Coronavirus Thread: Worldwide Pandemic

Regular_P

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How Singapore Has Kept the Coronavirus Off Campus

Professors in Singapore say one major thread connects all three universities: a cooperative student population.

David Tan, the vice dean of academic affairs at the N.U.S. faculty of law, noted that students at Harvard Law School had vocally opposed plans to hold classes online last fall. In contrast, he said, his students did not utter a word of protest.

“In Singapore, we just roll with it,” he said. “I think we are blessed with rather compliant students.”

Another advantage is that unlike in the United States, most students in Singapore do not live on campus. Those who do must comply with more restrictions, such as limits on the number of visitors to their dormitories. Singapore also does not have fraternities and sororities, which on American campuses have hosted parties of hundreds that led to major outbreaks.

“You just wouldn’t see 500 people at a party with loud music and drunk in Singapore,” said Dale Fisher, a professor in the N.U.S. Department of Medicine. “It probably wouldn’t even happen in normal times.”

Olyvia Lim, a senior at the Nanyang Technological University, said she and her classmates were baffled by reports about American college students partying amid a pandemic.

“We all said, ‘Why would they risk themselves to do such a thing?’” Ms. Lim said. “It’s a bit hard to believe because we are of similar ages, but I think it’s culture. They are all about freedom, but when the government here says, ‘Wear a mask,’ we all do.”

Students say they comply with the rules because of the threat of punishment. Some of their classmates have been evicted from dormitories for hosting visitors.

“The consequences are severe, so people are scared,” said Fok Theng Fong, a 24-year-old law student.

Things do slip through the cracks. At N.U.S.’s U-Town campus, a popular section of the university with several restaurants and cafes, students said it was clear that many had come from other zones without permission. Several admitted that they did not faithfully report their temperatures.

To control campus crowds, the universities have relied heavily on technology. It began last spring with the Singapore Spacer project, which used public Wi-Fi networks to collect anonymized location data from people’s mobile phones.

The project, developed by Michael Chee of N.U.S. and Professor Balan of S.M.U., went live in April as a way to monitor crowds “as passively as possible and with minimum inconvenience,” Professor Chee said.

N.U.S. now encourages students and staff members to check an app with a platform called CrowdInsights, which was developed by administrators at the university. But more important than technology, Professor Chee said, is the attitude among students that the collective good matters.

“We don’t have this militant ‘We must have freedom’ approach that the West has,” he said. “The technology supports the mission, but it’s useless if people don’t have that ethos and culture to apply it.”

At N.U.S., many students said they put up with the restrictions because they recognized the need to safeguard public health.

Valencia Maggie Candra, a 20-year-old freshman who returned to Singapore in September from her native Indonesia, said she “definitely felt a difference” in people’s attitudes.

Ms. Candra said she was studying alone in her dormitory lounge in November when a security guard came in and told her to wear her mask. She readily complied.

“Everyone is just relatively more socially responsible,” she said. “Even though the rules are not 100 percent followed, everyone still respects it.”
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TheGodling

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choc_cardigan said:
I'm curious is there a resistance to wanting the vaccine in France?
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There are anti-vaxxers (and stupid people in general) everywhere, Europe isn't any different.:yeshrug:

Lots of folks here (the Netherlands) blame the surge in numbers on the mandated mask rules because in their words, the government forcing people to wear a mask makes more people not follow the 6 feet rule. Even though that's a lie and people stopped following the 6 feet rule because they got tired of it, this "logic" basically states that people are dumb cattle who can't follow two instructions at once. So they blame the government for giving them two instructions when nobody should expect people to be able to follow more than one at a time.

That's the kind of vile "take no personal responsibility whatsoever" arguments a lot of folks operate on, and that's without taking the anti-vaxxers into account. :scust:
 
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88m3 said:
Washington Post



Los Angeles County has been so overwhelmed it is running out of oxygen, with ambulance crews instructed to use oxygen only for their worst-case patients. Crews were told not bring patients to the hospital if they have little hope of survival and to treat and declare such patients dead on the scene to preserve hospital capacity.


WASHINGTONPOST.COM
Los Angeles is running out of oxygen for patients as covid hospitalizations hit record highs nationwide
Motorists line up to take a coronavirus test in a
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Man LA is insane, :mindblown:good luck to the brehs and brehettes there and stay safe
 
Liu Kang

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choc_cardigan said:
I'm curious is there a resistance to wanting the vaccine in France?
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It exists but the anti vax crowd is not as nutty and not as vocal as in the US. However the French are (one of) the biggest homeopathy users and it's that crowd that is mostly on that wave but it's less conspiracy driven than it is "natural remedy" driven.
 
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