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Thread on goal shifting. Yesterday, @CT_Bergstrom discussed unfair treatment of modelers at Illinois (read it). I agree that the modelers took more than their share of blame, but that's an issue for another thread. 1/17 https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1308515039217811456
This thread focuses on my concern that Bergstrom's thread, in trying to redirect blame, inadvertently shifted the goalposts for what counts as "success," "good," and "working," as well as what counted as the "plan" for reopening. 2/17
Following the university-imposed a 2-week "lockdown" on students, things improved. @CT_Bergstrom described the restrictions as "a huge success" and the reduced number of cases as evidence that the "plan" worked. 3/17 https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1308517283774382080
Testing @Illinois_Alma is impressive. Nobody questions that. UIUC is better off than other school that lack - we know how bad things are. The situation is far worse at big schools that lack the testing available to UIUC. That doesn't mean it's good here. 4/17
Although things improved during the restrictions, the situation we have now was never the plan, and implying that the "plan" was successful moves the goal posts. The plan used to justify reopening in person did NOT "work" as promised and still is not working. 5/17
Doing better than we were before does not mean we're doing well in absolute terms. About 7% of Illinois undergraduates have already contracted Covid. That's bad. And, we're still not doing well. 6/17
Even with 2-weeks restrictions, spread wasn't under control. Went from exponential growth in Weeks 1-2 to stable daily positivity and a linear increase in cases for the past 10+ days. Linear is better than exponential, but it's still growth. 7/17
We shouldn't treat an improvement relative to an awful situation as success, just as it's wrong to say things are great here because they're better here than at other universities that have done less testing. 8/17
According to the models used to justify reopening, new daily cases would drop to single digits (positivity ~0) and almost no spread on campus after about 20 days. That's not what happened initially and it's still not what's happening now. 9/17
The models did not fully account for non-compliance despite warnings about it. We're also still not getting test results in 5 hours as predicted, and haven't been since classes started. During the peak, many students didn't learn their results for >40 hours. 10/17
That model that was used to justify reopening with 700 cases in *total* all term (~200 arriving infected, 500 from spread + infected people coming to campus). The assumptions were off. The numbers were better during the 2-week shutdown, but... 11/17
extrapolate the linear rate during restriction yields > 1200 additional cases before students leave. That's 5x the "planned" steady state rate. The restrictions reduced infections, but did not stop spread. 12/17
Restrictions have loosened, and cases are up again as students returned to more social engagement last wekk. Tuesday's 62 cases was the highest since September 8. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/photography/2020/09/22/college-pandemic-photos/ for photos of students lining up for bars after restrictions lifted. 13/17
Calling additional infections at a rate of 500+ cases every three weeks "a huge success" and stating that the "plan" worked would be a mischaracterization.14/17
Now that restrictions have lifted, we might see substantially more cases than that. We also still have no idea whether the campus cases will spread to the broader community or whether these infections will have lifelong consequences for infected students. 15/17
An easy way to see the problem: Ask whether the university have reopened if the models predicted >3000 cases and a 10% infection rate for students this semester? I'd hope not (I personally thought 500 additional infections was too big a cost to justify reopening.) 16/17
It's god to praise improvements. Once campus reopened, we had no choice but to do everything we could to reduce spread. The restrictions helped. But, we need to avoid equating relative improvement with absolute success. The plan was not and still is not a success. 17/17
