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es-mentiras · 4 years

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I Can't Stop Watching Contagion | Folding Ideas

Coping with crisis in the real world by confronting it in fiction

[O]ne purpose of fiction is that it allows us a space to practice intense emotions and states without exposing us to the complexities or harms of those states in reality. ... Watching a disaster film in a disaster, particularly one as sociologically driven as Contagion, is an extension of this. Rather than practicing intense emotional states before they happen, this instinct of exposing ourselves to what we’re already experiencing, amplifying existing emotional states, it works as a form of emotional inoculation. I am scared and anxious and uncertain, and so I will make myself more scared and more anxious and more uncertain, because it’s still fiction, it’s still safe, it still has an end. It is bounded. Things will get bad, things will then get worse, people will die. The world is unfair, it is unbalanced, it is unjust, and catastrophe will bring out both the best and worst of all of us. And then it will end.

...

There is an escapism to a story about horrible things, because that story is complete. It is bounded. It provides a framework to horror that doesn’t exist in the real present. Our future is uncertain, beset on all sides by devils, and we can come out better or we can come out worse or we can die and none of us knows which it will be and we’re all screaming at those in power to make the moral choice, to choose better.

...

On one hand I am deeply privileged to be in a position where I am and can remain isolated. On the other hand I can’t even think about the other hand.

Disease does not have a narrative meaning, it does not have an eye for poetry or twists or closure. The only meaning is in how we respond. So I watch Contagion over and over and over again. Because I need to practice emotions, and I need to live in a bounded world, and I need to believe we can choose better.

full video transcript under the cut:

[video is Dan Olson of Folding ideas lying on his couch, staring unmoving into the camera. scenes from Contagion are projected over him.]

VOICEOVER: This video is not an essay, it is a raw nerve.

Contagion is a 2011 film directed by Steven Soderbergh, starring an ensemble cast including Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Kate Winslet. The film revolves around the origin, contraction, spread, and cure of the fictional MEV-1 virus, a highly contagious, aggressive, and fatal strain of hybrid bat and pig flu.

The initial patient, Beth Emhoff, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, contracts the virus in Macau after shaking hands with a casino chef who has recently handled an infected pig. She spreads the virus to several other people in the casino after they handle objects that she’s touched, such as gambling chips, a martini glass, and her cell phone. An important aspect of the film is that the fictional virus is highly transmissible via fomites, which are objects that an infected person has touched after touching their mouth or nose, coughing or sneezing on the object, or otherwise leaving infectious residue on an otherwise inert, non-biological object. A local waiter who handled her glass returns home, infecting members of his family before wandering into traffic in a fever-induced delirium where he is struck by a vehicle and killed. A Japanese businessman who shared chips with her returns to Tokyo where he falls ill rapidly, dying suddenly of a seizure on a crowded bus, infecting several bystanders who touch him or handrails that he touched. A Ukranian model who handled Beth’s phone flies to London where her symptoms also escalate rapidly while she transmits the disease to others via handling portfolios and riding in a cab.

Beth returns to America where she infects several people in Chicago, first her ex lover Jon who contracts it when they have sex while she is on layover, and a bartender at the airport who handles her credit card, before flying to Minneapolis where she infects the coworker who drives her home from the airport and her son Clark. A day or two later Beth’s husband, Mitch, played by Matt Damon, picks up Clark from school after Clark begins to exhibit a fever. While Beth and Mitch are talking in the kitchen Beth suddenly has a seizure. Mitch rushes her to the hospital, leaving Clark with a babysitter, but Beth’s condition continues to worsen, she fails to respond to treatment, and she dies. As a stunned Mitch is driving home he gets a call from the babysitter that Clark has possibly had a seizure and might not be breathing. Mitch tells her to call 911 immediately, but before anyone can get there Clark is already dead.

From there the story expands to encompass the doctors, politicians, reporters, hucksters, and ordinary people who are swept up in an all-encompassing pandemic that threatens to kill a quarter of the global population. The movie is an incredibly tense hundred minutes of society pushed to its breaking points, not as a fantastical disintegration into wastelands of leather-clad murder gangs or a zombie apocalypse, but one rooted in the historical reality of epidemics.

