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Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by falcolas on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:03PM (#29739283)
So, will you refuse tetanus boosters as well? Flu shots? Malaria, et.al.?

This reluctance to accept medications that have proven to minimize the impact of deadly infections doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by insickness on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:14PM (#29739451)
I may not refuse tetanus and flu shots but I will 100% retain my RIGHT to refuse those shots. It's 100% the responsibility of the government to prove both the utmost necessity and the spread-prevention efficacy of any medical procedure the government forces upon its citizens.
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by basch on Thursday December 30, 2021 @04:43PM (#29741799)
Stanford is a private school. Do they not have the right to self determination and to choose how to build their own community? If they want people whos response to a booster are either "yes please" or "no skin off my back, I have better things to worry about" or "I personally dont agree with this but not a hill worth falling on" then I think that is their prerogative and within their power.
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by falcolas on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:20PM (#29739543)
And society has an equal right to quarantine people who could spread a deadly, infectious disease to protect the vulnerable.

As George Washington himself did.

Whose rights are greater?

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by insickness on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:31PM (#29739690)
> Whose rights are greater?

No one's "rights are greater." This is a false dichotomy. Does the government have a right to force people to take the flu shot? No. If a flu came along that was so deadly that the government wanted to force people to get the flu shot, then the government would need to prove the necessity and the spread-prevention efficacy of that medical procedure.

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by ZoomerCretin on Thursday December 30, 2021 @02:24PM (#29740385)
>Does the government have a right to force people to take the flu shot? No.

If you're talking about the United States, this question has been settled at the federal level by the Supreme Court for over a century. At the state level, the first vaccine mandate was in 1809. Most states have vaccine mandates for children, many of them with only medical exemptions. It's legal. It's not some great infringement on your rights.

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by rsj_hn on Friday December 31, 2021 @03:37AM (#29746087)
> this question has been settled at the federal level by the Supreme Court for over a century.

Right, the Federal government does not have the right to force the public to take a shot, while states may. It may appear that public health is being run at the national level, but really the CDC issues recommendations and many states ignore these recommendations and replace them with their own. Public health is run by the states, but that doesn't mean the state can do whatever it wants. Each state has its own constitution, and its own state supreme court that verifies whether any mandate is lawful, so this is going to depend on the state constitution and local public health laws.

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by peteradio on Thursday December 30, 2021 @02:45PM (#29740623)
> It's not some great infringement on your rights.

The fact that the treatment varies state by state shows that people do consider this to be a right worth retaining, and in high enough populations to hold sway over local Government up to the state level.

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by ZoomerCretin on Thursday December 30, 2021 @04:41PM (#29741784)
>The fact that the treatment varies state by state shows that people do consider this to be a right worth retaining

Yes, we live in an age of mass-indoctrination. If Fox News runs Anti-Food Safety segments 24/7 for months, we're probably going to have a few states that remove punishment/fines/laws for people who prepare food with shit on their hands. That doesn't mean that serving food with shit in it is an inalienable right.

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by peteradio on Friday December 31, 2021 @10:24PM (#29755209)
More likely you end up with farmers who can sell milk according to the buyers desires.
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by shukantpal on Thursday December 30, 2021 @05:09PM (#29742093)
Ironic
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by xdennis on Thursday December 30, 2021 @02:31PM (#29740447)
* George Washington was dealing with smallpox which kills 20—30 % of those infected.

* Quarantines have been used since the middle ages and they were used against people showing symptoms or groups of people likely to have the disease. We haven't had quarantines with covid. We've shut down society as a whole.

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by Jensson on Thursday December 30, 2021 @02:45PM (#29740620)
Omicron spread all throughout the world via vaccinated people at historical record speed. Vaccination is evidently not a good way to prevent spread right now, mandating vaccines to prevent spread therefore doesn't make sense. If you want to prevent spread you mandate a lockdown or similar, not vaccine. Vaccine might help lessen severity, in which case you need to mandate it for populations at risk. But it doesn't make sense to mandate it to prevent spread, since it doesn't.
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by q1w2 on Thursday December 30, 2021 @03:42PM (#29741205)
You cannot conclude your 2nd sentence from your first. The relative rates of serious disease AND the transmission rate have both been demonstrated to be lower for vaccinated and boosted people - even with the Omicron variant.

Vaccines, even when not fully effective, greatly reduce the amount of virus you shed, and thus significantly reduce transmission.

Anecdotes are near-worthless, but I will share that my neighbor got covid. He was vaccinated and boosted. His wife and him felt sick, as did their infant (obviously not vaccinated), for two days. TWO DAYS ONLY. ...and their other two children never contracted it at all - tested negative twice each.

