HomeMy WebLinkAbout07-15-20 Public Comment - B. Hunt - A Message on COVID-19 to Governor Bullock & the MUS from Montana State University UndergraduatesFrom:Chris Mehl
To:Agenda
Subject:FW: A Message on COVID-19 to Governor Bullock & the MUS from Montana State University Undergraduates
Date:Wednesday, July 15, 2020 11:58:46 AM
Attachments:A Message on COVID-19 to Governor Bullock from Undergraduates at MSU.pdf
Chris Mehl
Mayor, City of Bozeman
cmehl@bozeman.net
406.581.4992
________________________________________
From: Brooklin Hunt [brooklinhunt@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2020 11:12 AM
To: governor@mt.gov
Cc: Plowright, Raina; Will Rogers; Vestal, Amber; Hayes, Maggie; Chris Mehl; president_cruzado@montana.edu;
Lee, Ilse-Mari; Schultz, Logan
Subject: A Message on COVID-19 to Governor Bullock & the MUS from Montana State University Undergraduates
Hello Governor Bullock-
Attached you will find a letter about COVID-19 and reopening Montana universities written by undergraduates
(myself and Will Rogers) from Montana State University and the Bozeman Disease Ecology Lab (also known as the
Plowright Lab). We would immensely appreciate it if you would take the time out of your busy schedule to read this
letter, consider the ideas we present within it, and hear our voices in this important matter. I have cc'd Mayor Chris
Mehl of Bozeman, President Cruzado from Montana State University and her assistants, and Dean Ilse-Marie Lee
and Assistant Dean Logan Schultz from the Montana State University Honors College--hoping that the messages in
this letter will be heard loud and clear by our state, city, and university leaders.
To all of you, please do not hesitate to reply with questions or responses to this letter if you feel inclined to do so.
We would be absolutely delighted to hear back from you. Lastly, I want to express my sincere gratitude to all of you
for your service to the state of Montana and for all of your work to-date in the fight against COVID-19.
Sincerely,
Brooklin E Hunt, VA
Undergraduate Researcher
Bozeman Disease Ecology Lab (Plowright Lab)
Montana State University-Bozeman
1332 Campus Blvd, Unit #203
Bozeman, MT 598715
Governor Steve Bullock
State of Montana
1301 East 6th Avenue
Helena, MT, 59601
To Governor Steve Bullock, State Leaders, and the Montana University System Administration:
We are Montana University System (MUS) students who hope to begin a discussion
around how classes, research, and MUS communities will continue to prosper in Fall of 2020.
We are two undergraduates at Montana State University who are affiliated with the Bozeman
Disease Ecology Lab--a collaborative group currently seeking to bring public awareness and
understanding to the COVID-19 pandemic. We take pride in our university and want to help
ensure our own safety as well as the safety of our entire MSU community this coming fall.
We would like you to know that COVID-19 has us very concerned about returning to
MSU in the fall to continue our university studies. As undergraduate students with
more-extensive-than-usual understandings of disease transmission and dynamics, we truly see
and understand the risks of this situation. The uniquely high connectivity and large crowds that
generally commence with the semester worry us greatly--as they present abundant transmission
opportunities. We are also concerned as we have observed the waning of Montana and the rest of
our country’s resolve to fight this virus. At the time of writing 2,096 cases had been confirmed in
Montana with more than half of those occurring in the last month (JH COVID-19 tracker). While
we are proud and incredibly grateful for the steps already taken by our administration, our local
government, and our state leaders to slow the spread and answer the call to action this past
spring, we now seek additional actions as the fall semester quickly approaches. Without
action, our community at MSU and other collegiate communities statewide will suffer
immensely.
You, our leaders and administrators, hold responsibilities to students, educators, and
communities who benefit from and support our prestigious MUS. How will you guarantee our
safety, the endurance of the MUS, and the economic future of Montana? We cannot answer
these questions for you; instead we hope you will consider the tools at your disposal and some
that may have not been fully considered previously.
As you know, every year students come from all over the U.S. and world to study in
Montana; from countries and states that have demonstrated varied responses to COVID-19 and
have generally failed to effectively address this pandemic. We are concerned that the influx of
students arriving for classes this coming fall and subsequently interacting closely throughout the
semester will bring a burden to Bozeman healthcare providers that we are ultimately ill-prepared
to handle. We are not asking for classes to be nullified; such action would bring even further
economic hardship to our local communities and would jeopardize our university system. We do
ask that you - as the leader of our university system - more specifically consider how, when,
and at what scale we as a college community can safely re-open and serve our students, our
faculty, and our generous community members. We are aware of current plans to guide
reopening (i.e. the MSU Fall Roadmap) but generally find that such calls to action are weak and
may not be effective without the necessary structure and enforcement to protect our
communities, our students, and our educators.
