Churning at 60

As we have noted in prior posts, California's weekly new unemployment benefit claims data are stuck around 60,000 per week when something like 40,000 would be normal - at least based on past history. So, it seems as if there is a lot of extra churn in the state's labor market, with people going in and out of employment and filing claims when they go out. (It might be noted that the claims data above refer to "regular" payroll employees and not the "gig" accounts that accounted for much of the fraud in the state's system.) The extra churning may account for the fact that the state's unemployment rate has been consistently higher than the U.S. average during the recovery period.

In any event, as always, the latest data are at https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf.

...at least at UCLA. Indeed, the Bruin carries an article about concerns about testing at various UC campuses, basically focused on inadequacies. But after focusing on other UC campuses, we read:

UCLA and UC San Diego are among the UC campuses with greater COVID-19 testing resources. In January 2021, UCSD became the first UC school to introduce vending machines stocked with free COVID-19 testing kits, according to ABC News.

UCLA followed suit in July and now has 13 COVID-19 vending machines on its campus, according to a university press release. The university offers students two free test kits a week from the vending machines, according to the press release.

However, UCLA students still faced a shortage of tests at the beginning of the quarter.

Nina Do, a fourth-year human biology and society student, said she visited campus in the beginning of winter quarter to take a COVID-19 test. However, Do said she was unable to find a stocked vending machine when she visited campus in the late afternoon.

“I think it’s an algorithm – you have to play it by what you think the (restocking) schedule is like,” Do said.

According to an emailed statement from UCLA spokesperson Bill Kisliuk, UCLA’s demand for COVID-19 tests has more than doubled since the start of winter quarter. The university now averages 30,000 PCR tests per week, Kisliuk added.

Despite her difficulties, Do said she appreciates the convenience of UCLA’s vending machines, adding that the challenge of finding stocked machines has decreased in recent weeks...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2022/01/30/uc-campuses-provide-varying-levels-of-

covid-19-testing-access-to-community-members.

Yours truly can report on his own experience, so far. To come in on Sunday, I first tested at home using a rapid test and got authorization to come on campus. I stopped by a vending machine and acquired the required test that uses saliva rather than a nose swab. There is a web app that goes along with first using the test which is not perfect. At least on my iPhone, there were ads that popped up making it difficult to click on some steps. But it was doable. An email came back indicating I had properly registered.

My own class uses many guest speakers and it appears that the coronavirus rules for guest speakers are sufficiently complicated and time-consuming that it is impractical to bring them on campus. So they will be Zoomed into the classroom. (The reason I went in on Sunday was to test out using Zoom in that classroom including getting the image on the classroom screen.)

Although there have been demands for some kind of hybrid instruction where some students could continue on Zoom while others were in the classroom, without installation of cameras and mikes that operate automatically in every room, there is no simple way to do it. Most classrooms are not so-equipped or, if they are, would require disruptive instructor attention to make sure everything was operating properly, etc.

If you have BruinAlert on your smartphone, you will have started to get alerts about a threat to the UCLA campus around midnight. The alerts indicated that the campus has moved all classes back to online today (Feb. 1) "out of an abundance of caution." Emails also came in, with the most recent one (as of this posting) indicating that the individual involved - a former Dept. of Philosophy lecturer - is not in fact in the UCLA area.

Yesterday, there were threats by someone to various HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) that caused shutdowns of those campuses.

According to an account in the Bruin posted around midnight, at least one class is going to be held in-person despite the warnings and the campus decision to go back to remote learning today.* It is possibly, however, that the decision to stay in-person in that course was later reversed.

Editorial Comment: There will need to be some after-the-fact discussion concerning the "abundance of caution" standard and how specific a threat needs to be before campus instruction is disrupted. Note that the midnight decision seems premature, since classes are not held at that hour. Many students and faculty would not have become aware of the alert - even though it was sent at midnight - until waking up in the morning. By that time, it had been determined that there was not an immediate threat. Yet apparently, the decision to go online could not then be reversed. The ability to disrupt campus life has now been highly publicized, possibly inducing future threats by unbalanced individuals.

As we noted in prior posts related to the coronavirus surge, flipping between online and in-person instruction is potentially highly disruptive and advanced notice - if such a switch has to occur - is advisable. Advance notice is more like a week and not a day or a morning.

From the LA Times: UCLA canceled in-person classes Tuesday after a former lecturer and postdoctoral fellow sent a video referencing a mass shooting and an 800-page

manifesto with “specific threats” to members of the university’s philosophy department Monday. Several emails from department leaders and obtained by The Times inform students and faculty that Matthew Harris made threats toward the philosophy department and people in it. In some of the emails, sent over the course of Monday evening, department heads recommend moving to virtual learning, and multiple instructors did so, alerting students that in-person classes would be canceled...

Harris According to one email sent by a philosophy instructor to students, Harris’ messages included “a video entitled ‘UCLA Philosophy Mass Shooting’ and an 800-page manifesto with specific threats towards some members of our department.”... Harris makes references to race and uses several profanities. He included links to his manifesto and videos, including the video that appeared to threaten a mass shooting. “da war is comin,” he wrote. “forward dis [expletive] to our tha goldhead caucasoid princess.” ...

A philosophy department newsletter from spring 2019 stated Harris would join the university as a postdoctoral fellow in philosophy after completing his dissertation at Duke University. “He works on philosophy of race, personal identity, and related issues in philosophy of mind,” the newsletter stated. Harris was placed on leave last year while campus officials investigated reports that he sent a video with pornographic content to a student...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-01-31/former-ucla-lecturermass-shooting-video-800-page-manifesto .

* https://dailybruin.com/2022/01/31/ucpd-investigates-threats-against-students-facultyfrom-former-ucla-philosophy-researcher.