And I can’t stop watching it.

I have watched Contagion over fifteen times in the last two weeks. Several days I’ve just watched it on repeat two or three times. And I'm not alone. According to Netflix it is, at the time of writing, the second most watched thing in Canada. For weeks it has sat in the top ten.

Unlike many similar films, such as the 1995 film Outbreak starring Dustin Hoffman, the film is not about any one person, and there is no singular twist of victory. Rather it is an example of sociological storytelling. It’s about the systems and networks that these characters exist within, and how they both influence and are influenced by those systems, and what happens when those systems are placed under tremendous strain. Kate Winslet plays Dr. Erin Mears, a front line worker for the CDC who is sent to Wisconsin to track the transmission of the virus and contain its spread. Half way through the film she catches the virus herself, and then her condition worsens, and then she dies. It is unceremonious. It is not foreshadowed or paid off because it is not poetic, because pandemics are not poetic and don’t have a tight arc or an eye for narrative fulfillment. It doesn’t have meaning, the only meaning is in how we choose to respond.

Because this is sociological the movie doesn’t end when doctor Ally Hextall develops a vaccine. What would be the singular victory moment in most films is instead the beginning of a slow, painful march back to stability as first the vaccine needs to be mass produced, and then distributed to billions of people worldwide. It is a dangerous task that needs to be tightly controlled as it requires access to the isolated virus and thus is very slow to ramp up. The film trudges through the immense societal tension that is created when there is a cure, but it will take over a year to make and distribute enough for everyone, a situation that lays bare every societal privilege. Dr. Orantes, played by Marion Cotillard, is kidnapped and held ransom for the vaccine by Chinese villagers who are keenly aware that in the priority of global politics the poor, the rural, and the non-white are at the very back of the line. They are terrorists, but they’re not wrong, just desperate. They are at the back of the line, and the government throws them under the bus anyway. Despite the existence of a vaccine Mitch continues to keep his teenage daughter, Jory, under aggressive quarantine out of legitimate fear of the disease that has been amplified to paranoia by the trauma of losing Beth and Clark, the survivor’s guilt of being naturally immune, and the uncertainty of whether his daughter would share that immunity or not.

In December 2019 the coronavirus COVID-19 was identified by doctors in the city of Wuhan. Over the course of January and February the spread of the virus began to be identified in South Korea, Japan, and Italy and, gradually, most of the rest of the world. The disease itself is not exceptionally lethal when compared to epidemics such as the Black Death in the mid 14th century or the spread of Smallpox through indigenous populations following contact with Europeans in the 16th and 17th centuries, but, first of all, “better than the black death” is a pretty bad standard, and second on a global scale a mortality rate of 1-2 percent in an unchecked pandemic still means, in absolute terms, millions and millions of preventable deaths. This is compounded by the strain that mass illness, even one that is not terribly lethal, inherently places on an already strained society: crowding healthcare systems, disrupting infrastructure, and forcing people to choose between working while ill, and thus infecting others, or losing their jobs. A low mortality rate is often the result of adequate care, but the quality of care goes down as the number of severely ill goes up, as the number of infected healthcare workers reduces the number of people qualified and capable of administering that care. This, in turn, has a knock on effect where unrelated illnesses and injuries become more dangerous. A heart attack or broken leg that would be easily managed under normal circumstances becomes that much worse when there aren’t enough people to help, aren’t enough beds to go around. The more people who are exposed, the more need to roll the dice against that one to two percent, and the more are going to lose.

As of March 2020 most of the United States and Canada have entered a period of uncertain quarantining. Non-essential businesses are closed, events are canceled, workers are being sent home or laid off, borders are being shut down,and the economy is in freefall. Every existing societal problem, from income inequality to housing inequality to healthcare, is being stressed and amplified by not only the virus but the complicity of our governments. News comes out hourly about warnings the people in charge received months ago, and the ways in which they were either ignored or exploited for personal gain. Several American politicians were briefed on the security risks of COVID 19 in late January, and then took to Twitter to decry public fear as a partisan hoax while they dumped their stocks in preparation for a crash that they knew was coming. People in government, their corporate donors, and their pundit allies are getting anxious, debating breaking quarantine and telling everyone to go back to work and roll the dice on whether or not they’re going to die for the economy. We are standing on the precipice of a very uncertain future, and we don’t know if that future is days, weeks, months, or years away. This could be the new normal for a very long time.