Efforts like the Montana State University Fall 2020 Roadmap, while a step in the right
direction, are absent of specifics with no (presently stated) thresholds for student body
prevalence; no action-based testing or isolation; and no clear policy on how distancing, face
mask use, nor testing will be enforced. The state and university administrators now hold a
tremendous role in limiting the spread of COVID-19. Please consider how and to what degree
you will provide for our safety and our education. Below you will find a list of ideas related
to reopening universities in the face of the pandemic that we describe in this letter and ask you to
consider in your planning. In summary, we ask that you heavily consider the following
topics, issues, and ideas:
●Develop a plan for monitoring the COVID-19 situation on campuses in real-time
using scientific methods.
●Mandate mask-wearing.
●Allow students to choose between online-only and blended courses.
●Require a brief, formal education in COVID-19 transmission to all students.
●Require a 2+ week quarantine or shelter-in-place of all students at the beginning of
the semester.
●Descalate political tensions surrounding this public health crisis.
●Hold yourselves accountable for providing safe environments across Montana
university campuses
●Provide additional assistance to underserved communities.
Please allow us to provide more detailed summaries of what we are asking and our
ideas outlined above:
1.Real-time, scientific monitoring of the situation: We ask that the university system
consider implementing extensive and novel forms of evidence-based evaluations of
performance, such as syndromic surveillance, PCR testing, wastewater testing,
hospitalization rate, etc. You are in charge of the safety of our students, educators, and
community, but we are ultimately “flying blind,” with minimalistic plans to obtain real-time
evidence of the efficacy of safety measures once the fall semester begins. How can we
evaluate whether or not safety measures are working if we cannot monitor MSU’s population
and have no real-time estimate of the burden of COVID-19 on our community? The short
answer is that we cannot. Testing must be increased and novel combinations of tests and/or
quality of tests must be considered in order to minimize false positive and negative rates,
particularly on campuses. To increase testing capacity, we need to marry efforts by local
health care providers with the capacity of our universities. Public and private efforts cannot
win in this situation when separated, as they have largely functioned up until now. Together,
public and private efforts could provide phenomenal testing capacity for our community.
2.Face mask requirements: We ask that you seriously consider mandating face masks in
classroom settings and other mass gatherings associated with universities (i.e. laboratories,
common hour tests). This is a dead-simple, practical option to reduce spread in enclosed
environments. A recently published systematic review and meta-analysis spanning across 44
studies in 16 countries by Derek Chu and colleagues found that the use of masks and
respirators decreased the risk of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and MERS-CoV by 85%. The
review found that even simple, homemade, fabric masks could be highly effective if worn
and fit properly. We need a state-wide implementation of this policy with stricter
implementation in university classroom settings, where 20+ students share space with poor
ventilation. Without widespread mask-wearing in such university environments, explosive
outbreaks, high morbidity, and deaths on Montana campuses are very likely. The MUS has
recommended masks be required on campus this fall - your support in providing funding to
the university to purchase masks and develop enforcement strategies could be tremendously
beneficial.
3.The right to choose: We ask that you implement regulations that give students the right to
choose between taking their courses in-person/blended or entirely online. Currently, it seems
that universities will dictate which courses will be taught in-person, online, and/or blended,
and when this might change according to local case counts. This places students in the
gut-wrenching position of having to choose between continuing their education or
maintaining their health. In the 21st century, this is an unacceptable social situation. There
are many unknown factors associated COVID-19: will there be long-term defects due to
infection (i.e. chronic lung disease)? What is the true death rate? How many of a student’s
friends, family members, and work colleagues could sequentially be infected if they were to
be infected? With so many questions unanswered and this paucity of information relevant to
decision making, it is entirely unfair to require all students to attend courses in-person at the
will of the university and without the right to choose otherwise.
4.Student education on COVID topics: We ask that the university system develop a
COVID-19 online briefing or course in concert with the drug, alcohol, and financial classes
already required of incoming freshmen at MSU. Such a class could describe the relative risk
of various activities, the benefit of small personal actions, and better describe the role of the
university system in the health of its students, educators, and communities. Better yet, the
course could describe the basics of respiratory disease transmission, COVID-19 testing, and
the current scientific evidence for mask-wearing, hand-washing, social distancing, and other
preventative measures. Students deserve to know the state of affairs, our capacity for testing
and treatment, as well as the benefits and costs their actions may have.
