CORRECTION: That’s 46 BC students testing positive this week, not total. On their dashboard it also says they have 68 students in isolation and 15 who have recovered.
Unlike BU, Northeastern, and other local schools, BC is not testing all those on campus multiple times per week. Instead, they’re testing a random sample each week at a rate that means it would take all semester to test the full student body. Unlike many other schools in the area, BC decided to continue its sports programs this fall and today the Boston Globe reported 13 members of the swimming and diving teams had tested positive. Now the number of students (including those not on teams) with COVID-19 has risen to 46.
This should be a concern to us in Newton, given that many BC students live off-campus or patronize Newton Centre businesses. BC needs to get more serious, and we have to monitor whether this ends up spreading into our community.
Worrying indeed.
Most worrying is that from my reading of the links it appears that the entire student body was tested once when they arrived and there was a very low positivity rate (.3), i.e. below the general rate in MA.
Last week’s test of 1228 yielded a 3.7 positivity rate, 4 times the general MA rate. What’s not clear to me though is who those 1228 people tested were. Were they random or people tested because of suspected exposure. If the latter than you would expect a higher positivity rate.
Definitely sounds like a significant outbreak in progress though. Without regular testing of the entire student body its impossible to know how wide spread it is within the larger BC community.
Someone on the Newton FB group said they know a BC student who said they’re randomly testing 1000 students/week. Out of a student population of almost 15,000.
I am very worried about this. This past weekend, a BC student in my neighborhood said directly to me that “we all just go up to NH to party” so we won’t get caught when I asked how his first semester at college was going.
46 is a lot compared to 0 cases reported by the city of Newton for 9/3-9/10. There are many cases unreported to the city like the outbreak I heard happened at the Windsor Club when they opened their swimming pool.
The number of cases at BC has just risen to 68 – from a WCVB alert I just received.
Shame on BC. They have the funds to do a better job with all of this. They should also know better. Very disgusted.
Has any major post-secondary institution shown greater contempt for the community than Boston College has?
http://www.bcgavel.com/2019/09/10/bc-paid-10-percent-of-bostons-requested-payment-in-lieu-of-tax/
The evidence suggests that America’s college students are not mature enough to live on-campus while keeping socially distanced to limit exposure to Covid-19. Given the outbreaks across the country- north, south, east, and west- neither sports nor academics can be done in a safe manner. As my niece, now in her thirties, declared, “Of course, college students will get together to drink and hang out. Don’t the colleges know that?”
We should blame both the colleges for opening and the students for lacking the will to keep apart. College athletics right now? You gotta be kidding!
I fear the same will occur in high schools if they return to normal before everyone gets an effective vaccine. Sorry to bum everybody out.
@Bob Jampol,
I think in terms of high schoolers here, the virus will spread whether schools are open or not. I’ve seen tons of teenagers hanging out together without wearing masks (they’re hanging from one ear) and gathered close together. I know someone who had gathered with friends in Newton Centre 2 evenings ago and while they were all appropriately distanced and masked, they were harassed by a group of 4 teens who weren’t respectful of space nor wearing masks. IF this behavior is indicative of wider conduct, it’s not a good omen.
Anyone actually surprised to learn that college students are catching and spreading COVID?
Anyone with common sense ( or at least has had teenagers ) would know that opening the schools, college or k-12 is a spike waiting to happen. Do you really think that 19 year old kids are going to follow all the rules?
I don’t understand the reasoning or lack thereof. This is a 100 year event. 2 years of remote, lousy learning experience isn’t going to be worse than prolonging the pandemic, or worse, bring it home to your parents or grandparents and have one of them pass from it.
It’s lousy. It’s terrible. But, I’m convinced there will be a vaccine out of the many being developed and we will eventually put this thing out. But it’s going to take a couple of years.
It’s probably the colleges want to get full tuition and parents want to not pay full tuition for zoom lectures. Colleges that have billion dollar endowments even.
