Is your freshman getting a booster to fulfill college requirement Fall 22?

[Anonymous]

Booster mandates falling: in addition to Northwestern, Cornell, Duke, SUNY, and UMass, now U Chicago and Princeton have given up boosters for now.

U Chicago gave up the vaccine mandate, with an option to test weekly instead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes. Next question?

This.

I'm so effing tired of all the armchair epidemiologists second-guessing medical recommendations. Do you do the same with your other physicians (no need to answer - well know the answer is no)?

STFU about masks and vax requirements. Either don't do them, and miss some stuff where they are required, or get them and do all of the things you want. No one wants to hear from you anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The big deal is that there is no benefit for OP's kid, w/two shots and two covid infections. Only risk. Forcing it is unethical. There is no basis.

(See eg https://www.fda.gov/media/159007/download #38)

I agree (I'm not the pp you quoted, but I'm the first respondent at 16:41 yesterday.)
But schools made their position on the vaccine known before decision day (May 1.) As a pp noted, a few (like Rice and Vanderbilt) have actually walked back their requirement for a booster (I'm not aware of any schools that did NOT have a booster requirement on May 1, but have since mandated it.)

If it was important to someone to have a choice to not get the booster, they could have applied to many other schools that not only do not require the booster, but do not require the vaccine at all.

Yes! Colleges can set their requirements. You can choose not to attend if you don't want to follow it. Colleges have had vaccination reqs for decades. Some even require Meningitis B vax, others don't. My kid can't attend most universities without the whole slew of vaccinations, similar to what was required in K-12 as well. If you are a Health sciences major, you may have even more reqs. My DC is employed at a company involved in the Healthcare industry, and guess what, since they have to travel to "healthcare sites", they are required to get a TB test done (and follow up with treatment I'd assume if they happen to test positive). It's part of the job reqs. Don't like it, they can find another job. Similarly they are required to be up to date on all other vaccines, including covid and a booster. I for one would prefer anyone I might encounter in healthcare setting to be fully vaxed for all diseases.

+1 from college faculty. Families who don't work in higher ed, use your imagination about the human petri dish that is a college campus. Now multiply that by 100, stop washing your hands, and share your beverage with the 6 nearest people around you, even if you've never met them before. Even before covid, college students were sick *constantly*. Anything you can immunize against, do it, and any healthy behaviors you can promote (including basic things like nutrition and sleep), do it.

As PPs have said, families of rising college freshmen are completely free to decline admissions offers at any time from schools with whose policies (of any kind) they disagree. And absolute truth to tell, as inconvenient or expensive or disappointing or frustrating or bait-and-switch or wasteful as it might seem, older students are also completely free to take a gap year or transfer out if they don't want their school's covid mandates. No one is forcibly trapped in college.

What subject do you teach in college?

Yes, college campuses are Petri dishes. However, the Covid vaccine and the Covid booster do NOT prevent transmit on of Covid. We have known that for a long time now.

How does mandating a Covid vaccine or booster help prevent the spread of Covid? It does not.

This isn't true. Vaccines and boosters reduce the spread of Covid 19.


One study of households in Scotland found that vaccination reduces transmission by 40-50% among household members.

https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o298

Yes, it does not reduce the transmission to 0% but it greatly reduces it. If everyone had just gotten vaxed initially, covid would not have been allowed to mutate as much and we would be in a different place right now. Measles used to be a thing of the past in the USA (and much of the world), but as more people don't vax their kids, we have seen more outbreaks in the past 15 years. Same with Whooping cough---know a fully vaxed teen that had a nasty case 8 years ago when it went rampant in our community, not to mention how dangerous it was to any of the younger kids who got it who were not yet old enough to be fully vaxed against it.
Herd immunity is a real thing, despite some people not wanting to believe in science.

Hilarious. If you (and the CDC/FDA) beloved in science, they would acknowledge and honor natural immunity, as they do in other parts of the world.

And, even your hero Fauci quit pushing the idea of hers immunity about a year and a half ago.

Fauci quit pushing it when it became apparent that a significant portion of those in USA don't believe in science enough to get the vax.

Your comment makes absolutely no sense.

