28 Texas Students Have Coronavirus After Spring Break Trip

[jayschool2013]

Source: New York Times

A group of about 70 students from the University of Texas at Austin celebrated spring break in Mexico, but returned to find that 28 had tested positive. Dozens more are being monitored.

AUSTIN — Two weeks ago, amid the global coronavirus pandemic, about 70 students from the University of Texas at Austin partied in Mexico on spring break. The students, all in their 20s, flew on a chartered plane to Cabo San Lucas, and some returned on separate commercial flights to Texas.

Now, 28 of them have tested positive for the virus and are self-isolating. Dozens more are under quarantine and are being monitored and tested, university officials said Wednesday.

The Austin outbreak is the latest to result from a group of college students who ignored social-distancing guidelines, went on traditional spring break trips and have now tested positive for the coronavirus. Many of them appeared to be under the mistaken impression that young people were not as vulnerable to the coronavirus as older people. Students at the University of Tampa, the University of Wisconsin at Madison and other colleges have tested positive after returning from spring break trips to Florida, Alabama, Tennessee and elsewhere.



Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/us/coronavirus-texas-austin-spring-break-cabo.html

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Oy.

[la-trucker]

1. Entirely self inflicted

What were they thinking?

[Initech]

2. Expect more of these stories as more spring breakers return home.

[milestogo]

3. They brought it back to Madison WI

A disproportionate number of positive cases in my county are in their age group.

[pstokely]

8. didn't they tell them go home after Spring Break?

any good reason to come back if classes are online and you can get a good internet connection at home?

[milestogo]

9. I don't know what happened - could be that the juniors and seniors are out of the dorm

and living in apartments, so they consider themselves home. Also, there are thousands of graduate students who live here, although they are less likely to take off to Florida for spring break.

[Marrah_Goodman]

4. Odds are these kids will live, the people they spread it to, maybe not so lucky.

I blame the venues, the colleges, the parents AND the kids.

[OnlinePoker]

5. No sympathy for knuckleheads who should have known better

They were warned and still went.

[Warpy]

11. At that age, they're supposed to be knuckleheads

Adults around them, including governors here and in Mexico, should have shut the venues down.

[GeorgiaPeanut]

6. Who woulda thunk

that this here might coulda happen?

[LiberalFighter]

7. What a bunch of d*** f***s!

[GulfCoast66]

10. You know, I don't have much anger against those kids.

I still bear the scars of the fucked up decisions I made when I was 19-22. I can vaguely remember how bulletproof I felt and I had no connection with the real world. Just study(which I did well) girls and beer. I’m honest to admit I would have been right there with them.

Know who I have deep seated revulsion for? The supposedly wiser political leaders who allowed them to come down here and do what kids do.

Anyone stupid enough to place any faith in 20 year olds making good decisions about their own well being, not to mention others, is a fool. Or in this case greedy SOBs more worried about spring break revenue than the public good.

[Sucha NastyWoman]

12. Two weeks ago we were just starting to talk about social distancing.

Really, we were more at the “fist bump” stage.

And young people were said to be unlikely to get sick. Not many people were aware they could spread it without being sick themselves.

I don’t blame them because I recall my neighbor telling me, in the middle of spring break week,
that the school board had just announced schools were also going to be closed the following week. There were only a handful of deaths at that point.

By the following week we were starting to realize how scary this thing was.