So take me home before the storm
Oct. 8th, 2020 08:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12General COVID fretting behind the cut.
Students have returned for the start of the academic year, and the inevitable has happened. Just like all the other university towns — which have an earlier start to term than Cambridge — there are a number of positive COVID cases among the students. So far only eleven cases have been announced, but I feel certain there will be more soon enough.
I don't entirely blame the university for this. With inadequate government financial support, they were caught between a rock and a hard place: most of the colleges make a significant amount of money through students paying to live in residence (and much of their other income comes from hiring the college spaces out for conferences, weddings and other large scale events over the summer, which obviously could not go ahead), so they were always going to insist on the students residing in college, rather than staying at home. (Teaching is hybrid: lectures and large classes will be done virtually, small group teaching and one-to-one supervisions will be done in person unless requested otherwise.)
But college accommodation is by its very nature the perfect environment in which to spread disease: shared kitchens and bathrooms, narrow corridors and staircases to enter the space, lots of bedrooms close together. 'Freshers' flu' — the annual onset of a bad cold every time the students return to Cambridge — takes on a much more sinister meaning in times of a global pandemic. I used to get sick every year myself, even though I only lived in university accommodation for two years. (And I feel anxious just thinking about that postgraduate accommodation: fifteen people living together in a converted nineteenth-century house with a single entrance, narrow corridors, and two tiny shared kitchens!)
Thankfully my manager made an abrupt u-turn with her plans for me to return to working in the library, and I'm still working from home with no return date imminent. Matthias, unfortunately, is back two days a week in his library, which has restricted access (students have to book a half-hour slot in which to browse the shelves and borrow books, or they have to use the click&collect service, with afternoons taken up with bookable DVD-viewing slots — his library covers Film Studies) but is also on one of the busiest parts of the university, the location of almost every humanities/social sciences faculty. People are meant to wear masks when they're in a library, but because the university has stopped short of mandating it in all indoor spaces (instead they've offered the vague advice that they must be worn 'when social distancing can't be maintained') I'm very worried that compliance will be patchy, and outdoors, on the site where his library is located, there are often crowds of students flooding the area as they make their way from one class to another, and they may not bother to wear masks outdoors.
I had to go into central Cambridge yesterday during my lunch break, and I actually felt sick with fear when I got there: since March, the whole city has been a bit of a ghost town, with very few people, and I'd felt perfectly comfortable travelling in at any point to run errands. Yesterday, the crowds were back to pre-COVID numbers, and there were packs of students wandering about in groups, eating and drinking or chatting, mask-less. In normal times central Cambridge is very crowded when students are in residence, but I'd forgotten what that looked like.
Numbers here have been low throughout the whole pandemic, even in the summer when every available green space was packed with huge groups of people having picnics and barbecues. I fear all that is about to change with the arrival of the students, who live and travel in groups, and have come to Cambridge from all over the country (including from places with really high numbers of cases). The fact that the weather is dreadful and getting colder and darker every day will also discourage socialising outdoors, meaning people pack into indoor spaces much more than they have done the past seven months.
I had been planning to go back to swimming in the indoor pool at my gym, which I haven't visited since February, but now the thought of being in a changeroom makes me feel sick. I'm certainly not going to go into the centre of town in the middle of the day on a weekday again — I'll have to limit myself to early morning visits to the outdoor market on the weekend.
The whole thing is just a disaster.
Students have returned for the start of the academic year, and the inevitable has happened. Just like all the other university towns — which have an earlier start to term than Cambridge — there are a number of positive COVID cases among the students. So far only eleven cases have been announced, but I feel certain there will be more soon enough.
I don't entirely blame the university for this. With inadequate government financial support, they were caught between a rock and a hard place: most of the colleges make a significant amount of money through students paying to live in residence (and much of their other income comes from hiring the college spaces out for conferences, weddings and other large scale events over the summer, which obviously could not go ahead), so they were always going to insist on the students residing in college, rather than staying at home. (Teaching is hybrid: lectures and large classes will be done virtually, small group teaching and one-to-one supervisions will be done in person unless requested otherwise.)
