First college to ban unvaccinated students from living on-site

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Amity Island

Amity Island

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Hartpury University and College in Gloucester is thought to be the first English higher-education institution to make Covid-19 vaccinations compulsory.

The specialist agricultural and veterinary institution said the rule also applied to anyone wishing to stable their horse there.

Hartpury said the measures would not apply to people with medical exemptions.
First reported in the Daily Telegraph, the college said unvaccinated students may also have limited access to social events on campus

www.bbc.com

Hartpury says unvaccinated students cannot live on-site

Students without the Covid-19 jab may also have their access to social clubs and venues restricted.
www.bbc.com
 
nonethewiser said:
Makes sense, all should follow.
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Hi Nonethewiser,

In what way does it make sense?

https://forum.diabetes.org.uk/boards/threads/jabbed-adults-infected-with-delta-‘can-match-virus-levels-of-unvaccinated’.95373/

www.thetimes.co.uk

Half of Covid hospital cases fully vaccinated

Almost half of Covid-19 patients admitted to hospital so far this week have been fully vaccinated, the HSE director-general has said.Paul Reid said that 49 per
www.thetimes.co.uk www.thetimes.co.uk
 
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It makes sense because if everyone is vaccinated, the chance of picking up the infection is much lower or absent.

However many fully vaccinated folk are in hospital is irrelevant. They are all individuals, not a group.
 
Benny G said:
It makes no sense at all.

The young people at university have many other real things to be concerned about.
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Such as, who is going to muck out and exercise the horse that they are keeping there if everyone’s down with Covid (This college is a big provider of equine courses).
Surely reduced transmission, which several studies including the ONS have noted, will mean fewer people off sick with it (not everyone young gets away with it asymptomatically) and those left to do the work won’t be so stretched, and fewer students will miss vital weeks of their courses because they’re laid up in their room with a temperature and cough.
 
Benny G said:
And for the vaccinated even less risk.
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So wanting as many people as possible vaccinated makes good sense for a university, surely?

(It might be that this kind of requirement will cause students and/or staff not to return which would obviously be a factor. I presume there'll also be lawsuits at some point which is also something I presume they'll be thinking about.)
 
Amity Island said:
Nothing wrong with wanting, but banning?
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Is there anything wrong with banning? I'm honestly not sure.

I'd worry more about whether it might be counterproductive, with maybe some people trying to cheat the system or withdrawing from the university who might have been persuadable had they had a different approach.

On the other hand this perhaps gives helpful information: presumably most places won't be requiring vaccination (but will be strongly recommending it), so having a few that are trying to ought to show how effective it is (both in terms of whether they can achieve very high vaccination rates and how much difference that makes in sickness, infections, etc.).
 
Bruce Stephens said:
Is there anything wrong with banning? I'm honestly not sure.

I'd worry more about whether it might be counterproductive, with maybe some people trying to cheat the system or withdrawing from the university who might have been persuadable had they had a different approach.
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I'd go with banning.

But then again, I think people who refuse to get vaxxed should be made to wear big dunce hats & ring warning bells.
 
“Choose not to take a drug”? What drug are you talking about?
 
It says for those living in campus accommodation, so presumably unvaccinated people could rent privately? I think it’s a sensible rule for campus accommodation.

I don’t think vaccinations should be mandatory, but I think people who’ve exercised their choice not to have the Covid vaccine would expect that there might be some places that they’re barred from because of that.
 
Benny G said:
The other option is to ban people who do things that might cause someone offence, or make the NHS busy.
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I'd limit the banning to people who refuse to do simple things to decrease substantial risk to others.
 
It’s worth noting that policy in Australian states with regard to admitting unvaccinated kids to school amounts to mandatory vaccination. Parents have to provide certificates of vaccination to schools, so it’s just accepted that you get your kids vaccinated.
 
I see where you’re coming from @Amity Island but I feel that there are far too many people who are recklessly refusing the vaccine and/or basing their decision on stupid reasons. I most certainly do NOT include you in that group - I understand you have concerns and that you’ve done lots of research and reading.

But I wouldn’t want to go to a uni full of people who are refusing the vaccine for silly reasons and believing unscientific rubbish. IMO, it’s reasonable to ban those people. They’re risking others’ health unnecessarily.

I’ve refused vaccines before and I’m glad I have the right to do so, but I accept that my choice might limit me, and I think that’s right (a job I applied for wanted a certain vaccine and I had reservations, didn’t want it and didn’t want/need the job enough to have the vaccine).
 
@Amity Island I have children and I’ll have to decide whether they have the vaccine if one’s available for their age groups. It’s not an easy decision and I’m still uncertain what I’ll decide, but I understand why some places might institute bans. I wouldn’t insist my children went to those places if they were unvaccinated and bans were in place. I’d have to find alternatives and I’d accept that as a consequence of my decision.
 
Amity Island said:
From the evidence that has so far been provided, the risks outweigh the rewards for the healthy young.
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I'd disagree with that. The main risk seems (so far) to be heart inflammation, but that seems pretty rare (30-50 per million in children and usually mild (so much so there was doubt about whether the harm was causal since nobody seemed confident about the base rate), so I guess a bit lower in this age group) and quite a bit lower than the risks from infection (which can also cause heart inflammation).

While the risks of death from COVID-19 are generally low for this age group, they're not zero and there's significant uncertainty about long term harms. And colleges have many older people present, of course. And (in this case) animals, some of which might be vulnerable to infection.
 
Hi @Amity Island

We’ve been lucky not to have mandatory vaccines in the U.K. but other countries have mandatory vaccines for children eg before they’re allowed to start school:

https://ourworldindata.org/childhood-vaccination-policies

So making entry to some places dependent on having had a Covid vaccine isn’t unheard of, not even for children.

What are the long-term effects of Covid? How common is long Covid in children? How common is MIS-C (multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children)?

No decision on this is simple, even ignoring the fact that Covid could be spread by children and could mutate - to the detriment of us all.
 
Inka said:
How common is MIS-C (multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children)?
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In the US there have been 4404 cases with 37 deaths. (I don't know how many children there are in the US, or how many have been infected with the virus.) Median age of the cases is 9, which isn't great for a policy of vaccinating people starting at age 12. Doesn't hurt much (since there have been cases over 12) but it reduces the value a bit.

Now that the vaccine's been approved for children 12-18 I'm guessing (in a few years when supply is sufficient) sufficiently motivated parents (such as doctors) will just pay for their children to have it privately as happened with the HPV vaccine (when there was one covering more strains that wasn't being offered by the NHS and, for that matter, when boys weren't routinely offered the vaccine).

(Pfizer's name sucks, though: "Comirnaty"? Really? Moderna's "Spikevax" surely wins there.)
 
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