Editorial: Pitt’s covid response and research should be partners
Share this post:
The University of Pittsburgh wants its students to stay put.
Until they go home, at least.
The university issued the order for the Oakland campus Sunday. It comes amid an upswing in covid-19 cases at the college. Monday, Pitt reported 74 positive cases in just three days.
That is part of a much larger uptick statewide. Pennsylvania reported record-high numbers three out of the past five days, with 4,711 Wednesday. Allegheny County posted a new high, too, with 366 new cases the same day, while Westmoreland County posted its second-highest number, 138.
It all points to a situation that needs to be addressed, and maybe Pitt’s lockdown is the way to do that.
It does make one wonder how the numbers are going up this way.
Many state and federal officials are pointing to gatherings as the problem. Eight months after Gov. Tom Wolf first issued his statewide restrictions, people are pulling at the leash. They want schools reopened. They want to go to restaurants and football games. They want their lives back to what they had a year ago.
And it makes sense school districts could have questions about whether kindergartners are actually learning kindergarten things online or if middle schoolers are losing ground on their educational benchmarks if they aren’t sitting at a desk instead of at a laptop. They have a lot to consider and often get conflicting information from the state while simultaneously being given “guidance” rather than suggestions.
A university isn’t really in the same situation.
A university isn’t just able to run the numbers. It has whole departments that can explain the data and brainstorm solutions. Pitt is actually ranked by U.S. News and World Report as a top school for education and educational psychology, which means finding a way to navigate the demands of teaching in such trying times is definitely in the organization’s wheelhouse.
But more than that, Pitt has something else going for it another, smaller university might not. Pitt might have a better understanding of the coronavirus pandemic numbers than most of its colleague colleges because of its role in the research. The university — which holds a major place in vaccine history already — is one of those at the forefront of working on covid immunization.
“If we hold steady and work together, then we can stop the surge in the number of positive cases,” Pitt Dean of Students Kenyon Bonner said.
It’s a good strategy. No one wants college students to head home for Thanksgiving and take Allegheny County sized virus exposure back to smaller towns or rural counties across the state or country.
But as the university considers where things go after the holidays, maybe the departments engaged in the logistics of teaching could spend a little more time meeting virtually with the in-house experts on the disease.