(The latest in a long series on how college campuses are dealing with COVID-19.) I've been watching higher ed COVID-19 dashboards for nearly a year now, and the recent numbers at local campuses honestly look pretty good. (knocks on all available wooden surfaces) I'm not kidding! Case counts are way, way down from a month ago. Clusters aren't clustering like they were in the fall. It's clear from the number ofschoolsthat have announced plans for in-person commencements in May that higher ed generally thinks the worst of the pandemic is behind it. That said, COVID-19 hasn't vanished â far from it. Duke University got swamped by a COVID-19 surge after mostly avoiding it for a semester and a half.Â