This is useful and the opinions quoted sensible; this is really the most important bit:
"Institutions will have a number of strong defenses available, including, among others, that their adherence to CDC and other guidance demonstrates that they have met the applicable standard of care and that, given the nature of the virus, it will be very difficult … to demonstrate what caused a particular individual to contract the virus," Warner said. "Institutions will also be informing their students and employees of the risks inherent in returning to campus given the very nature of the virus."
Any institution in compliance with federal and state health guidelines will be in good shape legally, regardless of how much illness there is on campus.
Speaking of which, this from former Yale President Richard Levin is striking (and his last recommendation correct!):
We did some modeling to estimate how much social distancing is needed to prevent widespread infection in colleges and universities. Suppose we start the school year on Sept. 1 with one student out of 1,000 unknowingly infected with the disease. You can think of this as the fraction of the population that falsely tests negative on arrival to campus. Further suppose that the number of people to whom an infected person will on average transmit the disease (the R0, or “reproductive ratio”) starts at 2.26, which is within the range of numbers calculated in the first month of the outbreak in Wuhan, China. If the population is 100 percent susceptible to the disease — in other words, students arrive with no immunity — and there is no social distancing, 85 percent of the students will have experienced infection by Dec. 18. But if social distancing is practiced 50 percent of the time that individuals have potential for close contact, only 0.9 percent of the population will be infected in the same time period. And if there were 60 percent social distancing, the R0 would be less than 1, and only a very tiny fraction of the population would become infected — 0.2 percent in four months.
The moral of the story is: You don’t have to be perfect with social distancing, but you have to be pretty good. I think, realistically, it’s hard to expect a population of 18-to-22-year-olds to be perfect. One solution is to actually police this social behavior in order to protect others. I think you have to say to people who misbehave chronically, you’re being sent home.
