OPINION: Ohio U COVID-19 guidelines continue to make little sense

“Rufus the Bobcat getting a (pretend) COVID-19 vaccine.” Photo courtesy of Ohio University Communications and Marketing

Danny Murnin is a freshman studying journalism and an opinion writer for The New Political.

Please note that these views and opinions do not reflect those of The New Political.

It has been nearly two years since the entire United States shut down due to the rapid spread of a mysterious, foreign disease we all know now as COVID-19. Education was one of the industries hit hardest by the pandemic, and few schools have had a harder time managing the pandemic than Ohio University. 

To recap, Ohio U first shut down in the middle of March 2020. The remaining month or so of classes were conducted online, with students working from their own homes. The vast majority of large public colleges returned for in-person learning in August of 2021, albeit with heavy restrictions. Ohio U opted to stay mostly remote, with only a select number of students invited back to campus for the fall semester. When all students were invited back in the spring, classes stayed almost exclusively online, and out-of-class activities were also virtual. 

Things started to change. Case numbers declined, effective vaccines became widely available and fear of the virus started to dissipate. The university announced plans for an almost exclusively in-person fall semester and removed the mask mandate and testing requirement for fully vaccinated students.

Over the summer, however, the virus mutated into a more transmissible and deadly variant, delta. With delta, the mask mandate returned, along with fears about a shift back to virtual classes and activities, though that never happened. Case numbers remained low for most of the semester, and the university implemented a vaccine mandate with a deadline in mid-November.

At the start of this semester, things came crashing down. On-campus students were notified in December that they would be required to send in an at-home COVID-19 test before returning to campus from break. This was a flawed idea; it was wildly optimistic to expect thousands of college students to remember to pick up a test, not lose or damage it, take it on time and get it properly shipped. 

It’s not surprising that many students, such as myself, tested through Vault Health upon returning to campus. Additionally, a week before the start of the semester, the university announced that off-campus students would also be required to test. 

These decisions were made by a group of university officials, including Dr. Gillian Ice, a professor and the director of the Global Health department. She has served as head of COVID Operations at the university for the past 19 months and has become an easily recognizable name amongst the Ohio U community. Not only because she holds an important position, but her name is plastered on every campus-wide email with information pertaining to the pandemic. 

Ice has always held a demanding job, but any amount of vitriol and opposition directed towards her and other decision-makers pales in comparison to what has been seen this semester. Why is this? 

In short, the general feeling on campus right now, for one reason or another, is that the university’s handling of the pandemic has gone completely off the rails. The testing fiasco is a major reason why. Ice said herself during her appearance at the Student Senate meeting on Jan. 12 that over 1,000 shipped tests were lost in the mail by UPS, and a large number of students were mistakenly locked out of housing, dining, and recreation facilities while waiting for their results. In some cases, students waited as many as five days for their results. In particular, many students took issue with the fact that those still waiting on test results were allowed to attend classes and in-person activities amid the sky-high case rates. 

These concerns were unfounded. CDC guidance specifically says that asymptomatic people with no known exposure to COVID-19 do not have to quarantine while waiting for their test results. The university failed to properly communicate this, hence the confusion. In an email sent campus wide on Tuesday, Jan. 11, Ice wrote, “Athens campus students who did not complete their required pre-semester COVID-19 test may still attend classes and campus activities. Please schedule and complete a test at our Vault Health testing center by Friday, Jan. 21, if you have not done so already.” 

However unintentional, Ice’s emails insinuated that nothing would happen to students who did not test. Saying something is “required” usually means there are consequences for not meeting it by a certain time, but that is not what the university did in this case. 

Besides the problems with testing, many students have also taken issue with the university’s unwillingness to ease restrictions with such a high vaccination rate among students and staff members. 

For the first time since the virus emerged, the country envisioned an end to the pandemic. The FDA authorized the first two vaccines for emergency use in December of 2020 and research showed they were remarkably effective at preventing transmission, hospitalization and death. Rising vaccination rates spurred the university’s plan for a fully in-person school year, which kept operations in-person, even as some restrictions such as the mask mandate returned. 

In an email sent to the campus Aug. 10, Ice said improving vaccination rates would allow the university to return to fully ‘normal’ operations. 

“Every person who gets vaccinated against COVID-19 helps us move toward safer campuses where restrictions are less necessary.” 

As of Aug. 31, the all-campus vaccination rate on campus was just under 69%, by Nov. 15, the deadline to get vaccinated, this number rose to 88.6%. It now stands at 91%. With a 20% increase in the vaccination rate, one would expect that university leadership would follow their own words and reduce restrictions. 

Over two months later, the message was still the same. Ohio U President Hugh Sherman said the plan was for the spring to be even more laxed. 

“Ohio University is looking forward to hosting conferences and workshops, planning more special events for our students and the community, and increasing activities on all of our campuses while we continue to follow guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” Sherman said.

The university has broken its promises on what a higher vaccination rate would mean for students. Yes, case rates in the country, state, and community are higher than ever. But at the end of the day, the constant changes in format and policy need to stop. Hospitalization and death rates are what matter. On Jan. 10, the first day of classes, over 1.3 million COVID-19 cases and 1,825 deaths were recorded nationwide. Exactly one year prior, there were 2,556 deaths, yet only 223,525 cases were recorded. The nationwide vaccination rate, currently standing at 63%, continues to increase as the death rate declines. According to the CDC, unvaccinated Americans are 13 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than those who are vaccinated. If 90% of Americans were fully vaccinated like at Ohio U, the death toll could potentially be very low. 

It is also important to consider who is at risk for severe illness. Of the 31,245 confirmed COVID-19 deaths in the state of Ohio as of Jan. 18, only 483 of them have been individuals 39 years old or younger. The average age of death in Ohio from COVID-19 is 77 years old. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, less than 15% of Athens County residents are 65 or older. 

Considering this, a reasonable person would conclude that whether or not it is intentional or rational, the university is still hoping to achieve a ‘Zero Covid’ resolution. 

There was a time when permanently wiping out the pandemic was possible. If every person in the country had stayed home unless absolutely necessary during the first months of the pandemic and wore masks when they had to go out in public, a lot of needless suffering could have been prevented. But far too many people didn’t do that, so a happy, clean, ending is no longer possible. 

Ohio University, along with the rest of the world, needs to change its approach from “How do we defeat this pandemic?” to “How do we survive while returning life to how it was before this all started?” 

I’m not going to pretend that it will be easy or quick. But some sense of normalcy has to happen.