Science and Projections for Our Return to Campus

Joshua Weitz and Greg Gibson provide updates on Covid-19 projections and coronavirus surveillance testing, with a focus on the return to campus.
Presentation slides:
figshare.com/articles/present...
Greg Gibson is a professor in the School of Biological Sciences, Director of the Center for Integrative Genomics, and Genome Analysis core of the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at Georgia Tech.
Joshua S. Weitz is a professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Georgia Tech and Director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences.
Held Tuesday, August 4, 2020 | 11a to 12p EDT
Hosted by the School of Biological Sciences

[@decoratedway]

These online discussions from GT Covid-19 experts and leaders are fantastic. Please keep them coming!

[@jhssuthrnmama]

I'm glad to see my Georgia Tech Community involved in the scientific discussion. I'm just a GT electrical engineer, but I've noticed that, assuming the CDC is correct that there are approximately 10 undetected infections for every positive test, Georgia, and also specifically Fulton County, have now reached 20% of the population having been infected. This is the infection percentage at which many highly infected communities have maxed out, for instance, the Diamond Princess, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, Gangelt Germany, Sweden, the slums of Delhi, and New York City.
A growing number of epidemiologists are speculating that infections max out at around 20-30% in most populations because of an innate T Cell immunity in 40-60% of the population due to the similarity of SARS-Cov-2 to other pre-existing coronaviruses. Could this be why Georgia's, and Fulton County's, cases peaked sharply and then plummeted around three weeks ago?
This has interesting implications for the return of students to campus, especially if a majority of them come from communities, like Metro Atlanta, which have seemingly reached that 20% threshold. Of course, the most significant data point is the extremely low fatality rate for college-age students, which points to the primary safety focuses being social distancing faculty members from everyone else, and noticing CDC director Redfield commentary that increased suicides and overdoses are killing more older teens and young adults then covid-19. This is already a group extremely susceptible to the worst effects of our decade-long increasing suicide epidemic, and the extremely prolonged social isolation is now killing the most vulnerable.

[@johogufu]

um, there are stakeholders on campus other than faculty and students: staff

[@wailim4103]

I saw on news that there will be games at Bobby Dodd Stadium with over 10,000 attendees. This does not seem to be a good idea when Georgia continues to report high new cases daily.