Coronavirus transmission illustrations

 This has some good visuals, including one of a classroom:

https://english.elpais.com/society/2020-10-28/a-room-a-bar-and-a-class-how-the-coronavirus-is-spread-through-the-air.html

Brownbag today (Thu 29-Oct)!

Brownbag

hosted by SPEL GSO over Zoom

11:45 start

topic: Kate Manne, Entitled, chs. 1 & 5

my surveillance test

 negative

NY-22

 

SIENA/SYRACUSE.COM POLL OF NY-22

HOUSE
Brindisi (D-inc): 48%
Tenney (R): 39%

PRESIDENT
Biden (D): 45%
Trump (R-inc): 44%https://t.co/qdNvfeeQBn

— Jackson Bryman (@kilometerbryman) October 8, 2020

yup

 But the rise in Broome County's positive cases is not a result of BU's numbers, Broome County Executive Jason Garnar said Wednesday at BU.

"I believe what's happened with the Binghamton University numbers is because of what's happening community-wide, not the other way," said Garnar, who added that the average age of of the new positive cases in the county is 40.

"Those are not students on campus," he said. 

https://www.pressconnects.com/story/news/local/2020/10/07/binghamton-university-virtual-classes-2-weeks-covid-spike-new-york-suny/5908437002/

The two week pause starts tomorrow

Beginning Thursday, Oct. 8, all classes will be held remotely. The campus will remain open; it is not closed. All core operations of the University will remain open and employees should continue their current work arrangements.

Residence halls will remain open and students will still be able to utilize critical campus resources. The libraries and classrooms set aside for student study spaces will remain open with physical distancing in place. Medical services, counseling and other services will continue as usual. 

What will change during this two-week pause:

• Dining will transition to all carry-out with no seating.
• All in-person extracurricular programs and other non-essential student activities will be suspended, including club sport activities and intramurals.
• All in-person activity by athletics teams will be halted during the two week period.
• OCCT Buses will move to a weekend schedule.

the new new Spring academic calendar

 it's changed again -- moved up 4 days for what looks like a good reason

New revisions to spring 2021 academic calendar

Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Donald Nieman announced additional changes to the spring 2021 academic calendar, which will now begin Feb. 11 and end in time to accommodate student leases.

The semester will now begin Thursday, Feb. 11, with all in-person final exams completed by May 21. There is an online exam period from May 24-26. As with the fall 2020 semester, the spring semester will have no breaks. See the calendar at https://www.binghamton.edu/academics/academic-calendar.html

Read the full story in BingUNews at the link below.

visit https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/2695/new-revisions-to-spring-academic-calendar

Yeah, looks like we're screwed

 https://www.binghamton.edu/restarting-binghamton/covid-19-dashboard.html

We were at 0 on Monday, the trend is increasing (we're +13 from yesterday), and most of the positives are from Decker (which suggests, to me anyway, that the testing is catching mostly symptomatic people who want to be tested, and this in turn suggests that there are lots of asymptomatic people who haven't been caught by surveillance testing.)

Plus the county-wide rate is worse and accelerating even faster. (Wednesday's Broome County positivity rate was 4.7%, according to the New York Covid dashboard.) Our students are doing much better than the county as a whole, and the timing of the surge doesn't sync with our academic calendar. (It syncs better with the start of K12 school.) There's plenty of community spread and it's not going to be reduced by dorms students behaving better.

So, unless someone already did something last week to prevent positives, we'll hit 100 next week, which maybe doesn't make a big difference anyway, except for shutting down what little in-person stuff remains.