ADSA’s Data Science Community Newsletter is an excellent resource for data science news. It is catered toward academics, but I think likely would be of interest to folks far beyond the academy. Among many interesting topics — climate, civil liberties, arXiv’s 30th birthday, a new CDC center directed by Marc Lipsitch (!!!) — there was this:
On some campuses already back in session, COVID is already playing out with worse outcomes compared to the same time last year. University of Wisconsin-Madison, which does not have a vaccination mandate, set aside empty dorms and used empty hotels last year for quarantine. This year dorms are at full capacity, hotels are full of football fans, and sick students are lodged in several family housing units in a complex with children who cannot be vaccinated. At University of North Carolina Wilmington, Professor Kevin McClure tweeted that they added “another 122 positive cases [yesterday]. over 300 cases total. 52 out of 150 quarantine beds in use. This time last year we added 3 positive cases.” It would be unwise to make any broader assumptions about college operations based on two schools. Dr. Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust, said “We’ve only gotten 18 months into this pandemic, and the pandemic is going faster today than it was in 2020 and much of 2021.” … “We’ve had 5 pandemic changing variants in the last 6-9 months and that isn’t going to slow down.” Humility remains a virtue as we decide how to proceed.
Shocking and stupid that major universities are not mandating vaccines. Mine is.