University advances COVID education campaign
UW leaders and experts host six educational videos — required viewing for those on campus. The videos highlight science and make clear that UW won’t reimburse students who get sick and fail out.
The University of Wyoming is putting its employees and students through mandatory online training, hoping to shed light on the science behind the pandemic and encourage the unvaccinated to finally get the shot.
The training includes six videos, hosted by UW administrators and experts, which dispel misinformation and provide the science behind transmission, variants, mask use and vaccines. The videos call on employees and students to wear masks, get vaccinated and take other pro-social precautions to protect the community.
“It’s completely based on the science and facts and best practices from the CDC,” UW President Ed Seidel told the Board of Trustees Wednesday. “But really importantly, it’s from our own professors and staff at the university. It’s not something that we piped in from somewhere else and I hope, therefore, it’s seen as a trusted source of information. I hope that they’re persuasive.”
During that same meeting, the trustees voted unanimously to extend the campus mask mandate. ASUW President Hunter Swilling said most students would support that extension, based on the results of a recent 2,100-student survey.
“Of those students, 49.07 percent reported that they completely agreed with the mask policy, and 21.47 percent somewhat agreed, and 29.46 percent disagreed,” Swilling said. “So 70.54 percent of students either somewhat or completely agreed with the mask policy.”
Seidel hosts the first of the six videos, urging everyone to get information from good sources. Misinformation has been a rampant problem throughout the pandemic.
“It is important to me, and to all of us, that our campus knows the science behind the virus, the vaccine, mask use and how to manage the disease,” Seidel says. “There are numerous information and news sources — some good, some bad — sharing a spectrum of thoughts about COVID.”
The following videos, Seidel says, provide some insight into the same science and process he uses to make recommendations to the board. The video hosts are not only experts in their fields, but members of the local UW community.
“These same experts help provide recommendations to me, and to the campus, on a daily basis to keep the university operating at its fullest potential during the COVID crisis,” Seidel says.
Don Jarvis, a UW molecular biologist for more than three decades, breaks down the realities of virology, the danger of variants, and how that danger is exacerbated by low vaccination rates. Jarvis warns of a “pandemic reset,” in which new vaccine-resistant variants develop in the bodies of unvaccinated people — and land the entire world back in another pre-vaccine era.
“I would like to encourage everyone to exercise their personal choice to prevent this scenario,” Jarvis says. “Please, please consider getting vaccinated to protect yourself, your family, your friends and your community. It is the only way we’ll finally be able to control the pandemic and finally return to normal life.”
Center of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Co-founder Penelope Shihab talks about when one should get tested, while UW Biocontainment Facility Scientific Director Elizabeth Case addresses the proven effectiveness of masks.
“In general, your mask protects others better than it protects yourself,” Case says. “Masking works best when compliance is high. There’s a synergistic effect in the reduction of transmission when an infected person and uninfected person wear masks in the same room. That means that the protective effect for both masks is greater than the protection offered to either person by their own mask.”
Case adds that two-layered masks are “vastly superior” to bandanas and scarves and that indoor settings need upwards of 80 percent masking compliance to keep transmission low.
UW School of Pharmacy Dean Kem Krueger talks about the vaccine approval process and attempts to clear up popular uncertainty about vaccine safety.
“These vaccines have been evaluated more than most other vaccines and medications that are in use in the U.S,” Krueger says. “The COVID vaccines have proven to be safe and effective for use.”
In the final video, Mary Beth Bender, the director of the UW Student Health Service, speaks of the need to pull together as a community.
She does not mince words about the potential personal financial impacts of going unvaccinated or ignoring other public health measures.
“If you have to quarantine multiple times in a semester, it could put your academic success in jeopardy,” she says. “Not only are you missing out on the in-person education that you are paying for now, if you fail classes, you’ll have to take them again — which could put you a semester or more behind on graduating. This could cost students or parents a lot of money, or even mean you aren’t able to finish your degree.”
Vaccination rates among the UW employee and student populations are currently unknown, but are at least 75 percent for full-time benefited employees and 42 percent for students.
Those are the results of online self-reporting to the institution, which are verified. Another survey conducted by UW suggests higher rates — possibly in the 80s for employees and the 60s for students — but as some have pointed out during previous board meetings, those numbers could be subject to biases that cause the numbers to skew higher.
Administrators and others have typically said that the reality is somewhere between the two surveys.
“Our vaccine rates are not bad — some would say pretty good,” Seidel told the board Wednesday. “I have friends at other universities that have requirements for vaccines and they’re over 90 percent vaccinated. But we’re doing relatively well.”
Albany County’s vaccination rate is still less than 50 percent, while the county’s adult vaccination rate is just less than 56 percent. Both of those numbers are high for Wyoming, but low by national standards.