Getting vaccinated reduces disease severity AND transmission.

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by lenkite on Sunday January 02, 2022 @11:37PM (#29777382)
A disease that kills 20-30% of the population halted in its path by the smallpox vaccine which gives IMMUNITY for decades!

The Covid vaccines are fraudulent and more and more people are realising this. The CDC changing the definition of a vaccine from "providing immunity" to "increasing protection" just after Covid-vaccinated people started getting infected shows arm-in-arm corruption with big pharma.

Your 10th booster shot will kill you not save you.

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by peteradio on Thursday December 30, 2021 @02:12PM (#29740193)
George Washington by all accounts was a rebel traitor (in the best way possible). Should we see whatever words of wisdom he had? What would he see in our government today?
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by calpp on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:08PM (#29739360)
We have been over this so many times here: Tetanus and Malaria also affect younger people, median COVID-19 fatality age is over 80. No one criticizes an 80 year old for getting vaccinated. Herd immunity is elusive, as we see in regions with 95% vaxxed.
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by nradov on Friday December 31, 2021 @12:37AM (#29745304)
The Delta and Omicron variants are sufficiently contagious that there will be no significant herd immunity effect. Everyone will eventually be exposed.

https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by vlovich123 on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:14PM (#29739455)
The vaccines help protect you from long COVID and from very serious complications that can form (or even death).

It is very misleading to imply that only old people suffer from that as there are countless stories of “I have a 35 yold friend with no pre-existing conditions who’s fighting for their lives”. If it were only old people the hospital situations would look drastically different and we wouldn’t have capacity issues. We maybe are now better at saving those people than at the start of the pandemic but we’re not perfect yet.

Hopefully the COVID pills coming out to treat it are going to meaningfully reduce the outsized burden anti-vaxx people are putting on the health care system (overwhelmingly, if not even exclusively, the people ending up in hospital due to COVID are unvaccinated)

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by rkk3 on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:58PM (#29740022)
> It is very misleading to imply that only old people suffer from that as there are countless stories of “I have a 35 yold friend with no pre-existing conditions who’s fighting for their lives”

Those stories are breathlessly reported on because they are rare, 2.4% of Covid Deaths in the US are people under the age of 40[1] which is 50% of the US population, it's harder to find data but most of them had whom had other issues or were not direct covid deaths. Covid Risk goes up orders of magnitude by age [2].

[11 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investi...

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by vlovich123 on Thursday December 30, 2021 @06:48PM (#29743047)
Nowhere am I saying that failure to get a vaccine puts you at risk of death. I'm saying they get hospitalized [1].

60-69 yolds had ~2k hospitalizations last week

50-59 yolds had 1.5k hospitalizations last week

40-49 yolds had 1k hospitalizations last week

30-39 yolds had ~1k hospitalizations last week

Thus we see each age range has roughly the same number of hospitalizations. Not sure how this correlates on a per capita basis although in this case it doesn't really matter since the healthcare system is a shared resource.

Why are hospitalizations important? At this point, you dying or having complications from a failure to vaccinate is thankfully mostly your own problem since vaccinations are supremely effective at preventing this regardless of the COVID strain from the looks of it. Overwhelming the medical system and placing an undue burden on it because of refusal to vaccinate is why we're still facing lockdowns due to spikes of variants. Hopefully with the new treatment pill and evolutionary direction Omicron is taking means we're on our way out of the pandemic.

Again, focusing on the mortality when a massive problem is overwhelming our shortstaffed medical system is myopic. 25% of hospitalizations result in an ICU visit [2].

> Patients who were hospitalized more recently with COVID-19 (April to June 2021) were younger (median age of 59 compared with 68) and experienced lower in-hospital death rates (10% compared with 18%) than those who were hospitalized between January 2020 and March 2021.

This indicates the old people are smartly getting vaccinated or dying off. But again, deaths is not the primary problem the unvaccinated have at this point. Primarily they form a reservoir for the virus to mutate and put burden the health care system.

[1] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#new-hospital-admis... [2] https://www.cihi.ca/en/covid-19-hospitalization-and-emergenc...

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by rkk3 on Thursday December 30, 2021 @10:16PM (#29744479)
The fact is that young people are at very low-risk for covid. If you want to bring vaccine status into it, you get way more ROI vaccinating older groups. We've seen Hospitalizations per capita have go from 5 per 100k/day in Jan 2021 to 3 per 100k a day in December 2021[1] because of lower hospitalization rate's in older groups, not from lower rates in younger groups. Hospitalization is also not that clean of a comparison, since a 35yr old who is discharged after a day is taxing the system way less than someone there for a month.