5.Beginning-of-semester quarantine: We ask that the administration consider a period of
mass student isolation for a minimum of two weeks prior to the start of the semester. At the
beginning of the semester, thousands of students will be arriving in Bozeman after travelling
hundreds of miles (some from COVID epicenters) to move into new housing arrangements
and commence the fall semester. This will be a time of extremely high connectivity between
susceptible and infected (likely pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic) persons. This will likely
be reflected in high transmission rates and therefore spikes in new cases two weeks or more
into the semester. Additionally, we need to recognize the demographic of individuals
returning to Montana. These will be largely 18-25 year-old adults - a demographic that we
know engages in riskier behaviors and forms a disproportionately high number of new
COVID-19 cases. This difference is driven by elective actions (e.g., attending large parties,
going to bars, choosing not to wear a mask, etc.) that can be mandated against at a local,
state, and/or federal level. We must consider all options to limit the contact of potential
infectious individuals with susceptible populations, particularly high-risk populations such as
older faculty. Giving up the two initial weeks of our in-person classes is a small sacrifice
compared to the alternative of hundreds of new COVID cases per day resulting from
presymptomatic transmission by students who became infected during their travels to MSU
for the fall.
6.Deescalation of political tensions: We understand that this is uncharted territory for our
administrations, our local healthcare professionals, and our state leaders. Inaction and
rhetoric at the federal level has unfortunately polarized public opinion to COVID-19 along
party lines, making it much harder to fight an already difficult-to-diagnose and treat virus. As
such, your administration holds a tremendous sway over how the virus will enter our
community and spread. We ask that you do your absolute best to deescalate political tensions
around this unpolitical public health crisis while continuing our fight against COVID-19.
7.Hold yourselves accountable: We deserve to know how our university system will hold
itself accountable. The communities who support our universities can only fight COVID-19
with the tools and knowledge available to them. Our students and faculty are similarly
affected by the community and policies on campuses. The university system and the state
hold unique sway over policies which would affect the health and economy of
Montana--both in the short-term and for years to come. We ask that you explain to the
students, faculty, patrons, and supporters of MUS how it will be held accountable for failure
to act, poor policy, and misplaced priorities.
8.Assistance to underserved groups: COVID-19 has and will continue to disproportionately
harm indiginous/native american, black, and hispanic communities. Through a combination
of systemic lack of access to healthcare, current difficulties in finding healthcare, and
disproportionate economic hardship, members of these communities--those of our friends,
family, and neighbors--die from COVID-19 at alarmingly higher rates than members of
white, affluent communities. We implore that the MUS and State of Montana consider their
historic role of displacing and subjugating these communities, rectify their obligation to the
health and welfare of these communities, and engage in broader, stronger action to help these
underserved communities fight COVID-19.
We know you have our state’s health in mind. We know that we were all ill-prepared for
a pandemic such as this. We know that there is great difficulty in balancing fiscal responsibility
with the responsibility to protect health. We ask that you and the MUS seriously consider what
actions you will undertake given that 40,000 students from all across the country and Montana
state will arrive on your campuses, ready to learn with the expectation and hope of a safe
environment. If the conditions of timely and strategic testing, isolation of COVID cases
particularly at the beginning of the semester, social distancing and mask-wearing, and
remote/online classes are not fully considered, the university likely will become a
transmission hub within the community and be responsible for associated deaths and
suffering. We ask that you consider the ideas outlined in this letter to help prevent this.
We are gifted and fortunate, as Montanans are generally healthier than the rest of our
country; our communities have access to numerous outdoor activities, and we have a unique
blend of self-reliant and can-do mindsets. We are also unique in our fight against COVID-19.
We have a majority out-of-state student body, a largely rural population, and an older population
than many other states. Under your guidance, we managed to quell COVID-19 in late-spring. We
now face a disenthused public with rapidly increasing case counts and hospitalizations. We ask
that you consider actions that will meaningfully reduce transmission, regardless of their
discomfort or short-term economic consequences as these are miniscule prices to pay for saving
lives. Use the tools at your disposal, consider those presented here, and do right by your students,
faculty, grocery store employees, ranchers, small business owners, farmers, healthcare
professionals, outfitters, hunters, fishermen and women, hikers, bikers, and runners.
We sincerely thank you for taking the time to read this letter. We appreciate this
opportunity to have our voices heard by you and likewise hope you appreciate the ideas and
tools we have suggested in this letter. Please do feel free to respond to this letter with questions
and/or comments by emailing rogerswill47@gmail.com and brooklinhunt@gmail.com or writing
to the address listed above. Thank you again for your time and service to the great state of
Montana.
Sincerely,
Will Rogers Brooklin Hunt