On this morning's walk, I thought about how the news has changed during the last six months. When I started daily blogging 192 days ago, the novel coronavirus was often the only topic on the front page of The Washington Post. It sometimes seemed to be the only topic covered on the NBC Nightly News (the network whose news we watch since it immediately follows the local news we watch). As that wore off, we read or watched about George Floyd, then Breonna Taylor, sequeing into Black Lives Matter in all-the-news all-the-time mode. The Western wildfires might have been the only news of the day, but there's an election about to happen. I expect we won't hear much about anything else for the next month or two. We might have distractions in terms of the sports happening or not, but those won't be on the front page or on the nightly national news.
Dr. Fauci was asked about places we should not be going right now. He cited restaurants, bars, and gyms. I might have thought airplanes would be on the list, but they probably rank lower because a much smaller percentage of people will travel by air than want to eat out. I would not want to go to a movie theater right now, and it seems a whole lot of people feel the same way. I wonder if the coronavirus along with the growing popularity of streaming videos will permanently alter theater attendance. I don't think any of our mutual funds contain studio or theater stocks.
On the home front, yet another first-year dorm at the local university has students testing positive for covid-19. Last night, the university put up on social media (but did not send out via email) the president announcing tightened restrictions to start at 9:00 am this morning. The maximum group size has gone from 50 to 5 for indoor or outdoor activities. Students are encouraged (I don't know how they would require this) not to leave town nor have visitors from out of town. These will be in effect for at least two weeks. The comment I haven't figured out was that some students have already been put on interim suspension due to violations of covid-19 mitigation measures. What the hell is an "interim" suspension? How can you suspend someone temporarily? Is it keeping them from attending class for long enough that they will fail all their courses? Is it temporary in that it's for one semester only as opposed to being expelled forever and ever amen? If I learn what they mean or figure it out on my own, I'll let you know.
The university president said in his remarks that what has happened so far is what they expected would happen, that none of what has happened has surprised them. So did they know they were going to have to resort to more restrictive measures three or four weeks in? If so, why did they just not put them in effect at the outset and possibly keep the number of positive cases lower? And why post only on social media? I expect that kept a lot of faculty from learning about it until after it had gone into effect this morning.
Finally, the overall university numbers look good--emphasis on "look." They only include tests done at the university, which is likely why the positive tests that came out of the athletics department have not yet been added. They may very well have been done by an outside lab contracted by athletics. I see the exclusion of all non-university tests as a major flaw in what is being shown. The numbers given do not provide an accurate representation of covid-19 at the university.
I wonder if the local news tonight will include how the first day of the new restrictions went....
1 comment:
I think they have to show that it's not all talk. It's one thingg having rules and another to enforce them. The older universities here have a word for it - rustication. It's social pressure that makes us conform and I guess here the pressure is to comform with the old norms and not the new.
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