Okay Californians – let’s stop the spread of COVID-19. Finally, there is an app (CA Notify) that tells you when you’ve been exposed without doing contact tracing. This system augments the contact tracing process by notifying people you’ve been in contact with – even those you don’t know. By using your cell phone (Android or iPhone), the app simply notifies people that an anonymous person they were in close contact with has tested positive for COVID-19. CA Notify doesn’t know the identities or contact information of the individuals.
If you were unknowingly exposed to COVID-19, this app will notify you. Your privacy remains intact because the app doesn’t know your identity or your contact information. It’s ideal for those who want to protect their privacy because your location is not tracked and they don’t have information about the people you meet. The best part, they contact people you don’t know – like a salesperson or receptionist that you talked to. It’s more efficient than contact tracing because you most likely don’t have names and phone numbers of every person you see.
If a person tests positive for COVID-19, they’ll receive an anonymous verification code. They’ll also receive resources to quickly get tested and the medical care needed to prevent exposing others to COVID-19. You won’t get the name of the person, the location, or any details.
This app is free and it’s available for teens (ages 13-17) and all adults. I just signed up for this because I want to know if I’ve been exposed to anyone who has tested positive for COVID-19. This is an easy way for me to do my part to protect others, and myself.
Okay Californians – let’s stop the spread of COVID-19. Finally, there is an app (CA Notify) that tells you when you’ve been exposed without doing contact tracing. This system augments the contact tracing process by notifying people you’ve been in contact with – even those you don’t know. By using your cell phone (Android or iPhone), the app simply notifies people that an anonymous person they were in close contact with has tested positive for COVID-19. CA Notify doesn’t know the identities or contact information of the individuals.
If you were unknowingly exposed to COVID-19, this app will notify you. Your privacy remains intact because the app doesn’t know your identity or your contact information. It’s ideal for those who want to protect their privacy because your location is not tracked and they don’t have information about the people you meet. The best part, they contact people you don’t know – like a salesperson or receptionist that you talked to. It’s more efficient than contact tracing because you most likely don’t have names and phone numbers of every person you see.
If a person tests positive for COVID-19, they’ll receive an anonymous verification code. They’ll also receive resources to quickly get tested and the medical care needed to prevent exposing others to COVID-19. You won’t get the name of the person, the location, or any details.
This app is free and it’s available for teens (ages 13-17) and all adults. I just signed up for this because I want to know if I’ve been exposed to anyone who has tested positive for COVID-19. This is an easy way for me to do my part to protect others, and myself.
As we approach the end of fall semester, college students across the nation are pushing to extend the Pass/Fail grading system they all received last spring. But, most colleges aren’t allowing it. Each college has set up their pandemic grading protocols – albeit by the seat of their pants – to deal with student issues. Some colleges allow students to choose between grades and pass/fail, but the problem is WHEN they allow students to make this decision. If the students choose this at the beginning of the term, that would be more fair than allowing students to choose just before finals. In other words, if a student is not doing well in a class, should they be able to opt for a Pass instead of a C?
When students have pass/fail marks on their transcripts instead of grades, it doesn’t work to their benefit when it comes to grad school. Admissions officers are going to prefer a transcript with real grades to one that is riddled with passes or no-pass/fails. If students are really suffering because of COVID-related issues, they can always discuss their circumstances in an essay or interview.
Even at the high school level, most students are receiving grades this term. High school students face the same dilemma as college students when it comes to competing to get into selective colleges. If their transcript shows stellar grades, the students will be more likely to impress admissions officers than students with a transcript filled with passes. So if a student is getting all A’s in their classes, a transcript with passes will make them appear to be average A-C students. Not good.
Spring 2019 and Fall 2020 have already set students back because of the chaos that ensued during the transition to online classes last fall and the fact that online classes just don’t offer the same learning experience that face-to-face classes do. Students who get grades will do much better than students who get passes.
I wish the experts didn’t warn us that the coronavirus only affects old and sick people because young and healthy people still believe that they’re somehow immune. Over the past 2 weeks, college campuses are facing high infection rates among the 18-22 year old students who just arrived on campus. But the most alarming news is that a third of the college athletes (Big Ten Conference) who tested positive for COVID-19 have potentially dangerous inflammation of their heart muscle.
MRI scans showed that these athletes have myocarditis, an inflammation that can be deadly if not treated. 30-35 percent of these athletes have inflamed hearts. Some football teams have pushed back and postponed the season, while others are forging forward with modified seasons.
