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Comment by dj_mc_merlin | Hacker News Reader

Why? Do they mandate flu shots too? By this point everyone I know is just living their life as normal and has accepted there's a new seasonal disease. It's not the end of the world, doubly so since students tend to be young obviously.

The amount of people with multiple boosters etc. that have gotten COVID I know is also insane. The efficacy cannot be anywhere near what was claimed, or has deteriorated since for sure. I'm not just misunderstand statistics, there's just _too many_ people I know like that for that to be the case.

As an anecdotal data point though: I got COVID once a year ago and have been perfectly fine otherwise. No long term condition, nothing. Just 3 days of flu like symptoms, but worse. Without the vaccine.

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> Do they mandate flu shots too?

Yes[0]. As well as MMR, TDAP, Hep B, and Chickenpox.

[0] https://huhs.harvard.edu/immunizations#gsc.tab=0

Harvard does not mandate flu shots.

Flu

"Noncompliance with the flu requirement will not impact your ability to register for classes for the summer or fall semester. "

vs COVID:

"Students who are not up-to-date on their COVID vaccine, or other required vaccinations, will have a hold placed on their enrollment."

Incorrect. Read the whole page.

Flu is mandated is mandated for (only) spring term, because it's a seasonal disease and the vaccine is administered in the fall term.

> Students must be compliant with all vaccine requirements in order to register for the spring term.

I am glad they are consistent at least. I personally find the idea of an institution mandating yearly injections of any kind to be an overreach of power. Universities tend to do that kind of stuff, though.

(No, I don't have a problem with MMR/TDAP etc., these are vaccines with a long history that protect against diseases which I'm a lot more scared of than COVID. If there was a new strain of Polio tomorrow and a vaccine for it, I would be the first in line.)

Why are you afraid of the old polio strain? 70% of those who contract it are asymptomatic, and the death rate in the decades before the vaccine was under 1 in 100000… not altogether different from sars-cov-2. To be more scared of polio than Covid seems contradictory.

Paralysis is scary.

Because they're safe and proven effective at reducing death and severity of the disease. Yes your anecdotal data is one thing, this still kills way more people than flu ever did, on a yearly basis.

Now it would be interesting if they mandated this vaccine but not N95 mask wearing, that kinda baffles me.

Remember when the message they were safe and proven to prevent you from getting COVID?

No, I remember the scientists being “it’s amazing, we managed 90% effectiveness at preventing infections, and we would still have gone forward with this if it had only been 50%”.

Which scientists stated that? The vaccine clinical trials only measured rates of severe symptoms and death, and they did well at reducing those. But the initial trials didn't even look at infection rates as an endpoint.

Professor Jennifer Rogers. Here's the transcript of the podcast I listened to: https://www.numberphile.com/s/Statistics-and-Saving-Lives-wi...

Though I had misremembered, it was 95% effective and they would've been happy with 30% (the 50% was a slightly different claim right next to 30%).

There’s no death and severity for healthy young people. Only mild symptoms.

"no" deaths is definitely an overstatement (not hard to find deaths of healthy young people by Googling), but the overall point is valid. Severe consequences of Covid are very rare in the young, and many Western health authorities have found that booster vaccinations aren't warranted for young healthy people because the cost/benefit isn't there.

They can still transmit it. So, still a bad idea if the "healthy young person" has older relatives such as parents.

COVID is a problem for entire societies, tackling it in an individualised, atomised way is going to be super-ineffective.

> The efficacy cannot be anywhere near what was claimed, or has deteriorated since for sure.

It has deteriorated as the virus mutated. I had thought this was widely reported, but now I guess not.

Yes, they mandate the flu shot as well.

More colleges are mandating an assortment of vaccines, most have already mandated vaccines against things like Pertussis in order to reduce the amount of harm it can cause on campus.

No Harvard does NOT mandate the flu shot:

"Noncompliance with the flu requirement will not impact your ability to register for classes for the summer or fall semester. "

Still wrong.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33787054

Yes, they do. On the same page you're quoting they mention that they mandate it for spring quarter registration. They mandate it that way because the flu is seasonal. By the time you need to register it will be shortly before flu season kicks in.

Note that the flu mandate is a very new policy.

I'm not sure when Harvard started, but Massachusetts only started in 2020 after Covid started.

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