Now that Williamson has made very clear that universities are on their own, it's time for universities to buckle up and try to get through the crisis without government help. No help will be forthcoming. Points for unis to consider: /THREAD

*How many infections mean Tier Two and Tier Three reductions of face to face teaching?
*What are the size of the clusters or groups of students they are isolating?
*How can they scale up physical and mental health support for those locked down, potentially multiple times?

*How can they provide the most and best testing quickly?
*To what extent can they offer mass asymptomatic testing? Only the richest are doing this now.
*How can they support lecturers' own mental health?
*How best can they create a sense of online community?

*Christmas. When do they have to take all teaching online to give families a 14 day buffer before young people come home?
*January. Do they push back starts?
*September 2021. They need to start planning *now*, together, for AY 2021/22.

*Their own experts. Where is the economic and social planning, the use of labs, the use of R&D? Lots of stuff going on, but not concerted.
*Shared dwellings. To what extent can they disentangle their students' housing from those of other unis?

*Data and information. Where are the US-style data dashboards? Local communities have a right to see the numbers.
*On-campus priorities. Okay, this has gone wrong. But who should *definitely* come back onto campus in January and Sept 2021?

Basically, this debacle cannot be allowed to happen again. Planning must start right now, and the sector must do it in-house. The DfE are a chocolate teapot and the SoS is a fantasist. Ignore them and do the work. /END