Middlebury College in Vermont Experiences Large Outbreak of COVID
“When you look at positivity rates, the school’s is more than twice that of the state.”
The vast majority of students and staff are vaccinated, so at least these cases should be mild.
WCAX News reports:
How students are dealing with Middlebury College’s biggest COVID outbreak
Middlebury College is still in the throes of its biggest COVID outbreak to date, with 135 active cases. Compare that to 195 new cases announced in the entire state of Vermont on Wednesday.
When you look at positivity rates, the school’s is more than twice that of the state.
Our Melissa Cooney went to Middlebury to talk with students and the college about life on campus during this uptick in cases.
Navigating pandemic guidelines is second nature for college students.
“Our daily routines went on, we got tested, went to class, people quarantined,” said Brendan Maykeo, a Middlebury student.
But, like everywhere else, people are still getting sick.
“I honestly didn’t expect it to get this bad on campus,” student Sade Awodesu said.
Some 99% of the student body is vaccinated. The staff is 98% vaccinated.
The college PCR tests students weekly and antigen tests have been distributed during this surge, where the school has seen its highest case count since the start of the pandemic.
It’s important to note most students report very mild symptoms or none at all.
“What we’re really trying to focus on also is the severity of symptoms. That is really a more accurate and more relevant data point,” said Smita Ruzicka, the vice president of student affairs at Middlebury College.
The college says it is approaching a place where they can steer pandemic management into an endemic phase thanks to high vaccination rates and thorough protocols.
“It’s slowly shifting the mindset from sort of, again, a top-down restrictive, prescriptive set of policies to really a shift of thinking about personal responsibility, community responsibility and a shared sort of working toward, you know, sort of living with COVID. But we talk about it doesn’t mean that we let our guards down,” Ruzicka said.
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Comments
That asymptomatic testing craze has it’s costs.
Seems like it’s Psychosomatic me. Then again it’s Middlebury. The students should run to their “Safe Spaces” and wait it out until they grow up
Is this news?
We know the vax doesn’t prevent contagion or transmission.
It only mitigates the severity of the symptoms.
In fact, we know that the vaxxed are more likely to pass an infection on, not less.
We know that testing, regardless of frequency, doesn’t do a thing to prevent transmission, it only detects infection, often after you’ve had plenty of opportunity to pass it on.
We know that cases are just cases, not serious dangers, especially in that age group.
If you replace “COVID” everywhere with “headcold,” or “mono,” or even “lice” in a grade school, you’d read this story and your reaction would be “Yeah, that happens.”
Big deal, nothing about hospitalizations or deaths witch means it is less serious than the standard flu. All those infected will be immune from more serious variants.
My bet is a lot of these “cases” are false positives (PCR tests are known for that) from unnecessary testing, that most of the students aren’t actually sick (the debunked “asymptomatic transmission” meme notwithstanding), and that this is happening despite masks being mandatory. When will these fools learn?