But college accommodation is by its very nature the perfect environment in which to spread disease: shared kitchens and bathrooms, narrow corridors and staircases to enter the space, lots of bedrooms close together. 'Freshers' flu' — the annual onset of a bad cold every time the students return to Cambridge — takes on a much more sinister meaning in times of a global pandemic. I used to get sick every year myself, even though I only lived in university accommodation for two years. (And I feel anxious just thinking about that postgraduate accommodation: fifteen people living together in a converted nineteenth-century house with a single entrance, narrow corridors, and two tiny shared kitchens!)
Thankfully my manager made an abrupt u-turn with her plans for me to return to working in the library, and I'm still working from home with no return date imminent. Matthias, unfortunately, is back two days a week in his library, which has restricted access (students have to book a half-hour slot in which to browse the shelves and borrow books, or they have to use the click&collect service, with afternoons taken up with bookable DVD-viewing slots — his library covers Film Studies) but is also on one of the busiest parts of the university, the location of almost every humanities/social sciences faculty. People are meant to wear masks when they're in a library, but because the university has stopped short of mandating it in all indoor spaces (instead they've offered the vague advice that they must be worn 'when social distancing can't be maintained') I'm very worried that compliance will be patchy, and outdoors, on the site where his library is located, there are often crowds of students flooding the area as they make their way from one class to another, and they may not bother to wear masks outdoors.
I had to go into central Cambridge yesterday during my lunch break, and I actually felt sick with fear when I got there: since March, the whole city has been a bit of a ghost town, with very few people, and I'd felt perfectly comfortable travelling in at any point to run errands. Yesterday, the crowds were back to pre-COVID numbers, and there were packs of students wandering about in groups, eating and drinking or chatting, mask-less. In normal times central Cambridge is very crowded when students are in residence, but I'd forgotten what that looked like.
Numbers here have been low throughout the whole pandemic, even in the summer when every available green space was packed with huge groups of people having picnics and barbecues. I fear all that is about to change with the arrival of the students, who live and travel in groups, and have come to Cambridge from all over the country (including from places with really high numbers of cases). The fact that the weather is dreadful and getting colder and darker every day will also discourage socialising outdoors, meaning people pack into indoor spaces much more than they have done the past seven months.
I had been planning to go back to swimming in the indoor pool at my gym, which I haven't visited since February, but now the thought of being in a changeroom makes me feel sick. I'm certainly not going to go into the centre of town in the middle of the day on a weekday again — I'll have to limit myself to early morning visits to the outdoor market on the weekend.
The whole thing is just a disaster.
no subject
Date: 2020-10-08 08:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-10-08 11:27 am (UTC)To be honest I just wish it was mandatory for masks or face shields to be worn by everyone other than babies and young toddlers anywhere other than in their own houses/gardens, and when sitting at the table eating/drinking at restaurants. My cousin lives in South Korea and over there mask-wearing is mandatory for everyone, even very small children — her three-year-old son wears his mask without a problem — and as a result people have carried on living essentially normal lives, with some restrictions on sizes of gatherings.
no subject
Date: 2020-10-09 08:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-10-08 11:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-10-09 08:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-10-08 11:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-10-09 08:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-10-08 06:10 pm (UTC)We have all sorts of regulations about student behaviour but it's an age group that still feels somewhat 'immortal' and the friending/mating rituals will continue no matter what the administration says.
no subject
Date: 2020-10-09 09:01 am (UTC)This is exactly it! I've seen the regulations that have been sent out to the students, but I'm absolutely certain that they're hanging around unmasked in shared residential spaces (like kitchens and corridors), rather than wearing their masks until they go into their bedrooms. And given a lot of the structured group social activity has no doubt been cancelled this year (dinners in formal hall, use of the college bar, sports teams and clubs, parties organised by the college student organisations), they'll find unstructured ways to socialise which will of course carry the same risks.
no subject
Date: 2020-10-08 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-10-09 09:03 am (UTC)I will definitely not be making that mistake again, and will revert back to only visiting in to the market early on a Sunday morning!
no subject
Date: 2020-10-08 10:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-10-09 09:06 am (UTC)I can understand your reluctance to join the throngs at a large shopping centre in peak time — your decision to avoid that is a sensible one.