So why do I keep watching Contagion?

A dimension of narrative that I like to bring up pretty regularly is the idea that one purpose of fiction is that it allows us a space to practice intense emotions and states without exposing us to the complexities or harms of those states in reality. This is typically in the context of the fanciful: reckless stunts, wild sex, gun fights, or general risky behaviour. We talked about this with Fifty Shades and the idea of non-consent as a fantasy subject.

Watching a disaster film in a disaster, particularly one as sociologically driven as Contagion, is an extension of this. Rather than practicing intense emotional states before they happen, this instinct of exposing ourselves to what we’re already experiencing, amplifying existing emotional states, it works as a form of emotional inoculation. I am scared and anxious and uncertain, and so I will make myself more scared and more anxious and more uncertain, because it’s still fiction, it’s still safe, it still has an end. It is bounded. Things will get bad, things will then get worse, people will die. The world is unfair, it is unbalanced, it is unjust, and catastrophe will bring out both the best and worst of all of us. And then it will end.

Is there looting, and arson, and murder? Yeah. But it is, ultimately, out of the ordinary. People get paranoid, people get desperate, they riot under stress, but even when food supply lines break down, the world isn’t summarily turned over to those with the bullets and the willingness to use them. There is no Mad Max dystopia, no Fallout post-apocalypse, because at the end of the day humans are pro-social. The cooperative survive.

In 1349, in the midst of the black death, it must have looked like the end of the world. Entire households, entire villages, dying a gross, horrifying, pain ful death, month after month after month. Then for generations, every year wondering if this was the year the plague returned. Was this the year there would be no one left to bury the dead. But people survived. The working class, who bore the brunt of the disease and saw the bodies of their families, clans, and communities piled like cord wood, fought back against the aristocrats who isolated themselves in their towers and remote estates. It was messy, and bloody, and it took decades, but in the end serfdom was abolished. Europe lost upwards of sixty percent of its population over the course of five years, but it wasn’t Armageddon. Things kept going, people kept going, and Europe would go on to be absolute bastards to the rest of the world.

The disease in Contagion is not unrealistic, real diseases have been as deadly, or worse, but it is dramatic. It moves very, very quickly, is highly contagious, and kills a huge number of those who are infected. In reality this aggressiveness would kinda work against the disease, and, morbidly, would help responders limit the spread. It moves so fast and kills so quickly that there’s little question of who has it, and within a couple days everyone who has it is either recovered or dead. This was the aspect of the SARS epidemic that allowed response teams to effectively quarantine the virus where it burnt itself out. That said it’s not impossible that something could spread so aggressively, be so incredibly contagious, that it could spread like wildfire and become almost impossible to contain before anyone even knows what’s going on. But it’s undeniably dramatic and emotionally effective.

48 hours. We can contain two days in our head. A situation where things will get materially worse literally tomorrow or the day after if nothing is done right this second, that’s a comprehensible timeline. Forty eight hours is short enough that in a catastrophe, driven by adrenaline and stress and necessity, you can stay awake that long without even realizing it. COVID’s life cycle is closer to a month. By the time you get sick you’ve already been sick for two weeks, and now you’re in for hell for another two to four weeks. It’s just past the range where it really feels real. Two weeks isn’t long, but it’s still over the line into the indeterminate “future”.

This problem extends in both directions. There’ s only so much space in the mind for time. As the news ramps up, as things get worse, the present crowds out history. The distance between the irrelevant past and the now contracts. ’Days ago’ becomes distant. ‘Months ago’ is irrelevant. Years ago is ancient. By evening even earlier the same day is suspect in its relevance to the Now. We remember January but it has as much presence in the mind as childhood. Our lives become superliminal, displaced from time, as we wrestle with our own minds and how they try to process the chronology of our own existence. By Sunday, Friday no longer feels real, and yet every day’s news is the consequence of decisions made fourteen, twenty one, twenty eight days ago. Today’s responses won’t yield results until well into next month. This flaw in our meat is a gap into which charlatans, hucksters, and conmen can drive a wedge and pry us open, and pry they will try.

