The Homa Files

Caveat friends & family: they may come packed with the coronavirus.
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Last week, we posted: Colleges hit by surge in covid cases.

The essence of the post:

> Almost all college students have been vaccinated …  the vast majority were all vaccinated circa. August, 2020.

> The vaccines’ effectiveness wanes over time … down to about 50% at the 6 month mark.

> So, the vaccinees in the August cohort group are down to about 65% vax effectiveness

> And, the August cohort of vaccinees won’t qualify for booster shots until February

>Which means that about 1/3 of college students are walking around medically equivalent to somebody who is unvaccinated.

For the math details, see: If 100% were vaccinated, would we be out of the woods? … or, would we morph to a “pandemic of the vaccinateds”?

> And, the highly transmissible Omicron strain has hit many (most?) college campuses.

That’s a recipe for a covid surge — both on campus and more broadly since, as the WSJ reports:

For example, Princeton is “encouraging” students who plan to travel home for the holiday break to leave campus as soon as possible.

The rationale: “Avoid students getting stuck on campus if they tested positive and had to quarantine”.

So, what’s the rub?

Clearing campuses could lead to broader spread of the disease.

“Sending students home as soon as possible is like wrapping up a ticking time bomb and putting it in the mail”.

So, what’s the answer to minimizing viral spread from the hot spot college campuses?

> Require “unboosted” students to get covid tests before they travel home for the holidays

> If they test positive, quarantine them on campus until they test negative

> When they test negative, send them packing .. and encourage them to re-test when they land at  home

Bottom line: If your student visitors don’t follow the above protocol, they may not be “ticking time bombs” … but the chances of them being virus-carriers are certainly greater than zero … and the odds may be significantly greater than zero.

So, don’t get complacent just because they’re “fully vaccinated” and have been sent home … again, caveat friends & family!

This entry was posted on December 20, 2021 at 7:26 am and is filed under COVID - Return to Normalcy, COVID - vaccine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.