Dear Vice President Lombardi,
You recently addressed the student body in a letter concerning COVID-19’s impact on Cornellians’ lives and the policies put in place to combat the virus. One of the concerns you raised was the health risk that COVID-19 poses to all members of the Cornell community, especially the immunocompromised and those with family members who are unable to obtain vaccination. You used this concern to justify continued mask mandates for the vaccinated, and encouraged “suspend[ing] our informal social interactions.” I write to assuage your fears, and to advise against such policies.
Most students fall in an age bracket that has quite low risks of hospitalization and/or death. As of September 4th, the CDC records show that just 1,232 people between the ages of 15 and 24 have died from COVID-19. Compare that with the total of 643,858 deaths nationwide. Deaths among Americans aged 15-24 constitute roughly .002% of the total deaths, or 1 in every 500 COVID-19 deaths.
The risk from COVID-19 should necessarily be put into context with other causes of death among young adults. According to the CDC, in 2018, a normal year, the leading causes of death in Americans aged 15-24 were unintentional injury (12,044), suicide (6,211), homicide (4,607) malignant neoplasms (1,371), heart disease (905), congenital anomalies (354), diabetes melitus (246), influenza and pneumonia (200), chronic low respiratory disease (165) and complicated pregnancy (151).
For this age range, the COVID-19 death total (1,232) sits in the middle of the pack, with notably similar numbers to malignant neoplasms and heart disease, whose risks we regularly accept. However, one should keep in mind that these death totals are generated from just one year, whereas the COVID-19 death total is an aggregate from the whole of the pandemic, from January 1st, 2020 to September 4th, 2021, a year and three quarters.
If you still feel concerned about the risk to the Cornell population from COVID-19, I would note that its risk is further reduced by the high vaccination rate at Cornell. The vaccine has proven to make patients both more resistant to catching the virus and much less likely to experience serious symptoms. As the New York Times recently wrote, vaccinated people have about a 1 in 5,000 chance of experiencing a breakthrough infection on any given day, and for highly vaccinated communities that risk is even smaller, perhaps 1 in 10,000.
I hope these numbers reassure you that the risk COVID-19 poses to the Cornell population is, at worst, a modest one. As President Pollack noted, this semester, Cornell has not yet had even one case of COVID-19 that caused serious illness or required hospitalization. These facts should be given ample consideration, especially when justifying the extension and expansion of current restrictions, discouraging socialization, and hinting at the possibility of future restrictive action. Students would be dismayed and discouraged by an unnecessary return to the reduced lifestyle of last year. We are done diminishing ourselves out of fear. Life is meant to be lived.
Respectfully submitted,
Cullen O’Hara ‘23
