Johns Hopkins professor slams elite colleges for 'anti-scientific and cruel' COVID policies that subject students to 10 days of isolation, OUTDOOR mask mandates and weekly PCR testing - despite death rate for their age group being just 0.001%

 A Johns Hopkins University medical professor slammed America's elite universities - including those in the Ivy League - for 'anti-scientific and cruel' COVID policies that ignore how little risk the virus actually poses to college students.

Dr. Marty Markay blamed groupthink at such higher learning institutions as  Georgetown, Cornell, Princeton, UMass and Emerson for creating undue harm on the mental health of college students, in an article published on Bari Weiss' Common Sense substack, 

Over the last six months, Markay wrote, the risk of a person 15 to 24 dying of COVID was 0.001 percent - and those who did die were unvaccinated with a comorbidity.

Despite the staggering low risk of death, some colleges continue to require students who test positive to remain isolated for 10 days - even after the CDC cut the isolation period in half.  Others have both indoor and outdoor mask mandates, and impose weekly testing despite the national shortage of test kits.  

'At these institutions of higher learning and thousands more, science is supposedly held in the highest esteem. So where is the scientific support for masking outdoors? Where is the scientific support for constantly testing fully vaccinated young people? Where is the support for the confinement of asymptomatic, young people who test positive for a virus to which they are already immune on a campus of other immune people?' Markay wrote.

'The data simply do not justify any of it.' 

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At Georgetown, students who test positive for COVID are ordered to stay in a room in a designated building where they spend 10 days in confinement. Pakistani student Varsha Thebo, 27, is pictured here attending her online graduation ceremony last year

In fact, Markay wrote, colleges could be putting healthy students at risk by mandating vaccines and booster shots after a study found that as many as 1 in 1,860 men 18-24 years old developed myocarditis after the second shot.

'Current data actually tips the risk to benefit analysis in favor of not boosting young healthy people. Of course, that data could change in the future, at which time we may need to shift our strategy. But at the moment it is not compelling,' Markay wrote. 

In a New England Journal of Medicine study of 136 people who developed myocarditis, two cases were critical, and one 22-year-old died.

Meanwhile, another study found that in Israel there were no COVID deaths among double vaccinated people 16 to 29 without a booster between July 30 and October 10.

There is, however, a risk to a student's mental health, Markay argued, citing a study by The Jed Foundation, a nonprofit that combats adolescent suicide, which found that over the course of 2020, 31 percent of parents said their children's mental health was worse than before the pandemic.

In June, the CDC also found that the proportion of mental health–related emergency hospital visits among adolescents aged 12–17 years increased 31 percent in 2020 when compared to the rate in 2019.

The US Surgeon General has since declared a mental health crisis among young people globally, citing studies showing that 25 percent of adolescents saying they are experiencing depression and 20 percent saying they are experiencing anxiety. 

Markay's column was published as the US smashed records for new daily cases of COVID-19, recording more than one million infections in a single day. 

Across the country, there were 1,082,549 new cases recorded Monday, a number likely inflated by reporting delays over the holiday weekend. On a rolling-average basis, daily cases are at 494,732 over the past seven days, up more than 110 percent from a week ago, according to a DailyMail.com analysis of Johns Hopkins University data.

However, deaths and hospitalizations remain relatively low, leading some experts to predict that Omicron will effectively end the pandemic by creating widespread immunity with limited loss of life.

There were 1,688 deaths recorded across the country on Monday, and the seven-day rolling average of deaths stood at 1,340, marking a 12 percent decline from week-ago levels. 

Hospitalizations have risen by about a third in the past week, at around 100,000, but remain nearly 30 percent below the peak levels recorded last January, when case numbers were much lower than they stand today.

Yet almost none the deaths or hospitalizations impact young people. 

An analysis of breakthrough infections by age found that the average age of a vaccinated person being hospitalized is 72 years and the average age of a vaccinated person dying of COVID is 80, Markay wrote.

And according to a study by the American Academy of Pediatrics, children have represented just zero to 0.027 percent of all COVID-related deaths, with a total of 803 American children dying of COVID over the last two years.

That is less than the number of total deaths from both the flu and a respiratory syncytial virus in a normal year.

The study also found that among the 24 states reporting their data, 0.1 percent to 1.6 percent of all their child COVID-19 cases resulted in hospitalization.

Last week, the CDC also reported that weekly deaths in people 18 to 29 had decreased to zero from one in 5 million the week prior - lower than the number of deaths from car accidents, suicides and firearms in young people. 

Another study from Germany also found that no healthy child between the ages of five and 17 died of COVID over the course of 15 months when nearly all of the participants were fully vaccinated - which most colleges are requiring.

That's what makes the knee-jerk reactions by universities that charge exorbitant tuition prices for a severely reduced college experience even worse, Markay wrote. 

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At Princeton (pictured), which charges $57,690 fully-vaccinated students are not allowed to leave the country unless they are on a sports team and all students must be tested twice a week

At Georgetown in Washington DC, which costs $29,892 a semester, fully vaccinated students are randomly tested for COVID each week using a PCR test, and even those who are asymptomatic are ordered to stay in a room in a designated building where they spend 10 days in confinement. 

The university also announced last month that 'all University events, including meetings with visitors will need to be held virtually or outdoors.'

One student in isolation at the school told Markay she would call a friend to come and wave at her through the window, while another said the experience 'totally changed' her feelings about the school.

'Everyone's just fed up at this point,' the unnamed student said. 'People walk around the library and yell at you if you drink a sip of water. And that was during finals.'

She said she is thinking of transferring to a school in the South 'just to have an in-person experience.' 

At Princeton, meanwhile, which charges $57,690 per year, fully-vaccinated students are not allowed to leave the country unless they are on a sports team and all students must be tested twice a week.

And at Cornell University, which charges $60,286 per year, 'masks must be worn indoors at all times unless in a private, non-shared space' like a dorm room or an office, according to the school's policy. It also 'strongly recommends' masking outdoors when physical distancing is not possible.

Students at UMass Amherst must also double mask if they do not have a KN95 and at nearby Emerson College, students are tested twice a week and have stay-in-room orders.

The college instructs students to 'only leave their residence halls or place of residence for testing, meals, medical appointments, necessary employment or to get mail.'

It originally just asked students to wear masks indoors, but has changed its policy amid a nationwide surge in COVID cases due to the Omicron variant. 

Since the pandemic began, parents have said their children's mental health has worsened

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COVID shots have increased the risk of myocarditis in adolescents

Markay blames the mainstream media and public officials for silencing any criticism of these 'draconian' policies.

'Over the past several months, students from around the country have reached out to me, outraged at excessive policies imposed upon them,' Markay wrote.

'They were afraid to be identified in this essay for fear of retaliation. And for good reason. Around the country students have been punished, suspended, and even expelled for violations of draconian masking and socializing policies.

'It’s time for them to speak out.' 

He closed by posing a serious of questions that officials have refused to answer but must be asked, including:

• Will boosters be required every 3-6 months in perpetuity?
• How many healthy college students have died from Covid during the pandemic? 
• Will we continue to take all these precautions next year if influenza poses the same case fatality rate?
• If I have circulating antibodies from prior Covid illness, will the university recognize those antibodies as countries in Europe do?   

'It’s time to learn to live with Covid by using some common sense practices,' he wrote.

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Emerson College in Boston is now also prohibiting its students from leaving their dorm rooms unless they are getting food, getting a COVID test, going to a medical appointment, going to work or are getting mail. The school originally required students to wear masks indoors