It's Inexcusable to Put So Many Faculty, Staff, Students, and Community Members Through This Much Anxiety and Panic When Almost Nothing Would Be Lost by Going Online

I would estimate that approximately 80% of the faculty and students I have spoken with this past month are experiencing severe levels of anxiety and panic over the health consequences of returning to the classroom and having 168 hours of potential exposure to a virus that can cause serious disease, even among young adults. This is causing an undue amount of health damage without us even starting the semester. It is mental health damage, but it's health damage nonetheless.

To me, it seems kind of cruel. Not simply because it is causing so much widespread anxiety among the BUSPH community and the community at large, but because it is anxiety that could easily be relieved and without any significant adverse consequences.

At this point, students have already made their decisions. Many have arrived already. Tuition has been paid. There is not a significant risk that students are going to defer and it is unlikely that they are going to transfer to another school if we go online, especially because so many other schools have announced that they have decided to go to online courses this fall. So there is little to gain financially at this point.

As I have explained in other posts, there is certainly nothing to gain pedagogically or didactically, as an all-online format is far superior to this crazy hybrid model, with students going back and forth between in-class and online, with poor communication between the two groups of students, with the discomfort of students and faculty wearing masks the entire time, the inability to do group activities, the need for frequent testing, the constant disruptions caused by having the slightest cold and therefore not being able to come to class, and so on. 

So if there is nothing to gain financially and nothing to gain didactically, why are we doing this? Why are we subjecting our own community and the community at large to this level of panic and anxiety if it is completely unnecessary? 

Many schools - including both other public health programs in Boston - announced long ago that they were going online this fall, leading to a much more relaxing summer for their faculty and students. Even among schools that planned a hybrid system, school after school has announced that they changed their mind and given the circumstances, have decided to hold online classes, at least to start the semester.

Why does BUSPH have to be an outlier? What do we gain from this? What do we prove? 

The bottom line is that we made a mistake. It's OK to admit that we made a mistake. It's much more important that we do the right thing now and protect both the physical and mental health of the BUSPH community and the community at large. 

This is why I am asking that the School switch immediately to virtual-only classes. Very simply, it's the right thing to do.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Copy of My Open Letter to the BU School of Public Health Community

This is perhaps the most difficult note I have written in my career. It comes out of a deep love for the School of Public Health, a love that has been engendered by 25 years (as of six days ago) of being a part of an institution with a singular mission to use scientific principles and methods to think about public health problems, to teach our students principles to go out and improve the world, and to demonstrate our commitment to public health and social justice by do ing – that is, implementing these principles in our own actions and policies as a school. It is based on a careful analysis of these principles that I have reached the conclusion that led me to convey this message: It is essential that we rescind the decision to hold in-person/hybrid classes and transition immediately to online-only classes, not merely to protect the health of the community and the public, but to restore our ability to carry out our mission as a school of public health. Our decision to hol
Read more

Despite the Claims of Safety, Spending Three Hours in an Indoor Classroom Entails Significant COVID Risk

Initial theories about the spread of COVID-19 attributed the majority of cases to exposure to large droplets which are exhaled by people who are infected and then tend to drop rather quickly to the ground. This is why very close exposure was thought to be critical for infection to occur and why the six foot rule was widely accepted as conveying protection. However, more recently, there has emerged a compelling body of research demonstrating that COVID-19 can also spread through aerosols, much smaller particles that tend to rise rather than fall and can spread much longer distances as well as enter ventilation systems and continue to provide potential exposure for much longer periods of time. For example, a study by Shen et al. concluded : "To inform the knowledge gap and investigate potential transmission routes of COVID-19, we present the result from an outbreak investigation of COVID-19 among lay Buddhists worshiping in a temple. The attack rate on an enclosed bus containing
Read more

Open Letter to BUSPH Urging the School to Start Classes Online this Semester Due to Peak COVID-19 Conditions

Dear Dean Galea: It is with a love for the School of Public Health and a concern for its long-term reputation that we write this letter urging the School to begin the semester with virtual-only classes. We do not think it is responsible for the School to be holding in-person classes at the peak of this pandemic. This is an open letter and is being sent to all SPH faculty who are teaching this semester and whose health and safety are therefore at risk because of what we believe will be unsafe conditions at the start of the semester. When BUSPH opened for hybrid classes in the fall, COVID-19 infection rates were at a lull, with fewer than 200 cases reported in the state per day. At this time, however, the opposite is the case. We are in the midst of the largest surge of cases in Massachusetts since the start of the pandemic. At the peak of the first surge in April 2020, Massachusetts experienced 2,300 cases at its absolute peak. In the past seven days, we have experienced
Read more