When I first saw Contagion in 2012 I thought the weakest element was what I considered at the time to be the demonization of online media. Jude Law’s character plays an online pundit and conspiracy theorist who preaches to an audience of millions about an herbal tincture of forsythia that he claims is the cure, a cure he just-so-happens to be selling. It is, in 2020, the realest element of the film. Herbal cures, hydrogen water, steam treatment, teas, magnets, suspensions of silver, tinctures, and tonics. We’ve got pastors standing at the pulpit telling their congregation it's all a hoax, that there’s no reason to suspend services, that their nebulous enemies are just trying to shut them down. We now live in a world where the US president told people based on a rumour that chloroquine, a drug used for treating malaria and lupus, was the cure, so a man in Arizona ate a packet of fish tank cleaner containing the chemical. He’s dead now. And that is, again, all part of it.

And I am in an absolute haze. My daily life has not much been impacted, overtly. I’m already an agoraphobic shut-in wh o worksonline and has a bad sleep schedule. But it’s too much. I’m tired all the time. I can’t pay attention to the news and Ican’t not pay attention to the news. Working is difficult. I have a long history of respiratory illness. I am at risk.

On one hand I am deeply privileged to be in a position where I am and can remain isolated. On the other hand I can’t even think about the other hand.

[end transcript]

#i've seen a lot of posts like ''haha time to distract myself from irl horror with fictional horror!'' and i just wanted y'all to know #that that's a totally reasonable response to have; you're not weird for doing that. so this isn't precisely tma but i think it fits anyway #covid 19 #coronavirus #tma #horror #contagion

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arrghigiveup · 4 years

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Speech made by Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong today to announce the new restrictions for Singapore. We’re finally going under lock down like the rest of the world.

Transcript:

My fellow Singaporeans Good afternoon

I last spoke to you on COVID-19 three weeks ago.

Since then, the number of new cases daily has begun to rise. We used to see fewer than 10 new cases a day. But in the last two weeks, despite our best efforts, we have routinely had more than 50 new cases daily.

Initially, many of the new cases were imported from overseas, mostly returning Singaporeans. Then last week, we began to have more local cases. Furthermore, despite our good contact tracing, for nearly half of these cases, we do not know where or from whom the person caught the virus. This suggests that there are more people out there who are infected, but who have not been identified. And they may be passing the virus unknowingly to others.

In the last few days, we have also discovered several clusters at foreign worker dormitories, and one at a nursing home. These are very worrying, because large numbers of people live together in dormitories and nursing homes. A single case can quickly lead to a large cluster. Furthermore, nursing home patients are mostly old and frail, and very vulnerable to the virus.

As the situation developed over the past weeks, we have tightened our safe-distancing measures progressively. Singaporeans have responded well, calmly and responsibly, and made adjustments in their daily lives. By working together, we have kept the outbreak under control.

But looking at the trend, I am worried that unless we take further steps, things will gradually get worse, or another big cluster may push things over the edge. I discussed this with the Multi-Ministry Task Force (MTF). We have decided that instead of tightening incrementally over the next few weeks, we should make a decisive move now to pre-empt escalating infections. We will therefore impose significantly stricter measures. This is like a circuit breaker. It will help reduce the risk of a big outbreak occurring. And it should also help to gradually bring our numbers down. This in turn will allow us to relax some of the measures. This circuit breaker will apply for one month, in the first instance. The Task Force is holding a Press Conference immediately after I finish speaking to you to explain the details. But let me give you the key points.