I just found a past exchange on this website which provides some insight into the apparent recklessness of the university’s distancing policy:
Jeffrey Pontiff on August 24, 2020 at 6:17 pm
David Bedar on August 24, 2020 at 8:05 pm
@Bruce Wang BC Students are classified by where they live. BC itself straddles Boston, Newton and Brookline as parts of Chestnut Hill. Many BC students also live off campus in Brighton (Boston of course). Per tonight’s School Committee Meeting at which Newton Health and Human Services presented they are waiting for more info on how the BC outbreak actually breaks down. They mentioned that the State actually calculates the infection rate of each city and town. On the Windsor Club I heard that it was that a member who thought they had coronavirus but in the end they tested negative.
Sorry @Rich Frank two years of remote school does indeed do quite a bit of harm. Infection Rates are low … less than .2% not 2% but point 2% . We do need to proceed with caution but these kids in k-12 need to move forward, Honestly giving them structure and getting them out of their homes into school is going to allow positive peer interactions and be much safer than the unorganized milling around that happens now.
@Bob-what is your plan if there is no effective vaccine (not sure what your definition of effective is), which is a real possibility. Is there no in-person school or sports again? My daughter is in college and is back for in-person classes, and I can tell you there is nothing “normal” about it. What her college is doing is putting in place appropriate protocols to minimize risk. That is what needs to happen everywhere at this point. I think a lot of high school kids are now frustrated by the fact that they were told they couldn’t go to school in the spring, hang out with friends, play sports because the goal was to get schools open in the fall . At least that is a big message I heard over the summer. They see the low COVID numbers in the state and in Newton, and some wonder why they aren’t going back with appropriate precautions. Now that they have mostly complied for the past 6 months, we are now telling them that we as a school system can’t get them back into the classroom at some level. This can’t go on indefinitely with or without an approved vaccine.
Bob said: “The evidence suggests that America’s college students are not mature enough to live on-campus while keeping socially distanced to limit exposure to Covid-19. ”
Maybe it is time to think about why it is acceptable that teens are not mature. To me, it is a modified version of “Boys will be boys”. That is not acceptable any longer!
I urge every educator, every parent, to empower kids with maturity: hit them with consequences . That will make them think about alternatives to their acts. Do you think kids who had to work on a farm were immature? No, they knew what the consequences would be for leaving the pasture gate opened. Why are our kids coddled with few responsibilities?
The images of kids congregating and not doing their share in protecting others is sickening. Time to help them grow up and think of others.
@Isabelle,
I don’t disagree with you… but… many neuroscience studies have shown that the brain in a young person continues to develop until age 25. This is especially significant in areas of impulse control and action planning. No, I’m not suggesting that we give kids a pass regarding their conduct. Simply that the maturity needed for collective thought versus individual want takes longer in some kids. Witness how many colleges have seen outbreaks notwithstanding efforts to enforce social distancing and public health measures.
The kid on the farm had a life experience that is nothing like what teens experience today. Crops won’t fail and the family won’t go hungry if a teenager oversleeps here and now in our community. Just food for thought.
It seems like BC is trying to do as much wrong as possible.
The cross-country, golf, and sailing teams have been practicing, and the rowing team starts practice next week. And apparently the way to get tested regularly at BC is to be an athlete; while everyone else gets randomly tested approximately once/semester, “Student-athletes at BC are now being tested once a week for COVID-19.”
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/09/10/sports/concerns-rise-amid-virus-cluster-bc-athletics/
I dont think teenagers have changed much since I was a teenager 50 years ago. They dont have the same perspective as an old guy like me. Sometimes that’s a really good thing. Sometimes … during a pandemic .. it’s got a serious downside.
In any case. I dont think anybody should be shocked that young folks are behaving like young folks always have behaved. I think the folks who oversee the universities need to have a realistic perspective. I think in some cases the universities are basing their entire operation on patently unrealistic expectations of student behavior because the alternative is financially unacceptable for the institution.
It’s a rock and a hard place. I just dont want to end up in the hard place as an innocent bystander
Yawn.
Healthy kids that won’t die from covid get covid and isolate.
If the masks and social distancing work as advertised, the adult Newton residents cowering in their homes have nothing to worry about. Anybody who wants to “sit out” life for two years (or more) is free to do so if they have the means.
Two of my kids are at small liberal arts schools that are testing every student and employee twice a week and have strict rules about social distancing, mask wearing, visitor policy (NONE), etc. The semester started off with full quarantine, meaning kids could leave their rooms only to pick up grab-and-go meals or to take a walk/run. Now the schools have opened most facilities with extra precautions taken. There are no sports this season. Both schools have had total Covid case numbers in the single digits and currently have ZERO cases on campus. Granted, it’s easier at a small school, but it shows that not all college-aged kids are idiots. These kids knew in advance that they’d have to commit to the planned protocols or else stay home. So far it’s working.
