavirus, whether that's SARS or the common cold.
This is all about getting rid of a huge tsunami of people for which there would be no care. Once the situation normalizes or there is a vaccine it all changes. But right now we are simply utterly unprepared to deal with this at this scale, and fixing that will take time. Even high risk individuals need to eat, and need visitors. Quality of life, especially for people in such high risk groups is already hit hard, the least we can do is to try to make it easier for them to get the care they need should it get to that, at relatively little expense to the rest of us.
The real reason behind such a move is the culture of litigation in the US. Someone made your coffee too hot? Sue them. Someone stepped on your toe? Sue them. In this case, everyone is ducking for cover because they don't want to be the focus of a lawsuit that claims they didn't do anything to prevent the spread of the disease. The people who make these decisions at MIT are not unintelligent. They have all the resourc…
I don't necessarily disagree with your overall sentiment here, but I always feel the need to point out that this is a really bad example of a frivolous lawsuit. That lady's car didn't have cupholders, which was pretty common on '90s cars, and the coffee was hot enough to fuse her labia together. You can look up pictures; it wasn't pretty. She also only sued for medical damages and nothing more, if I remember correctly.
One of my coworkers daughters is affected by this. The big question this begs: If there is no refund being offered for the content shifting online from in-person, why have in-person at all? Is room and board going to be refunded? If courses being taught online is an acceptable substitute, why have caps on admission at all? Edit: Understood that infinite sized classes aren't workable for human intensive grading, inter…
I don't think anyone believes online is an acceptable substitute to a traditional MIT education, but it's a lot better than nothing, and better than continuing the in person teaching. I'm an MIT grad and know the benefits of being on campus. In fact I spent more time in the lab than I did in classes or my dorm and that just isn't possible online. My son's school (Courant) has sent everyone home too, with online subst…
If I was in that situation today, I'd prefer the semester be outright cancelled and replaced with a summer semester.