RR Phantom
Location : Wasted Space Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
| Subject: Stanford to International Students: Get the Booster or Face Deportation Fri Apr 01, 2022 5:30 pm | |
| The best universities in the world are supposed to be bastions of scientific reasoning. Instead, during the pandemic, they instituted policies that are at odds with basic principles of public health. This includes, unfortunately, Stanford University, where I am an international graduate student in the PhD program in Physics.
This spring, Stanford instituted a requirement that all students be vaccinated or else face an "enrollment hold" which restricts their ability to complete classes, progress on degrees, get financial aid or even live on campus. Though the university was not explicit, these restrictions on the unboosted amount to effective expulsion from the university.
COVID is a disease that discriminates by age. Nearly 80 percent of COVID-19 related deaths in the U.S. have occurred among people 65 or older, and young people like me are relatively spared from the risk of hospitalization and death if infected. While bad outcomes can still happen, the odds are in line with other risks in my own life that I happily take.
Because of this discrepancy, COVID vaccines are most important for the older population. The vaccines are very effective in reducing the risk of severe disease and death upon COVID infection, with the greatest absolute risk reduction for the older population. By the same token, the vaccine is much less beneficial for young people like me.
While the vaccine is safe for use with a relatively low risk of side effects, there is an established risk of myocarditis for younger people—especially young men like me. The medical literature suggests that somewhere between 1 in 6,000 and 1 in 10,000 young vaccinated adolescent boys and young men develop the heart condition as a consequence. Many who develop the condition end up in the hospital and face a lengthy convalescence. Some die. The risk of this condition increases with the number of vaccine doses a person has received, with the greatest risk coming from the booster shot.
.https://www.newsweek.com/stanford-international-students-get-booster-face-deportation-opinion-1693073 |
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