Continuation under the cut

First, we will close most workplaces, except for essential services and key economic sectors. Food establishments, markets and supermarkets, clinics, hospitals, utilities, transport and key banking services will remain open. These are essential services. We also should not disrupt economic sectors that are strategic, or form part of a global supply chain. People working in these industries can continue to go to work, with safe-distancing measures in place. But most other work premises must close. If the person can work from home, he should do so — telecommute. But others will not be able to, including foreign workers on construction sites and in shipyards. These workers live in dormitories, and we will make arrangements to look after them. The closure of work places will take effect from next Tuesday. This will ensure that most of our workforce stay at home and limit their physical interaction to as few people as possible.

Second, we will also move to full home-based learning in our schools and Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs). We started with one day of home-based learning this week. This has gone smoothly, with some teething issues being resolved. The Ministry of Education (MOE) will work with the schools to implement full home-based learning starting next Wednesday. All preschool and student care centres will also be closed, but will provide limited services for children of parents who have to continue working and are unable to make alternative care arrangements.

Third, we will tighten restrictions on movements and gatherings of people. It boils down to three things. First, stay at home, as much as possible. Second, avoid socialising with others beyond your own household. Gatherings should be confined to your household. Avoid visiting even your extended families who are not staying with you, especially if they are elderly or vulnerable. Third, go out only to do essential things. For work, if you are in essential services or key economic sectors. To buy food at markets, or to take out from restaurants and hawker centres. Or to exercise in the neighbourhood park, keeping a safe distance from others.

The spirit of these measures is to get all of us to minimise physical contact. If we do not go out, if we avoid contact with others, then the virus will not be able to spread. It is as simple as that.I know this is very hard to do. As a practical matter, in places like hawker centres and wet markets, it is difficult to practise safe-distancing, especially on the weekends when it is crowded. It will help if we all adjust our habits. For example, do our marketing on weekdays instead of weekends to avoid the crowd. We will also deploy more Safe-Distancing Ambassadors to encourage people not to crowd together, so please cooperate with them.

Safe-distancing is also hard for a psychological and emotional reason: it goes very much against our human instincts. It is in our nature to want to socialise, to be close to those we are talking to, to take comfort in the warmth and company of friends and family. I fully understand this. But I hope you will also understand why we all have to take social distancing extremely seriously in this period. This is the only effective way to slow the transmission of the virus, so that we gradually bring our numbers down. It is also the best way to keep our families safe, and particularly to protect our seniors from getting ill. So please bear with the painful adjustments that we have to make. Each and every one of us can, and must do our part, to keep everyone in Singapore safe from COVID-19.

Let me now say a few words in Malay and Mandarin.

[repetition of the above in Bahasa Melayu and Mandarin. Full transcript available Here]

I decided to speak to you directly today to explain why we need to make this major move now, but also to reassure you that things will be alright. Essential services will continue running so that all of us can cope in this new situation, as we batten down to fight this virus. We have enough food supplies to last us through this period and beyond. You can still shop at the supermarket or wet market. And you need not rush to stock up for weeks at a time. You can still buy food from your favourite hawker centres or coffee shop, though you will have to take out and eat at home with your own family, rather than hang out and eat outside with your friends.

I know these measures will impact our workers and businesses severely. This is already a very difficult time for them. We will help them come through this. On Monday in Parliament, DPM Heng Swee Keat will announce additional support for households and businesses, over and above what was provided in the two earlier Budgets. We will also legislate to require landlords to pass on property tax rebates fully to their tenants. We will also pass new temporary legislation to let businesses and individuals defer certain contractual obligations for a period, such as paying rent, repaying loans, or completing work.

Besides implementing this circuit breaker, we also are rethinking our advice on face masks.

Up to now, the Government has advised the general public that you only need to wear a mask if you are not feeling well, and this is to protect others from your germs. This was based on scientific advice and guidelines from the World Health Organization (WHO). We also did not have community spread in Singapore then, so it was very unlikely for you to run into anyone with COVID-19 on the street, much less be infected by them. Nevertheless, the Government gave each household four surgical masks, to use in case you got sick, and to give people peace of mind.

Now, the situation is changing. We now think there are some cases out there in the community going undetected, though probably still not that many. We also now have evidence that an infected person can show no symptoms, and yet still pass on the virus to others. This is why the WHO is reviewing the issue of face masks, and so is the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Therefore, we will no longer discourage people from wearing masks. Wearing a mask may help to protect others, in case you have the virus but do not know it. This is so that you keep your droplets to yourself — when you sneeze or speak or cough. It can also protect yourself a little better, especially if you are elderly, or vulnerable because of pre-existing health conditions.

