Re: VPA's decision

So great to see everyone here again. Happy New Year!

Anthony: I also applaud SFU's commitment to experimentation! It's the purest form of science.

Nicky: I'm afraid "transmission has been observed to occur in households and unstructured social settings... structured settings... have a lower risk for transmission" is a useless statement to the point of being a lie by omission. (a) BC contact tracing has always focused on households and social settings. Data on transmission in BC schools and universities does not exist - remember last fall when public health specifically refused to follow up on schools/uni exposures. Other jurisdictions have found plenty of school/uni transmission just by looking. (b) "lower" risk is probably true, just like $50 is less than $100. We simply don't know how low the risk is in BC universities really is.

"The recommendations of public health and Orders of the Provincial Health Officer are based on careful and ongoing assessment of the factors that increase risk and the interventions that are known to effectively reduce risk" is empirically false. BC's public health assessments and communication often directly contradict public health authorities in Canada, the UK, Taiwan, and others. That's a lot of experts lined up on the other side!

Lyn: What I'm comforted by is the fact that protecting oneself from Covid has never been easier. High-quality well-fitted N95 masks are now cheaply available, and maybe you can get your department to buy some in bulk. Not only do they block transmission even for hours of exposure, they are easier to talk through than cloth masks (i.e., better for teaching). Third vaccine doses offer 75% (UK data) to 88% (Ontario data) protection.

As far as I can tell with my dinky CO2 monitor, SFU's ventilation improvements are real (though I would like to see even more aggressive upgrades -- if you do as well, lobby for them!). Buy your own monitor and bring it to class. A French expert group recommends a CO2 concentration below 800 for teaching (masked) and below 600 for eating/drinking. If my classroom exceeds a concentration of 1000, I'm prepared to cancel class. (This hasn't happened yet but I think it would if a classroom was fully occupied.) Build a Corsi box (for ~$100) if you need to be around others in a small room.

Suzanne: hope you and your family will be better soon! According to the experts, PCR tests tend to pick up virus material for weeks after the infection, so you will probably have some certainty soon.

And the most accurate data on metro Vancouver infections is here. Already on the way down, but still about 50x as much virus as we had in early November.

Good luck!

Lucas

From: Suzanne Norman <snorman@sfu.ca>
Sent: January 12, 2022 2:10:40 PM
To: Lyn Bartram
Cc: Nicky Didicher; academic-discussion@sfu.ca; SFU Faculty Association
Subject: Re: VPA's decision

My son contracted Covid from a high school peer this week. Contrary to Dr. Henry’s statements, there is no cohort based learning, no increase in spacing in classrooms, no controlled movement between classes, and teachers cannot enforce masking (not that they should have to). My son and I are now both home with COVID. As are several of his friends.

Universities are worse.

Additionally, finding a rapid test anywhere has proven to be like finding hen’s teeth. Despite the millions of tests the feds gave the provinces, there are none to be found for individuals here in BC. I have tried. In Ontario, packs of tests were sent home with kids. In Alberta you can pick them up from drugstores (for free). Here you either don’t test or you wait days to test. Our pcr test is set for Saturday in Abbotsford. It took data to get it. Will our tests be positive then? No idea. I would like to know even for our peace of mind. But I want our data reported.

A rapid test with online reporting would be much more efficient and likely a better measure of actual numbers. A friend of mine with five family members sick just gave up looking for a test. No data from them.

Thankfully we are not that sick (yet). But it angers me that data are going missing because of a lack of access to testing. I can only imagine the struggles people are having across our population.

SFU and UBC should be in sync with online learning. We are geographically close and in each other’s health authorities and it makes sense for us to also wait til Feb.

Suzanne Norman

On Jan 12, 2022, at 1:53 PM, Lyn Bartram <lyn@sfu.ca> wrote:

While I appreciate that Dr. Bonnie states that structured settings do not show evidence of more transmission, I wonder where the source of her data are. If these data come from universities, we need to ask whether there are vaccine mandates in those environments. For example, BC is the only province where universities and colleges are PROHIBITED from requiring vaccines.

