[Limited to areas with at least 50,000 people. Recent cases are those announced in the last two weeks, but in some cases may have taken place earlier because of delays in reporting. New York, by the way, ranks 520 on this chart.]

Of these twenty metro areas, at least nine are home to universities that have recently reopened to on-campus students: Ames (Iowa State U.); Iowa City (U. of Iowa); Auburn-Opelika (Auburn U.); Milledgeville (Georgia College); Statesboro (Georgia Southern U.); Pullman (Washington State U.); Oxford (U. of Mississippi); Tuscaloosa (U. of Alabama); Lawrence (U. of Kansas).  In a continuing roundup of reopening outbreaks Inside Higher Ed reports more than 500 cases as of Friday at Georgia College, 8 percent of its student body; more than a thousand positive tests at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa (where faculty have been forbidden to discuss the outbreak); and over 600 at the University of Iowa. College towns not on the Times list but also affected include Illinois State in Normal, with over 500 positive tests; 105 positives at SUNY Oneonta; and 103 at Temple University.

Ames and Iowa City are now the two worst local COVID outbreaks in the world!  Here is how Pat Rynard, writing for Iowa Starting Line, reports the situation:

Iowa’s exploding COVID-19 outbreaks at state universities in Ames and Iowa City are now disasters that can only be fully measured on a global scale. Ames holds the distinction this morning as the worst coronavirus outbreak in the entire United States, while Iowa City is at third on the list [Update: on Monday, Iowa City climbed to the number two spot in the list, while Ames remained at the top]. The per capita rates are worse than any individual country in the world, and appear to surpass any state in some of the other currently hardest-hit countries.

According to the New York Times COVID-19 tracker, Ames has had 956 new cases in the past two weeks, while Iowa City has counted 1,489. In the past seven days, Story County’s per capita infection rate is 797 per 100,000 people, with Johnson County coming in at 787 per 100,000.

Those represent some of the worst, if not the absolute worst, local spread in the world. It is far more than any individual country’s current per capita spread. Some tiny nations, like Aruba (417 cases per 100,000 population in last week) and the Turks and Caicos (284 per 100,000) currently sit at the top of the world’s nation per capita rates, though that’s in part due to their small size. Peru and Colombia have 157 and 150 per 100,000 recent spread, respectively. . . .

Where does responsibility for this rest?

Many of America’s colleges and universities have proven to be fully unprepared for students’ return, choosing to offer vague assurances over the summer to get students and, importantly, their tuition and residence money back on campus. The second-worst city is Auburn, Alabama, where Auburn University has seen a swift outbreak.

But the incompetence of Gov. Kim Reynolds and leaders at Iowa’s two largest universities, as well as the reckless irresponsibility of many of their returning students who have packed bars and house parties, represent a global embarrassment.

On Friday, the University of Iowa reported 500 new positive COVID-19 cases from students. Johnson County’s positivity rate on Friday was a disastrous 55.5%, while Story County’s Friday positivity rate was even worse at 65.5%. That means that well over half of the people who take a test are testing positive. Gov. Kim Reynolds has received significant criticism for setting a 15% positivity rate as the metric for deciding whether local K-12 schools can go online-only for a time.

After scenes of massive student parties the week prior, Reynolds ordered the closure of bars and nightclubs in Story, Johnson, Black Hawk, Polk, Dallas and Linn counties. But the damage had already been done.

The University of Iowa warned late this past week of possible discipline measures for students found at this point to attend a gathering of more than ten people off campus. They also began offering testing for students after initially not doing so to start the semester, believing a negative test would give a student a false sense of security. That did not seem to stop over 600 students from contracting the virus as of the end of this week — and that’s just the number who have self-reported.

Gov. Reynolds has ordered bars closed in six counties, but yesterday, according to the Des Moines Register, the White House coronavirus task force — yes, the Trump White House — warned state leaders that bars should be closed in 61 counties and all students subjected to mandatory testing.  A week earlier the task force urged Iowa to require mask-wearing statewide. Reynolds repeatedly rebuffed such suggestions, saying that such mandates are unenforceable and that she trusts Iowans to do the right thing voluntarily.  The task force also recommended the state “support a uniform case reporting process for institutions of higher education (IHE) and reporting of this data on public facing dashboard, including on the state dashboard.” The state currently does not provide for uniform reporting. Is it any wonder that some have begun referring to Reynolds as “demon Kim?”