We still want to conserve surgical masks for the people who really need them – healthcare workers in clinics and hospitals. For everyone else, in a community setting, alternatives like reusable masks will give some added protection. So from this Sunday, the Government will distribute reusable masks to all households. Meanwhile, many community groups have been making and distributing reusable masks for the elderly and vulnerable. I applaud these efforts. They show our community spirit and mutual care.

But remember, mask or no mask, you still need to wash your hands, and keep a safe distance away from other people.

The next few weeks will be pivotal. Even after these stepped-up measures, the number of cases will quite likely still go up in the next few days. They can be cases who have already been infected earlier, except they have not yet shown symptoms, or not yet gone to see their doctor. But if we keep our efforts up, within a few weeks we should be able to bring the numbers under control, bring the numbers down, and get into a more sustainable position.

We will keep on doing our utmost to protect every Singaporean from COVID-19. Many people have been working tirelessly for the past two months — our nurses and doctors, our contact tracers and healthcare staff. We thank them all for their efforts and sacrifices. Now we are all enlisted to join them on the frontline.

It will be a long fight. But if any country can see this through, it is Singapore. We have the resources. We have the determination. We are united. By helping one another through this, we will prevail, and emerge stronger.

Thank you.

#Singapore #coronavirus #covid-19 #sorry this is not my usual blog content but it's important #also is it weird to be proud of a speech?#I am still pissed off at my govt for reasons unrelated to this #but Look! At this! Beautiful piece! of Risk communication!#This is the kind of speech we've been getting all this while #And it's just #So well written #If nothing else #my govt knows how to do risk communication lmao

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news-monda · 4 years

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frenchkisst · 4 years

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COVID-19 will hit colleges when students arrive for fall semester. So why open at all? Money is a factor.

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Colleges that are reopening campuses this fall know they’re bringing a higher risk of coronavirus to their community.

The questions aren’t really about if or when, but about how bad outbreaks could be — and whether having an in-person experience for students is worth the cost. With so much at stake, some students, parents and faculty are asking: Why take the risk at all?

In many cases, it comes back to money.

For months, colleges and experts have warned another semester of remote courses could have disastrous effects on student enrollment and college budgets.

Colleges already lost billions of dollars when they pivoted to digital instruction in the spring, in the form of refunded room-and-board payments and expensive technology for online courses. Another semester — or year — of online courses could be even worse, especially for universities without large endowments.

For any institution, online instruction also means no money from dorm rooms, dining halls or campus bookstores. Athletic proceeds have also dried up as the NCAA has canceled championship competitions for the fall and conferences have canceled fall seasons. And that doesn’t even account for students ditching class altogether.

A survey by SimpsonScarborough, a higher education research firm, in July found roughly 40% of incoming first-year college students said they were likely or highly likely to change where they attended school because of the COVID-19 outbreak. And returning college students, who complained of paying full tuition for lackluster classes in the spring, have weighed deferring future enrollment until campuses reopen. In response, some colleges have offered discounts on tuition or waived students’ fees tied to in-person activities. Others have faced students’ ire for declining to do so.

Already, colleges have reported cases of COVID-19, putting pressure on their reopening plans — and additional pressure on their finances. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has seen several outbreaks since starting classes last week. On Monday, the dean of the university’s Gillings School of Global Public Health called on UNC to put all courses online.

Story continues

«The number of clusters is growing and soon could become out of control,» Dean Barbara Rimer wrote on the website of the public health school. «After only one week of campus operations, with growing numbers of clusters and insufficient control over the off-campus behavior of students (and others), it is time for an off-ramp. We have tried to make this work, but it is not working.»

Money, Rimer wrote, factored into the university’s reopening plans, but finances will take a hit no matter what decision leaders make.

«People do not like to talk about money in higher ed, as though we should be above money, but we cannot pay scholarships, salaries, resources and building maintenance without money,» she wrote.

