“students may have intentionally tried to contract COVID-19, lured by blood donation centers that are paying a premium for plasma with COVID-19 antibodies.”
This, in one of the richest countries on the planet - a sign of insatiable greed, or a sign of an unbelievably messed up education system that has milked these students so dry that they have to resort to this (possibly some of both).
(Also reminds me of the Cobra effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect . When creating incentives, be mindful of what you’re actually incentivising.)
This, in one of the richest countries on the planet
This part of my response was prompted by Zvi’s commentary on this story on LessWrong (which is where I came across it):
Certainly I can’t fault the students. If permanent damage is sufficiently infrequent, it makes sense that college students would opt for a college education at the cost of a to-them mostly harmless infection, and if we acted sensibly we could mostly contain such problems (including keeping older professors remote) slash the infections would burn out within a short time anyway if the above graph is any indication. We ask our young to sacrifice four years of their lives while going into debt for some combination of a zero-sum signaling game, networking and learning. Now they should give up the networking and much of the learning, while still going into debt and losing those years?
(from https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2ev2A6e9uy5if4NcP/covid-10-15-playtime-is-over )
