Rich college kids immune to coronaplague?

A friend who is a professor at NYU told me that so far they’ve found only five students who test positive for coronavirus. He says that this is a population of 24,000 undergraduates who converge from all corners of the U.S. (there are additional foreign students, ordinarily, but presumably they are being barred from entry to the U.S. due to the Trumpenfuhrer’s cruel entry bans that were imposed in February and March).

From an official NYU update:

7,772 COVID-19 PCR diagnostic tests were performed on students (including those who arrived early for quarantining) at the two NYU testing centers — Gould Plaza and 6 MetroTech — established for testing students. Five tested positive; all are in isolation, are being monitored by the COVID-19 Prevention & Response Team, and will not be permitted to enter NYU facilities until cleared.

and regarding the prison camp that they’re running…

Last week, some 2,700 students moved into residence halls to begin a two-week quarantine period, which the University sought to support by opening the residence halls early and delivering meals (both at no cost to students).

The move-in went well; the meal service less so. The food service was an unprecedentedly complex undertaking for the University and its food vendor, Chartwells, involving delivery of three meals per day to the door of each of the 2,700 students’ rooms, a substantial percentage of which were individualized, specialized meals. We fell short of the plans we had in place. Chartwells has taken a number of measures to correct the initial missteps — including doubling the food preparation and delivery staff — that have helped, and we are continuing to make efforts to improve meal service for the quarantining students in the residence halls.

So the $80,000/year “hybrid” education starts with two weeks of incarceration!

American Pravda says that the U.S. has roughly 40,000 new cases per day. That’s nearly 300,0000 per week (reasonable length of infection for a 20-year-old?). Assume that there are two people who would have tested positive, but didn’t get a test, for every actual positive test? That’s close to 1 million. Based on a U.S. population of 330 million, we should have at least 1 in 400 people currently infected with coronaplague, right? But NYU had at least 7,772 tests and only 5 positives, only 1/4 the expected rate. What can we infer from this? The U.S. actually is testing everyone who might conceivably be positive? Asymptomatic infection is less common that we thought? Families that are rich enough to pay $80,000/year for an education that is no better than what is available at the local State U are not infected? What?

(How does the $80,000/year education actually work? Roughly one third of the students show up in person to any given lecture. The teacher tries to manage a forest of newly installed Zoom monitors so as to be able to interact with the two thirds of the students who are present via Zoom. There is a tech support hotline number in case the teacher is not a desktop computer system administration wizard. Classes start today.)

7 thoughts on “Rich college kids immune to coronaplague?

  1. Other than the arithmetic error (extra 0), the statistics works out nicely at 1/1000 carrying it.

  2. VT tested just under 9,000 college students and had decimal twenty two percent positive rate. That’s .22% Up there colleges and townies are working together to rat out students not following the party line. The learning is questionable and now the fun is gone, only thing left is the outrageous tuition.

  3. “Families that are rich enough to pay $80,000/year for an education that is no better than what is available at the local State U ”

    A close family member started college at a well-known, reputable private university in the DC area last week at right about $60K per two semesters including room & board and a minimal scholarship. Despite a 60% SAT and 60% high school class rank, she selected Electrical Engineering as a major. She lasted one week in EE and switched to Psychology. This is going to be end up being a quarter-million $ Psychology BA. Good thing her parents are high-income rich bastard doctors,

    • ^ Oh, and only Freshman are on campus for at least the 1st semester. Upperclasses are all virtual off-campus from anywhere.

  4. One bright spot is that if you can’t afford to spend $80k per year at NYU Tisch film school and spend a lot of your time incarcerated and then living in what’s left of New York City, you can learn everything you need to know in two weeks for $48 with this online film making course.

    https://mrpaulxavier.com/14-day-filmmaker

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