Desperate for cash: Will COVID-19 encourage colleges to let secret donors gain influence?

The American Council on Education, a higher education trade group, put colleges’ losses in the spring at $46.6 billion in increased student financial aid and lost revenue. The same group, joined by other college associations, told Congress it would cost at least $73.8 billion in new costs to reopen campuses.

«The sad fact is that many colleges are racing toward a financial cliff,” said Terry Hartle, a senior vice president with ACE.

Finances are likely playing some role in a university’s decision to reopen, said Kevin McClure, a professor of higher education at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Even a dorm that is half-full might be better for a college’s bottom line than one that is completely empty. In some cases, he said, a college may be influenced to reopen by its board — members of which are often political appointees. (States led by conservative leaders have pushed to reopen their businesses and schools more quickly than their liberal peers.)

Lake Superior State University freshman Taylor Owrutsky (left) of Round Lake, Illinois, talks with junior Katherine Davis about theatre club as students and family walk around campus during a move-in day for students on Aug. 5. «I’m just cautious so I have a bunch of masks,» Owrutsky said.

No matter what approach a college takes, the semester’s financial picture is unlikely to leave them “significantly richer,” McClure said. Colleges that are bringing students back to campus are doing so in a limited capacity, with fewer students and with some classes held remotely.

Small public regional colleges and less selective private universities may be facing mergers or closures. Even larger universities may have to contend with furloughs, layoffs or other painful budget cuts.

“Even as a scholar and someone who believes that going online is the right decision,” McClure said, “I know that in many cases, shifting to online means that institutions are going to be in a very tough spot financially. And that will mean jobs are on the line.”

Prepare for plans to change

Hundreds of colleges are pushing ahead with in-person classes, banking on tens of thousands of COVID-19 tests, plexiglass in classrooms, university-branded face masks, and the collective goodwill of students to comply with party bans to prevent massive outbreaks. Administrators at these institutions say their students are hungry for in-person instruction, even at a reduced capacity.

High-risk students ask: Why can’t all college courses be offered online?

The University of Notre Dame in Indiana brought its students back to campus last week. The campus already has a few dozen cases, despite a massive pre-move-in testing campaign, but the university’s provost, Marie Lynn Miranda, said the response has been heartening.

“Our students are so happy to be back,” Miranda said. “The extent to which they value that in-person educational experience is apparent. And it’s apparent with our faculty too.”

Some faculty at Notre Dame had petitioned the university to allow professors to decide if they wanted to teach in person or remotely. The university has made accommodations, a spokesperson said.

Whatever plan a college chooses, it may not last, said Chris Marsicano, a professor at Davidson College who leads The College Crisis Initiative, a project tracking college responses to coronavirus. Many schools had planned to reopen in the fall, but have since walked back those plans.

Students should get used to the uncertainty, he said.

Colleges likely will have to change their plans again during the middle of the semester. That may mean the easing of some restrictions, such as limits on social gatherings, but it could mean more digital instruction. He said colleges will try to avoid reconvening all their students to mix whatever they may be carrying only to send them back out across the country.

“They need to be ready to have online classes from their dorm room and all their meals delivered in boxes,” he said. “That’s sort of the worst-case scenario, but once you get on campus, most schools are not going to shut it all down.”

Another outbreak: 23 Oklahoma State sorority members test positive for COVID-19; house under quarantine

If people die, ‘I don’t know how that helps you’

Another cost has pushed some universities to make the opposite decision: the fear that reopening campus will cost a faculty member, staffer or student their life.

For Michael Sorrell, president of Paul Quinn College, a historically Black university in Texas, the decision to skip in-person classes in favor of an online one, “wasn’t that hard of a decision.” Paul Quinn made the call back in July. Sorrell, who previously worked in crisis management, said preventing coronavirus from spreading while offering face-to-face learning would require heavy policing of students’ behavior, especially off-campus.

He thought that was unrealistic, and he didn’t want to subject his students to heavy monitoring. He is also aware tough times are ahead. Paul Quinn planned for lower enrollment figures, and the university also reduced tuition for the fall semester. He said he understands for some universities the coronavirus is an existential threat financially, though he wonders about the long-term consequences.

