Duke University was among the countless schools this year that went hard on COVID rules as the semester began: The university required vaccinations for most students, mandatory masking in all indoor facilities, mandatory daily symptom checks for unvaccinated students, weekly testing for everyone, and even informal rules for how students can eat on campus.
Sadly, despite the university's best efforts to combat a highly contagious respiratory pathogen through the use of infrequent testing and cloth face masks, they failed. There was an outbreak. And now things are getting really serious:
In the first week of classes, 304 undergraduates, 45 graduate students and 15 employees tested positive for COVID-19. All but eight of these individuals were vaccinated, and the vast majority of them are asymptomatic. A small number have minor, cold- and flu-like symptoms, and none have been hospitalized, according to the university...
The [new] rules include:
▪ Masks are required on the Duke campus in all indoor and outdoor locations, unless individuals are exercising alone, eating or drinking, or otherwise not around others.
▪ Indoor group seating at campus dining facilities is temporarily suspended. Students and employees have also been advised to eat outdoors as much as possible.
▪ Professors can teach their undergraduate classes remotely for the next two weeks. (This option is due to absences from the number of students in isolation, not spread in classrooms.)
▪ Student activities will be limited.
Just as an aside, did you pick up on the profile of this outbreak? About 98% of cases occurred in vaccinated individuals. "The vast majority" have no symptoms, a few are suffering from runny noses and fevers, and literally none of them have been hospitalized.
And for this the school is:
- Requiring masking in the fresh air and sunshine
- Suspending meals at dining halls
- "Limiting" student activity
- Permitting remote instruction
The university claims that the cases are "placing significant stress on the people, systems and facilities" at Duke, which is, uh...a weird thing to say about an outbreak with a literally 0% hospitalization rate.
By the end of the semester Duke students will be required to roll around campus in jumbo-sized hamster balls and drench themselves in gallon-sized buckets of hand sanitizer three times a day. Only then will they be truly safe.
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