Kent State shootings: Harpur college closes, May 1970

March 29, 2020. Sitting through the start of my third week of self-imposed isolation, with colleges across the country closed other than to online learning as the country tries to 'flatten the curve' (more on that later) and salvage the economy by re-opening, hopefully by Easter, my mind drifted back to fifty years ago, when my college -- Harpur College (aka SUNY at Binghamton, aka SUNY Binghamton) -- cancelled classes and exams in the aftermaths of the Kent State shootings, when a student strike earned faculty support and thus ended by first year of college, with a whimper. Kent State had been the bang.

Students were allowed to take their grades to date or to request a final. As classes were cancelled on or about the last week of instruction, this seemed like a fathomable policy. Harper was also on a four-course, four-credits-per-course semester, with an A, B, C or No Credit (NC) grading system. Actually, we may not have yet reached that grading system but it was the standard for most of my time at Binghamton, when faculty provided methods to not flunk out of college, which often meant being promptly drafted.

I accepted my grades in all my course other than Spanish, where I hoped to earn an A with a final. The teacher seemed a bit agitated -- I may have been the only request she faced and she was a very grandmotherly Spanish native named something like Mrs. Bourgeal -- and the final consisted of her marking a starting point and an end point in the pages of a Spanish novel, and assigned me to translate the intervening text. I'm pretty sure I earned an A from that effort, but I've not looked at my transcript in years and my memory is vague after fifty years.

The five dorms of my Hinman residential college had started to empty as soon as classes were cancelled. By the time I left it was pretty quiet, near empty. My memory is that I got a ride home to drive back to campus in our Buick Skylark to load up my stuff and to return to my summer job at Bethlehem Steel, which is itself another story. I recall driving away with a feeling of disappointment of this half-baked end to my first year of college. To this day, I feel that this first-year experience had a negative effect on my subsequent academics but, then again, I could just be rationalizing my suboptimal four-year performance, a 3.22 GPA with a degree in Administrative Science, having surrendering on my original plans to major in chemistry after my disastrous P Chem experience in fall of my third year.

Back to 'flattening the curve.' The theory is great and so is the practice. The problem is the data, the region measured, and the time line. Using mortality rates as the key measure is probably a god idea yet it seems that no one has a clear standard for attributing a death to the virus. Most of those who died are elderly, with compromised immunities or another chronic, life-threatening condition, e.g., high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes. And what the doctor or coroner writes on the death certificate can be somewhat arbirtrary. One report found that 88% of elderly Italian deaths attributed to the virus failed to include the other life-htratening conditions that may have led to death. And even if the mortality rate for Italian elderly is twice the normal rate, this could also be explained later if the mortality rate then declines to below average after the excess deaths during the time of the virus. One report suggests that in Louisiana, doctors feel safe to attribute any elderly deaths to the virus. So statistics attributing death to the virus alone are problematic.

Then there's the numerator. The number of cases of the virus is impossible to determine other than with comprehensive, accurate testing, with at least systematically sampling necessary, not just testing those with symptoms. A podcast today highlighted that the virus may have been around the world much earlier than the confirmed cases would suggest. Many reports indicate that most victims show no ill effects and of those who do, perhaps only 10% to 20% might need medical care. More testing is needed, yet as testing expands arbitrarily or non-systematically, the number of cases can only increase. Here in Wisconsin, of those tested through this past week, 94% demonstrated negative results -- no virus. True, some of these people may later be infected, but that is the timeline issue, i.e., testing before you have been exposed or absent symptoms.

Then there is the regional effect. In China, it was primarily centered on Wuhan. In Italy, Bergamo, a northern city in Lombardy. In the US, its Los Angeles, New York City and Seattle, all cities with many foreign travelers. One report I saw indicated that a quarter of Wuhan's twenty million residents abandoned the city during the onset of the virus, with tens of thousands possibly traveling to the United States. Travel restrictions to slow this global spread were too little, too late, and maligned as racist.

My sense is that when this pandemic weakens enough to get most people back to work, there will be some activities and industries that may not find it so easy to get back to work. While this has been tough on hotels, airlines and restaurants, much of that demand can be re-ignited with the right loans and economic incentives. Professional celebrities like major league sports, movie and theater actors, and rock stars may find it hard to bring fans back to their crowded, 'super spreader' settings, and government regulation may continue to ban large gatherings for events like Coachella, stock car races, and other businesses that need very large numbers of people to attend too be profitable. This could even affect colleges, where parents might find online education to be a permanent alternative to higher ed institutions that already tested economic limits. A ten percent decline in enrollment at many already stressed, small private colleges could lead to accelerated declines and, pretty quickly, bankruptcy.

My hope is that we find a way back to appreciating life and what is really important, like faith and family and spending time together with small groups pf friends, and that people spurn the frivolous distractions and addictions that color the modern world today. Or maybe a sport like Major League Baseball or the NFL would just cut player salaries and ticket prices by 50%, perhaps 75% or even 90%, the sport could revive. And, finally, my hope is that the political derangements of the left will be cured by this pandemic, and that the current political divisiveness will be replaced by a better, common, prosocial set of values and policies.