“I don’t know how your students and staff look at you the same once they figured out that you didn’t put their safety at the top of your decision making,” he said. “If a bunch of students get sick, and a bunch of your staff dies, I don’t know how that helps you fight a fight another day.”

The calculus was similar for Suzanne Elise Walsh, the president of Bennett College, an all-women historically Black college. The college, like most small, private institutions, relies heavily on tuition money to function. It’s also in the middle of updating its accreditation, which also takes a lot of time and money.

But Walsh said she also had to consider how the virus is disproportionately affecting people of color. The decision was primarily focused on the health of the community, she said.

“That doesn’t mean finances aren’t an issue,” Walsh said.

Elsewhere in the country, some student groups — especially groups of graduate students, who often teach large, in-person classes — have led protests and petitions imploring their universities to adopt more online options.

A persons hold a sign reading, «In person classes are murder» during a protest Aug. 10 on the University of Iowa campus in Iowa City, Iowa.

“The primary motivator for insisting that classes take place in person is financial,” said Desirae Embree, a graduate student at Texas A&M University.

“Would a long-term budget crunch hurt a lot of us? Yes,» she said. «But also the more immediate danger is our short-term and long-term health if we do get this virus.”

10,000 gallons of hand sanitizer

Even before students arrived on campus, Notre Dame had mailed thousands of them coronavirus tests to take at home. Of the nearly 12,000 who took tests, less than 1%, or about 33 students, tested positive for the virus.

The university also installed new video technology in classrooms, replaced dozens of electric hand dryers with traditional paper towel dispensers to keep coronavirus out of the air, and stocked roughly 10,000 gallons of hand sanitizer.

Classes began last Monday at the Indiana campus, and as of Friday, there had been 44 confirmed cases since move-in started August 3. University protocol calls for people infected with coronavirus to isolate.

Miranda, the provost, said the university believes the in-person experience was necessary for its students’ education. Switching to digital instruction in the spring, she said, “was not a particularly good experience for our low-income and low-resource students.” They may lack internet and a safe home environment for studying.

Fighting to stay in school: Low-income students work to defy college dropout stats during COVID-19

In-person instruction also provides more cover for international students, she said, whose ability to study in the country has been threatened by proposed rule changes by President Donald Trump’s administration.

Miranda said she is aware of the criticism that financial concerns may be driving the university’s actions.

That desire to continue Notre Dame’s educational mission fueled its reopening decision, Miranda said, though it did have financial implications.

“Education is critical to our democracy,” she said. “When we can make it happen, we should make it happen.”

Other universities have taken a similar stance. Boston University is pushing ahead with its plans to reopen in the fall while facing demonstrations from its community to move all classes online. In a statement, university leaders said a residential education was key to the university’s mission. It also said students were eager to return to campus and that the college already had suffered a “significant financial impact.”

“We must minimize additional negative impacts on the University’s overall operational and financial viability so that we may emerge from this period financially sound,” the university said.

Texas A&M University is also planning to start in-person instruction, along with some online courses. The university has taken some safety measures like increased cleaning or pushing for everyone to wear a mask, said Embree, the graduate student in Texas, but it feels like putting a “Band-Aid on a geyser.”

“We have no idea what’s going to happen when all the students come back,” she said.

She still has questions about details such as what kind of filtration system would be used in the classrooms. And it’s unclear to her, she said, what the university plans to do to help graduate students who fall behind in their studies or need emergency financial aid, or how it plans to enforce its social distancing orders.

A letter asking that all graduate students be able to teach online and requesting hazard pay for those who teach in person had been endorsed by nearly 500 graduate students as of Friday. The university said last week leaders were confident they were “doing everything we can to provide the best education as safely as possible.”

Embree worries cases will shoot up when students return, and local hospitals won’t be able to handle the surge. And she fears students who do come to A&M may later return to their hometowns and spread the virus there.

“People will die,” she said. “And then the university will shut down and go completely online.”

Education coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation does not provide editorial input.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: COVID cases at college: Why reopen fall semester? Money from tuition

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