"So even assuming that the personal danger is acceptable (which isn't a given; 300 deaths sounds like a horrible and avoidable tragedy to me) death figures among healthy 20-somethings don't capture the full risk of keeping a university open."
Well now you're shifting the goalposts.
The comment was that the students are at risk. Someone shows you that they're not at risk, and you pivot to danger to "townsfolk".
Here's the thing: those students don't just disappear, and they don't stop interacting with other college-aged students, townsfolk and employees simply because they're not at school. And if you want to protect parents, shipping their kids off to live on their own seems like a better way to do that than to have those kids living at home.
(As far as "avoidable tragedies" go: during the same period that those 300 kids died of covid, literally thousands died of all other causes. More died of accidents than died of Covid. I think it's time to admit that your sense of concern is mis-calibrated.)
> The comment was that the students are at risk. Someone shows you that they're not at risk, and you pivot to danger to "townsfolk".
Assuming they're not stupid, evil, or politically conservative, the students are probably concerned about the risk of spreading the illness and the attendant harm that could cause, as well as what it could do to themselves.
Well now you're shifting the goalposts.
The comment was that the students are at risk. Someone shows you that they're not at risk, and you pivot to danger to "townsfolk".
Here's the thing: those students don't just disappear, and they don't stop interacting with other college-aged students, townsfolk and employees simply because they're not at school. And if you want to protect parents, shipping their kids off to live on their own seems like a better way to do that than to have those kids living at home.
(As far as "avoidable tragedies" go: during the same period that those 300 kids died of covid, literally thousands died of all other causes. More died of accidents than died of Covid. I think it's time to admit that your sense of concern is mis-calibrated.)