What I think my students this fall need to know: What I think my students this fall need to know: A week before first lecture is a good time to undertake an overview of the current state of the Delta variant plague wave, the fourth wave that is now beginning to hit the United States. The best source I have found so far is Max Roser & al.: Our World in Data: COVID-19 Data Explorer <https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer>.... Healthy students' concerns should be overwhelmingly focused on how to keep themselves from getting the plague and then affecting those more vulnerable, and more at risk, rather than on risk-to-self...
Your analysis is assuming death is the only thing to fear.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00324-2/fulltext -- which finds universal cognitive impairment from COVID -- is at least highly suggestive that while not dying is goal zero, not getting the disease needs to be ranked higher than the "vaccinated? everything is fine" policy we're seeing being made.
https://twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1418696473177362432 discusses this paper in terms of creating a tragedy of chronic illness; I'd prefer to discuss it as a moral failure of requiring certainty to spend money, when the certainty shall without question arrive well after the harm.
Vaccine escape is a real possibility; we have no way to judge how likely, but can be certain that the more reproductive events COVID viruses have, the more likely any particular mutation becomes. If this does happen, when it happens, the event of escape, will be a surprise; all we've got are lagging indicators.
That's the simple long-term harm; the vaccines stop working at all, rather than quickly. (The range of numbers available for full vaccine effectiveness has an upper bound of nine months. The lower bound is five.) The Uncommon Cold becoming inescapable and certain to damage your cognition every time you catch it will, eventually, become identified as just that. Contemplate how the social consequences of such knowledge becoming a general matter of emotional conviction might play out. Consider what it is worth to spend and to do to keep those events from coming to pass.
Your analysis is assuming death is the only thing to fear.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00324-2/fulltext -- which finds universal cognitive impairment from COVID -- is at least highly suggestive that while not dying is goal zero, not getting the disease needs to be ranked higher than the "vaccinated? everything is fine" policy we're seeing being made.
https://twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1418696473177362432 discusses this paper in terms of creating a tragedy of chronic illness; I'd prefer to discuss it as a moral failure of requiring certainty to spend money, when the certainty shall without question arrive well after the harm.
Vaccine escape is a real possibility; we have no way to judge how likely, but can be certain that the more reproductive events COVID viruses have, the more likely any particular mutation becomes. If this does happen, when it happens, the event of escape, will be a surprise; all we've got are lagging indicators.
That's the simple long-term harm; the vaccines stop working at all, rather than quickly. (The range of numbers available for full vaccine effectiveness has an upper bound of nine months. The lower bound is five.) The Uncommon Cold becoming inescapable and certain to damage your cognition every time you catch it will, eventually, become identified as just that. Contemplate how the social consequences of such knowledge becoming a general matter of emotional conviction might play out. Consider what it is worth to spend and to do to keep those events from coming to pass.
Is UC Berkeley doing mandatory Covid testing on all students on a regular basis as part of the containment protocol?