More Than 100 Colleges Are Still Enforcing Vaccine Mandates: Report

 More than 100 colleges and universities are still enforcing COVID vaccine mandates for students — some three years out from the start of the pandemic.

A report from No College Mandates lists 104 colleges and universities still requiring COVID vaccinations, including Harvard University, Johns Hopkins, Rutgers University, DePauw University, Sarah Lawrence College, University of Pittsburgh, and San Diego State University.

According to COVID policies outlined on some of these schools’ websites, staff and faculty are sometimes required to be vaccinated, too, The Daily Wire has reviewed. Additionally, some of the schools permit religious or medical exemptions.

No College Mandates brands itself as a group of “concerned parents, doctors, nurses, professors, students and other college stakeholders working towards the common goal of ending COVID-19 vaccine mandates.” The site has additionally compiled a list of more than 1,200 schools with details on specific COVID vaccine policies.

Some colleges and universities have only recently discontinued their vaccine requirements. For example, 64 New York state schools, all part of the SUNY system, dropped the COVID vaccine mandate in April of this year.

Some schools even mandated COVID booster shots for students as of last year. One young woman, Diamond Ellie Puentes, was abruptly expelled from Union College in April 2022 after she requested a medical exemption to the COVID booster shot. Puentes, who became ill after taking the second dose of the Pfizer COVID vaccine, is now suing Union College over her treatment and expulsion.

Research on the relatively new COVID vaccines is still being conducted. Harvard and Yale scientists, for example, are reportedly studying a condition dubbed “Long Vax.”

 

One of those researchers, Yale University cardiologist Harlan Krumholz, said he was hesitant to conduct these studies because he didn’t want the “anti-vaccine” movement to seize on these findings, but he ultimately decided it was his obligation as a scientist to have an open mind.

Moreover, young men face an elevated risk of heart inflammation after getting the COVID vaccine, according to a leading medical expert.

Dr. Marty Makary, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and an oncology surgeon at the school’s affiliated hospital, highlighted a study from Cedars Sinai that found a 30% increase in heart attack deaths among adults between the ages of 25 and 44 during the first two years of the COVID pandemic. One theory is that the uptick could be the result of the virus itself, but Makary, speaking to “Morning Wire” in February, said there’s evidence that the vaccine could be to blame.

“We did not see the uptake before the vaccine was rolled out, but young people were primarily affected around that same time, as well,” Makary told “Morning Wire.” “The state of Florida did their own study, looking at heart attacks after the vaccine in particular, and found that there was an 81% increase in sudden death from heart attacks in the months following the vaccine compared to baseline rates. So many people do believe that the vaccine is one of the causes of heart problems in young people.”