On Tuesday,  , reports surfaced , that 48 colleges across the country continue to need potential students to get the COVID- 19 killed for admission, nearly a year after the crisis was declared over by Congress. Politicians and policy experts are decrying the continuous mandates as unfair, unnecessary, overly stressful, and potentially harmful.
The , list , of schools requiring the picture, which is maintained by the No College Mandates business, includes generally private colleges, with a few notable exceptions for as Johns Hopkins University.
Following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s new revision , of its COVID- 19 guidelines that suggests staying at home for 24 hours following a fever ( which had formerly been five days ), Harvard University , dropped , its COVID- 19 shot requirement in first March, with a number of other smaller colleges also dropping their mandate in subsequent weeks.
The College Fix has reported that nearly 100 colleges required COVID- 19 shots as of last summer, and the number has remained low ever since.
Still, four dozen schools continue to maintain a requirement, which has led one congressman to , publicly call for an end , to all shot mandates nationwide.
” I am on the committee of jurisdiction, so we do have oversight responsibilities given the vast amount of funding that goes into higher education”, Rep. Kevin Kiley, R- Calif., told The Epoch Times on Tuesday. ” I believe there are options we could take from a legislative perspective, including by funding, to stop this kind of unscientific flaunting that lacked any hint of rational thought,” he said.
He went on to characterize COVID- 19 shot requirements as “discrimination” that is “unfair, unjust, and unnecessary”.
New Jersey state Sen. Declan O’Scanlon, a Republican, was more explicit in his denunciation of shot mandates, calling for Rutgers University to be stripped of its state funding.
O’Scanlon remarked,” It’s difficult to put into words how ridiculous and irrational the vaccination policy at Rutgers University is.” ” The 2024- 2025 semester is just around the corner and the administrators at Rutgers still insist that all students, faculty, and staff receive the COVID- 19 vaccine—a policy that has no basis in science whatsoever. In fact, the entire policy is anti- science”.
Studies have shown that the COVID- 19 shot does not prevent infection or transmission, and the CDC itself , admits , that “vaccinated people sometimes get infected with the virus that causes COVID- 19”.
Studies have  , also shown , that natural immunity through previous infection is “equivalent” to the shot in preventing future infection. One , study  , even found that” the incidence of COVID infection was higher in vaccine recipients … than in individuals previously infected”.
In addition, studies of the side effects of the COVID- 19 shot continue to raise concerns. A , study  , published in February looked at 99 million vaccinated individuals from around the globe, which” confirmed pre- established safety signals for myocarditis, pericarditis, Guillain- Barré syndrome, and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis. There were also identified additional potential safety indicators that needed to be investigated further.
According to Fordham University professor Nicholas Tampio in a recent , op-ed, the age of peak risk for myocarditis is young adults between the ages of 16 and 17 years old.
As , noted , by The Epoch Times, according to the Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System database, “COVID- 19 shots have been named the primary suspect in over 1.5 million adverse event reports”. However, a “FDA-funded study out of Harvard found that VAERS cases represent fewer than 1 % of vaccine adverse events,” which is almost certainly much higher in real terms.
Policy experts are also making alarm over how the COVID- 19 shot mandates represent pointless barriers to getting a college education.
” The number of publicly funded universities that are still requiring a shot is very worrisome”, Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow at the Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand, adding:
Why make it another obstacle for the students who want to attend college close to home and pay in-state tuition by requiring a controversial vaccine for a disease that does n’t have a significant impact on their age group? Looking through the list of the 48 remaining, many are private colleges and too many have religious affiliations. The sooner we can get this list to zero, the better! Congratulations to the 536 colleges that NEITHER required the vaccine. They ought to be commended for upholding their integrity and placing the highest priority on student health and medical freedom. They did n’t stop students from getting vaxxed but they did n’t force the issue.
The higher education reform initiative led by the America First Policy Institute, Jonathan Pidluzny, expressed further concern about the likely negative effects that COVID- 19 shot requirements will have on free speech.
He told The Washington Stand,” There is no public health justification for higher education’s mandates for the COVID-19 vaccine.” ” It is an empty political gesture. But it also reveals something about the university that is significant: Administrative leaders have renounced their positions to far-left activists.
” Students who attend those institutions can expect four years of anti-intellectual nonsense,” from shoutdowns and bias response teams to microaggression training camps. It would be difficult to find a better way to tell prospective students that a university is more interested in empowering them to become responsible adults who can think for themselves rather than in empowering them to have top-down control over their behavior and thought.
Originally published by The Washington Stand
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