Is anyone really surprised or shocked that BC’s ill conceived experiment didn’t end in this kind of train wreck.
Karen,
It is no surprise that small liberal arts school bubbles and the kids that prefer them are well suited for isolation. Many schools and many students are not.
Covid isnt going away and kids are going to get it. We have no choice but to muddle through. I have no doubt that BC will tweak their strategy as they gain more experience with their student and faculty cohorts.
Hey Craig – you know that wedding in Maine that created a major hotspot that spread to other towns? It wasn’t the young, healthy bride & groom, or their young, healthy guests who got sick and died, was it? The first to die was an elderly woman who had been “cowering” (your disgusting term) in her home since the start of the pandemic, and wasn’t even at the wedding. And your snarky shot at small liberal arts colleges – you must be a Big 10 guy, no wussy small liberal arts school for you – those are for losers who are content to hide in their rooms, right? Before you write me off as one of those people sitting at home “cowering” in fear, I’ve been working in-person at least part-time, and mostly full-time, since the beginning as my workplace is considered essential. And I would prefer my kid to be in school, at least part-time (if NPS could come up with a hybrid plan for the HS that was actually safe AND effective.) But your cavalier dismissal (“yawn”) of the issue because young and healthy college kids don’t die from this must mean you are ok with the collateral damage (older people dying.)
I teach at BC, and believe BC will close prematurely, probably soon. A majority of my students have told me they are fully aware, and concerned that BC is not testing them enough; they also acknowledge that many students — as college students at this age will, since they are prone to risk — are ignoring the rules and prioritizing socializing; some even trying to “get it all in” before they’re sent home. The administration, for months, has been reckless and not taken the virus seriously enough, and people are going to die as a result, be they relatives of students, or students themselves. This could have been avoided, and other colleges and universities are doing a better job of testing and placing student and community health over cash flow.
@Craig – some college-age people do die from COVID-19 and there is evidence that athletes are at particular risk of developing cardiomyopathy from it, which is a serious event with potentially long-lasting repercussions. There are also a lot of adults around college campuses – not only professors but also support staff, all of whom are at risk of catching the coronavirus from students who have it but don’t know it, and people in the Newton and Brighton communities who work at the stores frequented by students.
Also, I don’t consider BU and Northeastern small liberal arts colleges. Like BC, they have their students on campus. Unlike BC, they are testing everyone on campus multiple times/week. They aren’t relying on useless symptom checklists that don’t capture the large number of asymptomatic but contagious kids with COVID-19. There’s no need to be snide about other schools – there are schools of similar or larger size than BC that are following science instead of wishful thinking, most other East Coast schools have canceled fall athletics, and even some large state universities (U Mass, Amherst; Rutgers) have gone completely online.
@Brian S., I hope you are being pessimistic, but I agree, the BC administration handled this extremely recklessly, and you may have significant spread within the community already. I teach at BU. I don’t know if we will succeed, but we are testing undergrads twice per week, and pretty much everyone else once per week. Thus far, positivity is around 1 in a thousand tests. The BU students are trying to make this work and generally following the (draconian) rules. But you know how it goes. One social event can generate a hundred cases in a few days.
Meredith – the cardiomyopathy study (it wasn’t even a study) has been completely debunked.
https://www.si.com/college/michigan/football/michigan-football-big-ten-kevin-warren-myocarditis-covid-19-coronavirus-harbaugh
Tricia – you need not worry, you and your friends will make sure that BC shuts down and sends thousands of students home. They will probably infect a few parents along the way but, hey, at least they won’t be on the bike next to you at Soul Cycle.
As a result, BC will permanently drop most of their non revenue sports, fire a bunch of adjuncts and other support staff, and take a big hit in fundraising. None of this will impact you personally, of course, because if you’ve been working out of home from the beginning you did so under FAR worse conditions for community spread than a few asymptomatic, healthy college kids (college athletes!).
