Semi Weekly Message to the Physics Community, Thursday, August 20, 2020

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Dear Physics Community,

I would like to call your attention to Pres. Reif’s letter from yesterday. and focus on two key sentences.  First, from the third paragraph,

“…we are ready to try something more difficult: bringing back a portion of our undergraduates to live on campus.”

This does not sound like much, but it is huge:  In the past week, MIT has stress-tested every aspect of its operations with students back on campus.  Our testing capacity, which averaged 200 tests/day over the summer, was a key test because our testing operation needs to operate at 2,000 tests/day for students to return.  In the past week, MIT Medical ramped testing and yesterday carried out 1,930 tests. You can read the details here.  The average time from test to result is about 20 hours, with all tests being returned within 24 h.

Why is testing so important?  The mean time between infection and the appearance of symptoms for COVID-19 is 5 days, so to catch people early, MIT needs to test twice a week.  MIT will have about 2,800 students (1,900 grads, 900 undergrads) on-campus in two weeks.  Adding about 4,000 faculty and staff (about 30% of normal) coming and going during the week means at least 14,000 tests per week in order to ensure the safety of everyone.  If MIT had not been able to carry out 1,930 tests yesterday, Pres. Reif’s sentence above would have been much different.

The other critical sentence is from the sixth paragraph:

“…while we continue to celebrate and learn from each other’s individuality, we cannot afford individualism. I must take care, for your health; you must take care, for mine.”

What does this mean?  It certainly means wear your mask, wash your hands, keep six feet apart.  It also means being diligent about getting tested if you are coming on campus. The IDSS crew has done a series of studies that show that if 20% of the MIT population “opt-out”, I.e. consistently fail to get tested regularly, COVID-19 will spread at MIT regardless of what the other 80% do.  If you are coming on campus in any capacity, getting your COVID-19 test done is a key part of taking care of yourself and each other.

Everyone should read the guidance for returning students here.  These are the expectations for our students, but versions of this apply to everyone.

Yes, there may be standing in a long line (but that’s getting better).  Or coming at 5 am when they open to avoid lines.  But, it is what we need to do to avoid a repeat of last March when we all had to leave MIT and work remotely.  The next weeks will be a tough adjustment and there will be some positive tests, but if we all stick with it, it will be okay.

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Stay Safe,

Peter