Unfortunately, more stories like this are likely, and not just at the institutions listed above.  Take, for another example, the University of Michigan, scheduled to reopen shortly, over strident faculty objections.  Here are excerpts from an anonymous op-ed that appeared last week in the campus newspaper, the Michigan Daily:

Listening to the University of Michigan’s President Mark Schlissel for the last five months, I am shocked by the degree to which a Trump-like disregard for truth has overpowered our institution. In Donald Trump’s America, obvious lies are told without consequence, and unwelcome truths are silenced to avoid confronting inconvenient or unprofitable inevitabilities. Watching Schlissel mislead and lie to reopen the campus, I’ve asked myself: has truth become meaningless here, too?

The answer is yes. For the past four years, I’ve held out hope that our institution could serve as a respite from the madness of Trumpian rule. I believe that despite its flaws, the university remains the most important institution in society for its contributions to freedom, democracy and reason. But I was wrong to believe we could avoid the deterioration and rot that has run through our country. Now Schlissel runs our college like Trump runs America: with dishonest impunity, at grave risk to us all.

President Schlissel often reminds us that he is a scientific authority. He told us we could reopen in-person “while maintaining the same level of safety we’d be experiencing if we were fully remote” and bragged that he has “the best research.” But he ignored requests from thousands of faculty, staff and students to see this “best research.” He refused to share the science behind his decision to call 30,000 students from all corners of the world back to campus in the middle of an uncontrolled pandemic, even after admitting we lack sufficient testing capacity.

President Schlissel said testing played a harmful role in the AIDS crisis, so we shouldn’t pursue more testing now. But a legendary AIDS activist called this the most egregious lie he’s heard this year.

President Schlissel demeaned worker demands for widespread testing as “science fiction” that was “not essential.” But a study out of Harvard and MIT said there was no way to prevent a near-total outbreak without testing everyone on campus every two days. Another Harvard expert said Schlissel showed “a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of testing.”

President Schlissel proclaimed the University’s efforts were informed by our top public health experts. But a U-M respiratory infectious disease expert told The Michigan Daily that none of the colleagues she’s spoken with believe the University’s reopening plan is safe, and top experts nationwide harshly criticized Schlissel’s “lack of commitment to keep[ing] everybody safe.”

President Schlissel blamed students for forgetting their ethical responsibility to our community. His office placed culpability for controlling the virus’s spread squarely on their shoulders — if they didn’t avoid hooking up altogether, the outbreak would be their fault. But in July, his office failed to release a report from its own COVID-19 Ethics Committee that expressed “with urgency” that the U-M administration’s plans to reopen were unsafe and the negative consequences were predictable. The suppressed report leaked on social media in late August, after most students returned to campus.

President Schlissel lists diversity, equity and inclusion among his top priorities. But U-M’s Chief Diversity Officer sat on that ethics committee, and the suppressed report emphasized that “communities of color and other vulnerable people will be the hardest hit” by the University’s actions. . . .

President Schlissel claimed he “didn’t know how to interpret” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s call to all state universities to close their campuses and tell students to stay home. But her words were clear.

President Schlissel called U-M a “family.” But he admitted that the University may fire its most vulnerable staff members and dismissed the idea of using the $10 billion endowment to protect workers, asserting that new construction projects will take precedence over existing staff.

All of this provides plenty of reason to worry, but we now come to perhaps the most troubling development of all. President Schlissel said he is guided by U-M’s values as a public institution. But when the decision was made to reopen, U-M’s Board of Regents was chaired by one of Ann Arbor’s largest landlords, Ron Weiser — a billionaire Trump megadonor who has given more than $100M to U-M in the last six years. He closed a new $30M gift within days of U-M’s decision to reopen. In one of the biggest conflicts of interest imaginable between public health and private wealth, Weiser’s company McKinley, which he founded and of which he is majority owner, stands to take a financial hit if students didn’t come back and pay rent.

To sum things up, President Schlissel said this would be a “public health informed in-residence semester,” but the public health experts are upset and afraid. Thousands of community members are upset and afraid. And our megadonor landlord regent is satisfied that he’ll profit from the students told to return to campus by President Schlissel.

People will soon begin dying avoidable deaths from COVID-19 and the University will be culpable. Why did it come to this? Thousands of us were shouting warnings and demanding answers all summer, but we were ignored, silenced, made to feel powerless in our isolation. . . .

Of course, we’re already hearing that it’s all the fault of those irresponsible bar-hopping, party-going college kids.  Yet what mixed messages those students have received!  As one Iowa twitter user wrote, “We spent six months telling young people they were either immune or wouldn’t get sick, and now we’re threatening to take things away if they test positive.  This is how ‘adults’ drive an illness underground.”  But here’s how one first-year student sees it:

Illinois resident James, 18, made his decision on which college to attend in March, back near the outset of the pandemic in the U.S.

The northwest suburban Chicago teenager chose Miami University in Oxford, Ohio — a school that has now pushed back in-person class until Sept. 21 because of the pandemic.