Makes perfect sense. Vaccinations stopped being recommended as publicly as it was b/c a large segment of the American population are too dumb to get something that may prevent them from dying or having long term health consequences. But given there are some that still believe MMR causes autism, this is not surprising.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Booster mandates falling: in addition to Northwestern, Cornell, Duke, SUNY, and UMass, now U Chicago and Princeton have given up boosters for now.

U Chicago gave up the vaccine mandate, with an option to test weekly instead.

Colleges cannot ethically mandate without transmission prevention, though that didn't stop them last winter. It is interesting to watch which schools are trying to (finally!) walk back the mandates/get out in front of this, whereas Harvard and MIT haven't budged just yet.

Word is that Cornell only kept its primary series mandate due to intense local pressure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The big deal is that there is no benefit for OP's kid, w/two shots and two covid infections. Only risk. Forcing it is unethical. There is no basis.

(See eg https://www.fda.gov/media/159007/download #38)

I agree (I'm not the pp you quoted, but I'm the first respondent at 16:41 yesterday.)
But schools made their position on the vaccine known before decision day (May 1.) As a pp noted, a few (like Rice and Vanderbilt) have actually walked back their requirement for a booster (I'm not aware of any schools that did NOT have a booster requirement on May 1, but have since mandated it.)

If it was important to someone to have a choice to not get the booster, they could have applied to many other schools that not only do not require the booster, but do not require the vaccine at all.

Yes! Colleges can set their requirements. You can choose not to attend if you don't want to follow it. Colleges have had vaccination reqs for decades. Some even require Meningitis B vax, others don't. My kid can't attend most universities without the whole slew of vaccinations, similar to what was required in K-12 as well. If you are a Health sciences major, you may have even more reqs. My DC is employed at a company involved in the Healthcare industry, and guess what, since they have to travel to "healthcare sites", they are required to get a TB test done (and follow up with treatment I'd assume if they happen to test positive). It's part of the job reqs. Don't like it, they can find another job. Similarly they are required to be up to date on all other vaccines, including covid and a booster. I for one would prefer anyone I might encounter in healthcare setting to be fully vaxed for all diseases.

+1 from college faculty. Families who don't work in higher ed, use your imagination about the human petri dish that is a college campus. Now multiply that by 100, stop washing your hands, and share your beverage with the 6 nearest people around you, even if you've never met them before. Even before covid, college students were sick *constantly*. Anything you can immunize against, do it, and any healthy behaviors you can promote (including basic things like nutrition and sleep), do it.

As PPs have said, families of rising college freshmen are completely free to decline admissions offers at any time from schools with whose policies (of any kind) they disagree. And absolute truth to tell, as inconvenient or expensive or disappointing or frustrating or bait-and-switch or wasteful as it might seem, older students are also completely free to take a gap year or transfer out if they don't want their school's covid mandates. No one is forcibly trapped in college.

What subject do you teach in college?

Yes, college campuses are Petri dishes. However, the Covid vaccine and the Covid booster do NOT prevent transmit on of Covid. We have known that for a long time now.

How does mandating a Covid vaccine or booster help prevent the spread of Covid? It does not.

This isn't true. Vaccines and boosters reduce the spread of Covid 19.


One study of households in Scotland found that vaccination reduces transmission by 40-50% among household members.

https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o298

Yes, it does not reduce the transmission to 0% but it greatly reduces it. If everyone had just gotten vaxed initially, covid would not have been allowed to mutate as much and we would be in a different place right now. Measles used to be a thing of the past in the USA (and much of the world), but as more people don't vax their kids, we have seen more outbreaks in the past 15 years. Same with Whooping cough---know a fully vaxed teen that had a nasty case 8 years ago when it went rampant in our community, not to mention how dangerous it was to any of the younger kids who got it who were not yet old enough to be fully vaxed against it.
Herd immunity is a real thing, despite some people not wanting to believe in science.

Hilarious. If you (and the CDC/FDA) beloved in science, they would acknowledge and honor natural immunity, as they do in other parts of the world.

And, even your hero Fauci quit pushing the idea of hers immunity about a year and a half ago.

Fauci quit pushing it when it became apparent that a significant portion of those in USA don't believe in science enough to get the vax.

Your comment makes absolutely no sense.

Makes perfect sense. Vaccinations stopped being recommended as publicly as it was b/c a large segment of the American population are too dumb to get something that may prevent them from dying or having long term health consequences. But given there are some that still believe MMR causes autism, this is not surprising.

Exactly