32% of people 25-39 [2] aren't fully vaccinated, sure it would help some if they were but if you really wanted to solve the problem you'd address the large % of older groups that aren't vaccinated and are contributing to the majority of deaths & strain on the health system.

28% of people 40-49

21% of people 50-64

10% of people 65-74

15% of people 75+

[1] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#new-hospital-admis... [2] https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine-trac...

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by s1artibartfast on Thursday December 30, 2021 @03:04PM (#29740825)
Furthermore, that 2.4% is composed nearly entirely of unvaccinated individuals (~99%). Chance of death or hospitalization from covid is exceedingly small for vaccinated individuals <40.

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-s...

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by josephcsible on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:17PM (#29739501)
> there are countless stories of “I have a 35 yold friend with no pre-existing conditions who’s fighting for their lives”

You can't say this about rare serious COVID cases but also point out that the plural of anecdote is not data when other people say similar things about rare serious vaccine side effects.

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by ekianjo on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:47PM (#29739878)
> have proven to minimize the impact of deadly infections

if Omicron is as mild as shown by the current data, you won't be able to show any kind of baseline difference between boosted and unboosted.

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by disgruntledphd2 on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:49PM (#29739910)
> if Omicron is as mild as shown by the current data, you won't be able to show any kind of baseline difference between boosted and unboosted.

That's a massive if to base a health care system on.

Like, look at the incentives. If they over-react and Omicron is much less severe, people will be upset but they'll get over it.

If they under-react, and it turns out to be Delta-level with much more vaccine escape, that will be much, much worse.

And this is one of those un-reversable decisions beloved (or hated, I guess) by Jeff Bezos.

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by lenkite on Sunday January 02, 2022 @11:32PM (#29777354)
I think the Covid vaccines have proven to be utterly ineffective compared to other shots. No one talks about "Covid immunity" via vaccine but the 'immunity' word is overwhelmingly used for other vaccines. Looks like Pfizer/BioNTech made bank and laughing their way while rising in the top billionaires list.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/malaria...

Dec: "The co-founder of BioNTech SE on Thursday joined the world's 500 richest people after the U.K. this week approved use of a Covid-19 vaccine that the German firm created with Pfizer Inc."

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by vmception on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:56PM (#29739995)
This is a good question I've been also trying to get an answer to, and I've never had a reason to ask before now: with the seasonal flu drive are we often reusing a prior season's flu vaccine? I always assumed they developed new ones all the time, is the answer "it depends"?
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by nradov on Friday December 31, 2021 @12:43AM (#29745340)
Seasonal flu vaccines are reformulated every year based on the circulating virus strains. Leftover doses from the previous season are discarded, not reused.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/flushot.htm

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by emteycz on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:08PM (#29739367)
Tetanus booster is once every 10 years or so, isn't it? Flu shots aren't a requirement, are they?
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by falcolas on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:16PM (#29739486)
The time frame for a booster is based on the longevity of its protection.

The flu shot (and many others) are required for some professions. Protection for the vulnerable they interact with.

Opinion: if you don’t want to protect the vulnerable in society, you should refrain from participating in it.

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by vizzah on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:26PM (#29739626)
Aren't the vulnerable already protected with boosters? Where is the logic?
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by earthicus on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:44PM (#29739840)
My vulnerability is that I take immunosuppresants, which makes the vaccines significantly less effective (last I heard a few months ago, fully half of the breakthrough infections of the vaccinated were in the small population of immunosuppressed people).
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by vizzah on Thursday December 30, 2021 @04:49PM (#29741874)
OK, I get your point. It's an ideological dilemma then - you'd prefer as many people around you to be vaccinated and boosted to lessen your chance of getting infected (although, even those boosted could transmit). On the other hand, those younger cohorts getting vaccines mostly to protect the others are subjecting themselves to low, but still tangible risk of getting vaccine complications. So there is some altruism at play and this is something which shouldn't definitely be mandated by the governments. (PS: It's good that very effective pills are now coming to help immunosuppressed).
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by falcolas on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:30PM (#29739681)
Like the flu shots, there are people who legitimately (shorthand for “have a medical reason”) can’t get vaccinated.
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by adgjlsfhk1 on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:46PM (#29739863)
vaccines are more effective the more people have them.
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by tinus_hn on Thursday December 30, 2021 @02:05PM (#29740121)
The tetanus vaccine has been used for over a century, it really is not comparable to a rushed vaccine like those against COVID.
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by cik2e on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:21PM (#29739549)
What doesn't make a lot of sense is comparing vaccines that have been around for ages (tetanus, flu) to ones that were developed like yesterday (COVID, malaria).

