The Worst Consequence of BUSPH Decision to Hold Hybrid Classes: Losing Sight of Our Public Health Mission

What seems to have been completely lost in the School of Public Health's decision to hold hybrid (meaning in-person) classes is that we are in the middle of a pandemic that has killed more than 190,000 people and that as a school of public health, our mission should be to try to reduce that toll to the greatest extent possible.

It appears that the primary factor considered in the university's initial decision was purely financial. Why else would we decide back in April (in the middle of a raging pandemic) to open back up in September, without having any idea whatsoever what the situation would be like?

But even if you put that aside and simply consider what decision would make sense at the present time, the primary factors being used to defend in-person classes are financial impact, student expectations, educational value, and the low rate of infection at the moment. I have argued elsewhere on this blog that it is inappropriate to place financial impact above public health, that student expectations do not take precedence over community safety, that online classes have immensely more educational value than hybrid ones under the current circumstances, and that the low rate of infection is not stable and not a reliable enough criterion upon which to assure community safety. Remember, the infection rate was only 0.002% when we closed down the entire state last March. Nevertheless, we've still suffered 8,000 deaths since that closure.

What I don't see being considered is the fact that as a school of public health, our number one concern at this time should be not how to implement Learning from Anywhere and managing the preference app, not implementing complicated testing schemes and daily symptom attestations, but doing anything possible to contribute to reducing the morbidity and mortality from COVID-19 to the maximum extent possible. And there are two tangible things we could do that would make a big difference. One is actually something we shouldn't have done. The other is something we should have done.

 1. Do not bring 600 students into poorly ventilated classrooms for 168 hours each when you are only testing once per week and you are not telling faculty if someone in their class tested positive. This actually maximizes the potential negative health impact that BUSPH might have on the community. 

2. Instead of spending the immense testing resources on students who could easily avoid the need for such testing by taking classes online, why not use these facilities to test community members in order to try to put a dent in the spread of COVID-19 in Boston and in other vulnerable communities. Our students would gladly attend classes virtually if they knew that the resources saved would be used to help decrease the prevalence of COVID-19 in Boston and other high-risk communities. 

It bothers me that our focus has been so honed in on a single goal - offering hybrid classes - that hours and hours of time and human resources and hundreds of thousands of dollars were needlessly spent for no good reason. Tremendous anxiety and mental anguish was caused to so many faculty and staff for no reason. We should have simply followed what Harvard and Tufts did: put all of our human resources into offering the best possible virtual education that we can, and spending the money saved on community COVID testing.

I feel that the decision to hold in-person classes is a demonstration that in the complexities of financially-motivated admission/yield tactics, we have largely lost sight of our public health mission.