
College Opening Committees Should Implement Campus Level Pooled Covid Screening - JenniferRM
https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4834
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JenniferRM
I would argue that "the general public" paying a lot of attention to covid
isn't THAT important.

The public's inattention on the topic of covid might almost be a blessing for
key policy makers whose jurisdiction encompasses entire epidemiologically
dense networks of people.

There are very few "epidemiologically coherent entities" in the western
hemisphere that have the coordination capacity to solve covid, and "the ~328
million people in America" is not such an entity.

Sprawling metro areas (often crossing state boundaries) would need to form a
new layer of government, that rivals many states, that covers entire physical
metropolitan geographies, which we can't do quickly enough, so they might
become green zones later in the process, if ever?

Rural counties? Perhaps small cities with urban growth boundaries AND a single
municipal government? Incorporated towns with a single mayor. Possibly
universities (depending on their capacity for epidemiological isolation)?

University re-opening committees of non-commuter-campuses MIGHT have the
capacity and incentive to prevent their dorms from becoming plague zones. My
current best hope is that some examples of this will arise in the next month
or two at a small scale, and then (if we are lucky) they'll function as a
templates for scaled up versions of the same thing in 2021.

Zeph Landau's guest post on Scott Aaronson's blog is the best US-college-
centric policy document I know of regarding (1) the practical challenges
around pooled screening, and (2) how to navigate these challenges.

