https://time.com/6148706/college-covid-19-policies/
Many of America’s roughly 20 million college students are (still) living with a wide range of restrictions on their lives. Some students face no restrictions—neither vaccination nor mask mandates—while others are subject to bouts of nearly total lock down, such as happened at Emerson college, which issued a “stay in room” directive that lasted through January 18 and prohibited students from leaving their room unless to get tested, obtain food, go to medical appointments, or for employment purposes. Other restrictions across the country include remote classes (10-15% of 500 prominent colleges started the spring term online), booster mandates, bans on traveling off campus or internationally, no sharing meals in the dining hall, limits on the number of people in your room at one time, masks at all times indoors and outdoors in crowded settings, bans on eating or drinking inside buildings, and testing every 72 hours to determine COVID-19 status.
With many college campuses approaching 98% vaccination rates among students, faculty, and staff, universities should jettison the strategies they relied on in 2020 and 2021.
Restrictions appear to correlate with political leanings of the surrounding area, but not entirely. Many colleges in Republican-governed states, such as Tulane University in New Orleans, LA, University of Virginia, and Duke University, in North Carolina, have vaccination and booster mandates, mask mandates, and delayed the start of in-person classes for the spring semester. Even in Florida some colleges are remote due to COVID-19 concerns, although Florida has prohibited mask and vaccination mandates for K-12 schools and in higher education, as has Virginia now that Youngkin is governor. The vast majority of schools in the Northeast, West, and Northwest, and many in the Midwest, are still requiring vaccination, masks, and boosters as well as other restrictions.
Recently, a groundswell of pushback from parents, students, and some faculty has emerged. Parents and alumni from multiple universities posted open letters to the administrations at Cornell, William and Mary, Georgetown, Stanford, and elsewhere, most focusing on booster mandates, but some on general COVID-19 restrictions. Two law professors on the faculty at Northwestern argued that remote learning violated university contracts with students.
But, so far, universities have shown little sign of backing down. Though some, like University of California, Berkeley, are finally starting to change their rules. Berkeley is dropping mask requirements for vaccinated people starting February 28th.
We think that fundamental misunderstandings about two specific questions are leading to ongoing unnecessary campus COVID-19 policies that negatively affect students’ experiences, academics, and their mental health. These policies affect the daily lives of millions of young people and, as such, should be grounded in solid data showing they are effective. We do not discuss booster requirements here, as many others have published articles and data supporting that boosters in healthy young people are not meaningfully preventing hospitalizations, or at this point, even breakthrough infections.
First, do restrictions on college campuses, such as on dining, traveling, and on how many guests students can have in their room, make sense?
A recent analysis from the IHME indicates that the answer to this question is No. IHME models suggest that Omicron spreads so quickly that even the most severe restrictions (such as Emerson College instituted) will do little to blunt its trajectory, particularly given that most Americans are living less restricted lives than college students, including faculty and staff (aside from mask requirements) at those same institutions. The large R0 (a measure of infectivity) of Omicron means, as Anthony Fauci acknowledged recently, that infection is inevitable for everyone, even the vaccinated and boosted. This also means that young healthy nearly 100% vaccinated people are living severely restricted lives only to delay an infection they likely cannot avoid, and which is unlikely to seriously affect them. Post-vaccination, hospitalizations for college-age students have been miniscule. CDC data show the weekly hospitalization rate for 18-49 year-olds at 1.8/100,000 at the peak of the Omicron wave in mid-January, and of death in all, vaccinated and unvaccinated, 18-29 year-olds at 0.8/100,000. Both will fall even further now, as cases plummet with the Omicron wave having peaked in parts of the country. No vaccinated college students have died of COVID-19, as far as we know.