This means if a lot of the data around post-secondary learning environments and CoVid transmission comes from places where vaccines are required the results are much less applicable to our case.

I note that many Canadian universities are being much more cautious, choosing to wait out the Omicron spread until mid-late February. I, for one, am not comfortable coming back to campus at the end of January.

Lyn Bartram
Professor | School of Interactive Arts + Technology

Director | Vancouver Institute of Visual Analytics
Simon Fraser University | Surrey
250, 13450 102 Ave., Surrey, B.C. V3T 0A3
T: 778.782.7439 | M: 604.908.9954 | www.sfu.ca/~lyn

“Be kind, be calm and stay safe” -Dr. Bonnie Henry, BC Provincial Health Officer

From: Nicky Didicher <didicher@sfu.ca>
Date: Wednesday, January 12, 2022 at 1:48 PM
To: "academic-discussion@sfu.ca" <academic-discussion@sfu.ca>
Cc: SFU Faculty Association <faculty_association@sfu.ca>
Subject: Re: VPA's decision

I, personally, was happy and relieved to have the VPA confirm that we're going back to in-person teaching.

In Dr. Henry's directive to universities and colleges I was especially struck by the following points:

• With every variant, including the Omicron variant, transmission has been observed to occur in households and unstructured social settings. There is no evidence that moving to online post-secondary instruction will decrease such interactions, noting that students would spend fewer hours in structured settings, which have a lower risk for transmission.

• Since structured educational settings do not amplify transmission, a move to online instruction is not an effective means of reducing COVID-19 among students, faculty, and staff, or in the wider community.

• The previous move to online post-secondary education in 2020 and 2021 was associated with significant negative consequences for post-secondary students, who reported significantly poorer and worsening mental health and greater negative economic impacts than other British Columbians.

• The recommendations of public health and Orders of the Provincial Health Officer are based on careful and ongoing assessment of the factors that increase risk and the interventions that are known to effectively reduce risk.

Nicky Didicher

English

From: Anthony Perl <aperl@sfu.ca>
Sent: January 12, 2022 12:31:36 PM
To: Craig Scratchley; James Fleming; academic-discussion@sfu.ca
Cc: SFU Faculty Association
Subject: Re: VPA's decision
Thanks, Craig, for clarifying the context.

Now, we can see that by channelling our Radical Campus spirit, SFU has created a major opportunity for public health researchers to identify the impacts and outcomes of in person learning versus remote learning during a pandemic surge.

UBC will remain the control case, while SFU faculty and students will become the treatment group in this population level experiment in learning how to live with Covid.

Anthony

On 2022-01-12 12:14 p.m., Craig Scratchley wrote:

I guess this is what James Fleming was referring to:

https://broadcastemail.ubc.ca/2022/01/12/covid-19-update-on-winter-session-term-2/?utm_campaign=&utm_content=1642016386&utm_medium=sprout&utm_source=twitter

Craig

COVID-19 — Update on Winter Session, Term 2 | UBC Broadcast

broadcastemail.ubc.ca

If you are a manager of staff whose work is not computer-based, please print this email and display it in a common work area for them to review. To all our students, faculty and staff, we hope you had a restful holiday and a happy New Year. As we enter 2022, we know the Omicron […]

From: James Fleming <james_fleming@sfu.ca>
Sent: January 12, 2022 12:03:28 PM
To: academic-discussion@sfu.ca
Cc: SFU Faculty Association
Subject: VPA's decision

In light of the recent communiqué from SFUFA--and breaking news from UBC--I just want to say that I for one applaud SFU's decision to return to in-person teaching, as planned, on January 24th. Cheers! JD Fleming, English
-- 
Anthony Perl
Professor and Director of Urban Studies 
Professor of Political Science
Simon Fraser University
#2111 - 515 West Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC V6B 5K3
 
Tel: 778-782-7887
Fax: 778-782-5297
e-mail: aperl@sfu.ca
 
Simon Fraser University respectfully acknowledges 
the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), 
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and Tsawwassen peoples on whose unceded traditional 
territories our three campuses reside.