I tried to do a quick comparison of the COVID-19 testing rate on the William and Mary campus relative to the testing rate in Virginia. The ultimate goal of this is to (gu)esstimate the effect that more intensive testing of the W&M student body has had on the count of COVID-19 cases discovered.
Turns out, that’s a very hard thing to do, for a lot of different reasons. That’s not going to stop me from giving an estimate. But it does stop me from giving good estimate.
Best guess, the mandatory testing regimen at W&M ought to identify about three times as many cases as the voluntary, symptom-driven testing found in the community. The fact that it does not — that we don’t see a case count that is three times the community rate — probably reflects the self-selection of the W&M student body, and the fact that their pre-campus COVID-19 infection risk is (probably) much lower than that of the average 21-to-30-year-old Virginia resident.
For me, the bottom line remains the same: I want to see W&M improve, relative to that community benchmark, as the semester progresses. That’s how I’ll feel comfortable that W&M is controlling the spread of COVID-19 on campus. Continue reading Post #1032: William and Mary COVID-19 testing rate.
