BY KAREN BOSSICK

Trying to anticipate what classes will look like in the fall is like hugging Jell-O, says the new College of Southern Idaho president.

“It keeps changing, keeps morphing, and it’s hard to handle the definition of what this looks like because  we don’t know what the pandemic will look like in the fall,” Dr. Dean Fisher told KMVT this week.

That said, it will include more online courses, one-way hallways and staggered class times so not everyone is congested in hallways.

IT PAYS TO WEAR A FACE MASK

Want to make a quick buck? Caesars in Las Vegas is handing out $20 to gamblers who are wearing facemasks inside its five reopened hotel-casinos.

Meanwhile, some of the buffets are starting to reopen in Vegas. But diners are not filling their own plates. At Wynn’s buffet, the first to reopen, diners order from the table. You can order an unlimited number of plates from a menu featuring more than 90 items, and you can order as much as you can consume within two hours.

Other buffets are switching to cafeteria-style dining or prepackaged, grab-and-go dishes, according to The Points Guy.

A WHOPPER

A new study suggests that as many as 8.7 million Americans were infected with the coronavirus in March, but more than 80 percent were never diagnosed.

Researchers based their findings on people who went to doctors with influenza-like illnesses that were never diagnosed as coronavirus, influenza or any of the other viruses that usually circulate in winter, according to CNN.

It’s unclear whether the number accounts for those who never went to the doctor or sought testing.

COVID WILDFIRE

Dr. Michael Osterholm, director for Center for Infectious Disease Research at the University of Minnesota, told NBC’s Meet the Press that COVID-19 will rage “like a forest fire” in the United States, since the country has no clear plan to deal with it and has regressed to a dismissive pre-pandemic attitude.

“Wherever there is wood to burn, this fire is going to burn. And, right now, we have a lot of susceptible people, he said, adding that other nations have done a much better job of stopping the spread.

Health officials across the world are saying the same.

“You could say we’ve put out the first major fire but the wood is still smoldering,” said Steven Van Gucht, who chairs Belgium’s scientific committee on coronavirus.

“One mistaken gust of wind and the fire could flare up to its full strength,” he told the Associated Press.

THEIRS IS NOT A COUNTERFEIT RECOVERY

The Puget Sound town of Tenino, Wash., population 1,884, has spelled pandemic recovery with wooden money.

Town mayor Wayne Fournier set aside $10,000  to give out to low-income residents hurt by the pandemic. And, instead of using Uncle Sam’s currency, he printed his own currency on thin sheets of wood designed for use only in Tenino.

Kind of like Hailey’s Chamber Bucks, the wooden currency ensures that residents use the money for food, gas, daycare and other essentials only in Tenino, rather than outside the community. Town businesses submit the wooden notes they receive to the city, turning them back into cash.

CARRIERS WITH THE MOSTEST

A recent study showed that people who have yet to start feeling sick have the highest amount of virus in their bodies. Some health officials say they could account for a quarter of new infections.

LONELINESS COMPOUNDS COVID

Good thing the Senior Connection is getting ready to reopen. A new study shows that lonely people are 45 percent more at risk for mortality—and the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated that problem, especially among seniors.

So that begs the question: To social distance or not to social distance?!

COMPLICATED LOCKDOWN STRATEGIES

Leaders around the world are eyeing different strategies to address future surges of the coronavirus without hitting the shutdown button, according to Politico magazine. In Europe they’re looking at alternating 50-day strict lockdowns followed by 30 days of opening followed by more lockdowns as needed.

Israelis are looking at two-week cycles of four-day workweeks and school weeks followed by 10 days of voluntary quarantine. The idea: Even if people contract the disease during the two-week period the quarantine would reduce the infection rate below 1, which would prevent wide-scale outbreaks.