Hi
As usual, I agree with you.
However, another caveat....
These states have such low populations. When college kids came back, they had to be tested.
Fargo has 100,000 people - Grand Forks is half that size.
Each
of those schools had an enrollment of 13,000 students. So, you test
maybe 20,000 kids (allowing for some shrinkage), add in a couple
thousand faculty, admin and support staff, and of course your "case"
numbers are going to skyrocket.
But, as you know, all that a "case" is is a positive test. There are no hospitalized college kids.
And the media wants to act as if Sturgis were Armageddon.
...........................
So - here's the Arizona State Covid story....
My
youngest nephew is a freshman at ASU this year. His brother is a
Junior. Clean cut kids - hockey and softball - no tattoos - plenty
smart and polite - but all boy when it comes to shenanigans and the
occasional glass of whisky to keep the rest of the family company. Good
kids.
They'd gone to high school in West Fargo.
...............
So,
the younger fellow gets marching orders from ASU this summer. To be
admitted into the dorms, he had to have XYZ shots anytime during the
summer, and a negative COVID test dated no more than 14 days before
checking into the dorm. Fine.
Apparently,
the spinal meningitis shot is now 2 shots - spaced out over several
days/weeks. The kid gets all his shots at their long-standing clinic.
However, several weeks after the last SM shot, he gets a call - that
vaccine may have not been stored properly. So sorry, he needs to repeat
the 2nd shot. His Mom says "The kid's a hockey player who has been
beaten with sticks since he was 4 - another needle isn't a problem.
When can we get him in?" So, since he has to get the COVID swab too,
it's scheduled for a Monday - 10 days before they'll drive to AZ. He
shows up on that day and there's no vaccine. Come back tomorrow.
Tuesday, no vaccine again. He heads back Wednesday (has his own car)
and calls his Mom. He can't get in the clinic. It's not a holiday, no
bomb threat, etc. They won't let HIM in. Why not? Well on one of
those previous days, a tech thought it'd just be a good idea to get the
COVID swab out of the way. So, now the kid is awaiting results and that
class of people is not allowed inside. (;>)
So,
his Mommy tells him to stay put and she makes a couple phone calls.
There's a Doc who'll give him the repeat SM shot someplace not inside
the clinic - and life progresses.
He
gets his negative COVID result and the family loads up for a 2 day
drive to AZ. All's well. The older brother is already down there in a
rental apartment with 3 guys he's known since they were freshmen. The
younger brother is going to live on campus the first year.... meet
people, it's a big school. Mom and Dad hang out for a couple days, swim
and golf and then they fly back home.
They're
home just a couple days and get a call from son #2. He leaves a
message "I'm headed to jail". Well, it turns out that the college
thought it'd be a good idea to retest a bunch of kids, and his roommate
had popped up with a positive. So - the roommate is going into
isolation, and my nephew and the other 2 guys in the suite were going to
be quarantined individually. They have to move. The instructions were
that their meals would be delivered to them, and they could only leave
their rooms 1 hour in a 24 hour period. Hence his "jail" comment. No
one escorted the kids, and they weren't going to be kept together. So,
my nephew is now in a much larger place - a 4 bedroom apartment with a
separate living room. He doesn't know who is going to show up for the
other 3 rooms. He gets 4 large sacks of food. (They're big paper
shopping bags with cord handles. Macy's, Neiman's, Dillard's would use
that as their largest paper bag). He doesn't know if that represents
all 3 meals for his first day,( and maybe another sack with rolls,
crackers, desserts ) or if it's lunch for him and the 3 guys who
haven't shown up. He is a dear fellow and asks his Mom. She told him
to not touch the other bags, but just open one and eat whatever. Before
the day was over he got 8 more meals. Each in a large sack. No one
else has shown up yet, so he sets the other sacks aside. There's a
refrigerator, but it's quickly overflowing. The other guys never show
up, and he has numerous days of 12 meals. Stuff is starting to smell,
so he drives to Walmart and gets a can of Febreze and some big garbage
bags so he can lug this stuff out to the dumpster. In the meantime,
he's figured out how to retain the heavier stuff (perhaps cans of
juice?) and he double bags those so he has some weights to do arm curls
(;>). After about a week, his deliveries drop to 6 meals a day
instead of 12. His roommate calls him and informs him that the positive
COVID was, of course, a false positive. So, the roommate has moved
back into the room. He has been released from isolation. My nephew
wants to return to the room. He is told no - that his 14 day quarantine
went into effect some time after his "exposure" to the roommate. Oy
vey. Anyway - he should be back in the room by now. God only knows
what happened to the suitemates. And my nephew never did rat on the 3
nameless fellows who didn't show up.
Anyway,
the college wants to test them again. His mother said "not without a
court order". She has a couple attorney's names in AZ (referred by our
ND lawyers), and this retesting the retests is going to be strongly
discouraged. Her sage advice is that parents can get a full refund
until September 20th. She monitors an ASU Mom's group and figures that
by that time, all the hysterical Moms will have pulled their kids out of
the dorms. So, it'll kind of be like an Advent calendar. If he sticks
it out just one more week (and he will), things should be quite
pleasant.
I've seen his video of these bags of food - it's hysterical.
Anyway
- I'm sure other colleges are capable of similar insanity - and UND is
uber liberal, anti-Trump, so I imagine they're ratcheting up their
numbers as high as possible.
.................
Sorry
about the long story. I've spared you , and held off on this tirade -
but when I saw multiple reports of the "spike", I just figured I should
throw in my 2 kroners.
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