Just understand that regardless of how many things your ilk ruins (thanks for giving the teachers cover at South by the way), high school and college students are not going to stop doing what they do. They will gather, they will occasionally spread a disease that is non-fatal to them, and life will go on.
A year from now when case counts are similar to what they are today we’ll see if you change your tune about the risk/reward of in person schooling.
@Craig – I know the 30% number was incorrect (it should have been 15%, and the paper has yet to be published), but there is also credible data for a not insignificant proportion of people infected with COVID-19 have heart damage whether or not they were symptomatic and whether or not they are athletes. See, for example, this column in Scientific American.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-19-can-wreck-your-heart-even-if-you-havent-had-any-symptoms/
Oh, please – the cardiomyopathy issue has NOT been completely debunked. Yes, there were small problems with a couple of the studies (which were corrected) but the point of the article you linked to (on a Sports Illustrated Wolverine Football site) was to question the cancellation of Big Ten football and quoted ONE cardiologist.
And you can stop with the drama and assumptions – I do not want BC (or any other college) to shut down or send their students home. I am not worried about BC students being in Newton (and I’ve never been to Soul Cycle.) I am not at all happy that my high school student is fully remote. And I have a college senior who is an athlete whose final season has been cancelled and is 80% remote for classes. She’s living off campus because her school only brought the freshman on campus this semester so all housing could be single occupancy. It all sucks, but it is what it is.
The bottom line is that BC’s fall plan for both sports and housing were way too aggressive, and now they’re paying the price. In their desire to bring everyone back, they allowed too much density in the on-campus housing. And they needed a better plan for their returning athletes (other than the football team, who are well taken care of) to keep them on campus instead of having large numbers of teammates living together in off-campus housing. They’ll have to do what Notre Dame did last month – pause some sports if there are clusters and go completely remote for a few weeks to get things under control (and put the fear of God in the students.) This all sucks too, but in the end Boston College (and their athletic programs) will be fine.
“They will gather, they will occasionally spread a disease that is non-fatal to them, and life will go on.” For most of them, sure, life will go on. But do you really not care at all that their choice to gather in large groups for parties etc. can spread a disease to others whose lives might not go on?
WTF did BC administrators think was going to happen? The words “criminal negligence” come to mind.
@Craig: Trying to follow your logic, but struggling. A “healthy” kid can still die, first off, that’s been proven — but when they go home, they can also infect others who are not so healthy. They can also do this when they go out into public, go to NH to party, go out to eat, etc. I agree that the issue with colleges first allowing students to come, then sending infected students home, should be front and center — colleges shouldn’t have opened in the first place! We don’t have normal learning right now, we have hybrid learning, which consists of less classes and smaller groups, and is not at all similar to normal college classes. College learning could probably go back to normal in the Spring IF schools like BC weren’t so hell-bent on coming back strong; for no apparent reason than to fill their pockets. And spare me the “firing all adjuncts and cutting sports and fundraising…” Do you know how much money BC has?? They’re complaining about funding for $40 covid tests, laughable when you look at tuition and endowments and how much is spent on new sod and flowers on campus every semester. I’m not sure where you’re getting your information but you’re wrong on all accounts — not to mention the fact that covid doesn’t occur in a well-off, predominantly white, BC bubble — it impacts all communities, and not everyone is on the same playing field. Finally…and “life will go on?” I get the sense I know who you voted for…and if you wear a mask and consider this virus to be serious at all. We’re close to 200, 000 dead in the U.S and colleges like BC are fueling it in pursuit of cash.
@John White-
I’m not sure I’m being pessimistic after speaking with my students at BC and Bentley (80 in total this semester). I wish you luck at BC, and I’ve told my students that when I was 18, I made a ton of bad decisions, so I am allowing them to speak freely about the decisions they face, many of them as freshmen, this semester. I actually weighed in on a Boston Town Council Meeting with a BU instructor — writing program guy, very nice — this summer, who was very concerned. And, it sounds as though you are testing far more than we are, which is great — again, good luck, but from what I hear, BC is on the cusp of an explosion.
Wrote this this summer, in case you’re interested:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/06/30/opinion/leaning-toward-reopening-colleges-are-pushing-our-health-edge/
New article from the Boston Globe. BC students are worried, as well as angry at how lax the school is being.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/09/11/metro/bc-outbreak-worries-epidemiologists-students-community/