I have the COVID vaccine but that doesn't mean I am not concerned about potential long-term effects that we know nothing about. That, and the possibility of original antigenic sin [0] permanently screwing over our ability to mount an effective immune response to novel strains.

What justification is there for pushing a non-sterilizing vaccine, that doesn't prevent spread, on non-vulnerable populations?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_antigenic_sin

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by q1w2 on Thursday December 30, 2021 @03:44PM (#29741217)
Even if it's not sterilizing, it does reduce the spread. Lower viral loads means less virus transmission.
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by basch on Thursday December 30, 2021 @04:46PM (#29741839)
Let's say antigenic sin fears became a reality. Then the short term solution is mass production of a next gen regeneron regencov? Or a different enough vaccine that causes a response?

What leads you to believe long-term effects are possible?

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by blub on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:12PM (#29739417)
It’s not proven how good this booster is. A (preliminary?) study was showing recently that the protection against infection fades away after merely 10 weeks.
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by disgruntledphd2 on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:51PM (#29739928)
Again, this 10 week (the most data they had) suggested that this was only true for Pfizer, but not Moderna.

It's far too early to be sure though.

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by tinus_hn on Thursday December 30, 2021 @02:08PM (#29740150)
But apparently not too early to force others to be the test group.
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by disgruntledphd2 on Thursday December 30, 2021 @02:55PM (#29740733)
Sorry, can you clarify what you mean here?
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by josephcsible on Thursday December 30, 2021 @03:01PM (#29740784)
It sounds to me like "since we don't have the data yet, by mandating it now anyway, we're forcing people to test it".
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by disgruntledphd2 on Friday December 31, 2021 @04:44AM (#29746407)
Sure, but that's not a global thing. I chose to get a booster, and there have been no mandates in my country (and given rates of vaccination, it's unlikely that there will be).
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by tinus_hn on Friday December 31, 2021 @08:57AM (#29748056)
Sorry, how is that relevant as a comment on an article about a school requiring booster shots for all students?
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by falcolas on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:22PM (#29739583)
And? Thats >10 weeks of protection at no monetary cost to you.

Its not some different product, its the same vaccine.

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by ekianjo on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:48PM (#29739890)
> Thats >10 weeks of protection at no monetary cost to you.

monetary costs are not the only costs you pay

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by ALittleLight on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:50PM (#29739912)
When I took the vaccine I was sick for a few days. I don't have any risk factors. I have multiple double vaxxed and non-vaxxed family members for whom covid was a minor cold and none for whom it was serious. I assume that as I am genetically closest to my family members they are a good predictor for how I will fare, if I haven't already had it without knowing it.

Why would I sicken myself for a few days with the next vaccine shot to marginally decrease the odds I will be sick for a few days from covid?

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by blub on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:41PM (#29739800)
The benefits are always balanced against the potential harm.

For young males, the risk of myocarditis from the vaccine may be comparable to that from the disease according to a UK study - until that’s clarified, booster mandates have no place in colleges.

Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by ZoomerCretin on Thursday December 30, 2021 @02:26PM (#29740402)
Myocarditis is only one COVID-19 symptom. The total risk of injury and death is far higher from COVID-19 than the vaccine.
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by blub on Friday December 31, 2021 @02:54AM (#29745915)
We’re talking about already vaccinated individuals which are protected against harm and now should get a booster that’s associated in a study with increased risk of myocarditis. This connection must be studied more before anybody thinks about mandating boosters.
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by qvq on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:41PM (#29739803)
The cost is potential health risks associated with taking the vaccine/booster. We don't know exactly why myocarditis rates are elevated and some people would rather wait for more information.
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by ada1981 on Thursday December 30, 2021 @02:11PM (#29740190)
Do you have a place I can read about myocarditis rates?
Re:Stanford requires booster shots for all students by qvq on Thursday December 30, 2021 @07:34PM (#29743431)
The WHO acknowledges there may be a link between myocarditis and the vaccine.[1]

Sudden cardiac arrest incidents increased in 2020 (vaccine was not officially realeased until Dec. 2020).[2]

I added the second link to show there may be a rise of cardiovascular disease not due to the vaccine. I'm interested in seeing data for 2021.

[1] https://www.who.int/news/item/26-05-2021-gacvs-myocarditis-r...

[2] https://www.heartrhythmjournal.com/article/S1547-5271(21)007...