Source: Calculated from William and Mary COVID-19 dashboard. Virginia new case rate calculated from Virginia Department of Health data and Census population estimates by single year of age.
This week’s new-case number was an unpleasant surprise. The rate of new cases among students at the Williamsburg campus is now more than three times the rate for 18-24 year olds in Virginia as a whole.
Even with the understanding that W&M students may be more likely to get tested, this seems like a significant difference. As importantly, while new cases are trending down in Virginia as a whole, they appear to be trending up at William and Mary.
This is also completely at odds with a superficial reading of William and Mary’s 2/15/2022 email to parents (Subject: [parents-l] W&M COVID-19 Updates), where they state that:
"Currently, many of these metrics are trending favorably, ... we are encouraged that we are in a much better position than we were in early- to mid-January."
That’s a weirdly ambiguous piece of text. You have to stop and realize that by “we”, they meant the U.S.A., and not William and Mary in particular. Return to campus didn’t occur until the end of January, and William and Mary’s metrics are trending unfavorably.
To me, to the extent that anyone continues to worry about the health consequences of COVID-19, this current increase seems to be well worth tracking. New case rates are falling throughout the country, but not at William and Mary.
So, what’s the issue with W&M students that is not present in that age group for Virginia as a whole?
If I return to that 2/15/2022 email, and as with that line above, try to read past the ambiguities and try to read between the lines, I have a pretty good guess as to what the main problem is. Emphasis mine:
"One of the data points that does appear to be different this spring is the number of individuals being identified as close contacts. Given the high transmissibility of the Omicron variant, I encourage you to socialize in small groups with your core friends and colleagues and to meet outdoors whenever possible. For those that would like them, faculty and staff may order masks from the facilities management warehouse and students may pick up additional masks from the Sadler Center information desk. "
When I step back from all that polite talk, and focus on “socialize” and “masks”, my best guess is that the problem now is the exact same problem they’ve had in the past. Probably, students have gone back to holding unmasked parties.
That was the issue at the first return-to-campus outbreak under COVID. That was the issue for the St. Patrick’s day outbreak last year. It would be completely unsurprising if that were the issue now.
That’s purely guesswork on my part, but all the pieces seem to fit.
But why the seemingly nonchalant attitude on the part of the William and Mary administration?
Return briefly to last year’s St. Patrick’s day outbreak (Post #1099). I think everybody took that one fairly seriously. That outbreak generated 120 new cases in 11 days, or a rate of 11 new cases per day. So, the current rate of daily new cases is now roughly what it was during the St. Patrick’s Day outbreak last year.
But while the case count is about the same as St. Patrick’s Day 2021, the health risks are vastly lower. That’s due to vaccination plus a milder strain of COVID-19. CDC data show that full vaccination remains roughly 80% effective at avoiding hospitalization from Omicron, and that vaccination plus booster is is about 90% effective. (You’d have to download the data from the references on the CDC vaccine effectiveness web page to find that.) On top of that, the crude hospitalization rate for Omicron is about one-third that of prior variants. All told, that’s something like a (1/(.2 x . 33)) = 15-fold reduction in health risk, per case, compared to the situation last year. (No one has the data on significant health risks other than hospitalization, but I would expect all significant risks to be reduced roughly in proportion to the hospitalization risk.) And so, the current 12 cases per day presents about the same population health risk as one new case per day would have, around this time last year.
With that in mind, it now makes more sense that William and Mary is dancing around the issue of parties and masks, now, when they took a lot firmer stand during prior periods that had roughly the same daily new case.
Again, guesswork on my part. I can’t read their minds as to why the wording regarding socializing and masks is now so oblique. But it makes logical sense.
All I can say for sure is that the metrics at William and Mary are not trending favorably. COVID-19 may be approaching endemic status in a handful of areas, but the William and Mary campus is not yet one of them. The seems well worth keeping an eye on for a while longer yet.
FWIW, I’m now of the opinion that for your average boostered individual, the health risk from COVID-19 now, in Virginia, is no higher than the risk from typical seasonal flu (explained here or here). So I’m not trying to be alarmist at all. I don’t see a huge risk here. I’d just like to see the counts at W&M going down, as they are everywhere else.