Since Aug. 17, James has been taking online classes from home, all while watching some of his best friends — new University of Iowa attendees — meet people and party with no restrictions in Iowa City.

So, James decided to join in.

“I went up [to Iowa City] on Wednesday and came back Friday. Since we don’t have class for a while, I thought I’d go visit my friends,” said James, who preferred his last name not be used so as to not run afoul of his college, in an interview with Starting Line. . . .

“I was thinking that it’s kind of odd that you can be so casual there,” James said. “I could have been there for months and I kid you not, nobody would have known I was there. I was shocked. I [said to my friend], ‘Are you sure I can come?’”

“I thought I’d at least have to pull some trickery to get in, but I didn’t have to do anything. I wasn’t slick either, I didn’t have a duffel bag. I brought like a mini roller bag and nobody said anything. And I didn’t see any administration.” . . .

University President Bruce Harreld has maintained a position of “personal responsibility” to combat COVID-19 on campus — by urging students to wash their hands, wear face coverings and social distance. The stance has been met with concern over its leniency.

The UI freshman who James visited requested to remain anonymous, but said he moved into Catlett Residence Hall just over a week ago. Like many others hailing from Illinois, the student has enjoyed his newfound freedom away home, in a place subject to looser COVID-19 guidelines.

“Honestly, people aren’t scared. There’s a few, but most people, if they could, they’d still go out,” the student said. “It’s definitely more people that like their freedom and want to party instead of quarantining.”

Approximately 5,594 of the UI’s students come from Illinois, according to a 2019 profile of all UI students. The UI freshman who hosted James said that the vast majority of people on his floor are Illinois residents, most of which have been socializing together in dorm rooms and frequented the bars before they closed last Thursday.

Around eight or nine people on the floor have tested positive for COVID-19, he said.

There have been other people who have friends coming from out of town to the dorms as well, the UI student said, including a family friend whose high school-aged sister came to visit her brother, another UI attendee from the Chicago area.

James said he expected some pushback from the University regarding his stay on campus. He thought the trip would be like the experience of one his friends whose school is also postponed, and has been visiting Illinois State University on the weekends. But the friend needs to borrow keys or sneak into on-campus living in order to stay.

“I was shocked at Iowa. My friends called the people that handle parking at the University to ask about overnight parking for a visitor, and a woman gave them all of the information I would need,” James said. “They didn’t ask where I was coming from or anything. I just parked, walked in, and not even a comment.”

But what surprised James most was the lack of testing on campus.

“He was mostly amazed that we don’t have to test here, and all the other schools are testing two, three times a week,” said the UI student, who noted that friends from home at schools like the University of Illinois are back on campus too, though testing is required.

“You don’t have to test here. I would like to test, like at least twice a week. A couple kids who live near us, they couldn’t get one here, it was all filled up,” he said. “So they drove all the way to Des Moines to get a test. They called student health, but couldn’t anything until much later in the week.”

James said that Miami University administration emailed him on Friday with news that every student will be required to get a COVID-19 test each week in Oxford, with online correspondence for testing sign-up.

“You’re required to be tested, even if you’re asymptomatic. And they’re going to have a screening for asymptomatic people,” James said.

He also said Miami University has been good about corresponding with students and parents about protocol once they’re back. On Friday, the school made students aware of what back-to-school processes would look like, which is a stark difference from how UI students says their university communicates with its community.

“We haven’t had to test here once. Unless you have symptoms or something,” said the UI student. “They’re communicating to us a little, but way more than they are with our parents. I think it’s the parents who are more nervous because they’re not really getting anything.”

And then there’s this tweet by right-wing mouthpiece Ben Shapiro, once touted as a sort of kinder, gentler Milo Yiannopoulos: “Media must stop treating increased infections among non-susceptible populations as a problem. They are not. They are part of the solution, since they lead to herd immunity. Twenty-year-old students getting covid at universities, isolated from the most vulnerable, is not a crisis.”  Never mind that young people get this disease too and some even die from it, while others will grapple with the health consequences of their infection for decades.  Moreover, those students have families, they travel, they come into contact with professors, custodians, cafeteria workers and others.  But apparently that’s the point — let these young people be the heralds of the new quack “cure,” replacing hydroxychoroquine and bleach: herd immunity.  Shapiro is only regurgitating a line that is now, apparently, welcomed in the White House.  For herd immunity to succeed, scientists calculate that about 65 to 70 percent of the population would need to become infected. In the United States, it would likely require over 2 million deaths to reach a 65 percent threshold of herd immunity, assuming the virus has a 1 percent fatality rate, according to the Washington Post.

Shapiro is certainly assigning those non-susceptible students a big task.

And we’re only at the start of the academic year, with many, if not most, schools not even open yet.