Why is this not headline news? These athletic institutions are BIG MONEY MAKERS and nearly a third of them wouldn’t report the number of student athletes who tested positive for COVID-19. Many also wouldn’t divulge their coronavirus protocols for athletes. Student athletes shouldn’t be required to put themselves in vulnerable positions by playing sports amid a pandemic. This is just wrong on so many levels.
This virus is alive and spreading. Thinking that it’s just going to go away in different regions while the rest of the states and countries continue to see new outbreaks is naïve. It surprises me that intelligent people think that they can gather in groups smaller than 10 and that they’re safe. Seriously? Just meeting with ONE PERSON is not safe today. You don’t know who that person has been with during the last 2 weeks (girlfriends, coworkers, teachers), what surfaces they have touched (grocery stores, gas stations, door knobs), if they are asymptomatic, or if they may have a false-negative coronavirus test result. Take-away message: YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE THEY’VE BEEN!
The University of Arizona just analyzed student dorm sewage on campus and found one dorm tested positive. They tested the 311 students who lived and worked in the dorm, and found 2 asymptomatic students. These students were quarantined. Had the university not stepped up their proactive analysis of student sewage, the students could have spread the virus all over campus.
Colleges are opening up across the United States with great intentions of keeping students safe. They expect students to follow an honor code with rules about the numbers of people they party with and the 6-foot distance to keep between themselves. I wrote a blog about why college students’ prefrontal cortexes aren’t fully developed until age 25 so they don’t have the reasoning skills they need to make smart decisions. When college students engage with roommates, classmates, professors, and staff on campus, and then they visit friends in the local community, travel home to see family for holidays, and zigzag their way through public transportation and on airlines, they may become the reason that we see a huge rise in COVID cases and death this fall and winter.
The “rules” that everyone loosely considers when they’re out in public are just general rules. The 6-foot rule is for people who are not breathing hard. In other words, they’re not walking or running, they’re not exercising, and they’re not laughing or talking loudly. My daughter Nicole (an ER doc) says that the safe distance is really 10 feet, not 6 feet.
I find it ridiculous that it’s okay to gather with less than 50, 25, or even 10 people. Say one of those people is asymptomatic or has been tested but had a false negative reading, that person could most certainly infect the other 49, 24, or 9 people in that “safe group.” As long as we are circulating with anybody outside of our households, we are part of the problem. We are all spreading the coronavirus if we have contact with other people. Period.
Hindsight is 20/20, and if I would have known what I know today and had the influence to do this, I would have shut down the entire world for 2-4 weeks. If everyone would have stayed home and only hospitals, law enforcement/first responders, and absolutely essential businesses stayed open (with daily testing and quarantining), we could have stopped the coronavirus from spreading. We would all be back to work and school today, and we would have bounced back economically – we now know we can survive a 2-4 week shut down.
This has been an enlightening year for me. As the eternal optimist, I thought that we would have the coronavirus under control in a few weeks, or months. But what I’ve learned is that when we don’t understand a threat like a pandemic, we get scared. This fear drives our next steps that make us think we’re invisible; we won’t get the coronavirus so we’ll forge forward! – or – we think we’re going to die; we need to protect ourselves by staying away from everyone. Then, we look for leaders or information that support our beliefs. By hearing what we want to hear, we’re not making sound decisions about how to stop the spread of COVID-19. So today, decisions are being made for political and financial reasons, not for humanitarian reasons.
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This is clearly the most unconventional and obstructive high school semester in our history since WWII. Everyone has been affected by school closures, shelter-in-place (SIP) orders, unemployment, and/or COVID-19. You all have your stories and the college admissions departments want to hear them. Schools will submit information about changes in class instruction, final exams, and grades or pass/fail as a result of SIP. Now students will have their opportunity to share their experiences on the college applications.
The Coalition for College Application has added a question to its application about how the coronavirus pandemic has affected their education. It will also have optional checkbox-style questions that describe how COVID-19 impacted their ability to do schoolwork, parents’ unemployment or employment as an essential worker, and family/friends who have gotten sick or died.
The Common Application has also added an optional question about students’ COVID-19 experiences. Here is the prompt:
“Community disruptions such as COVID-19 and natural disasters can have deep and long-lasting impacts. If you need it, this space is yours to describe those impacts. Colleges care about the effects on your health and well-being, safety, family circumstances, future plans, and education, including access to reliable technology and quiet study spaces. Do you wish to share anything on this topic? Y/N Please use this space to describe how these events have impacted you.”
This is a good time for high school seniors to reflect on how SIP and the coronavirus pandemic has changed their perspective on life. This essay will help college admissions officers learn more about them. Need help getting started? Click here for a free session.