Headlines last week declared natural immunity better protection than vaccines, based on a Lancet study Thursday that backed up a groundbreaking Israeli study from . . . August 2021. Yet vaccine mandates continue to block a full return to normalcy, and it’s taking a particularly hard toll on college kids.
Three years in — and well after COVID ceased to be a deadly, nationwide threat — many institutions are still reluctant to let go of pandemic restrictions. Parents have come to see how those lingering rules have hit the young especially hard. For college students, campuses feel forever altered under the weight of the ubiquitous refrain “to keep the community safe.”
Some professors, for instance, still mask their classes or move them online. Many colleges continue to have vaccine and booster mandates in place, though the overwhelming majority of students have already acquired natural immunity and are among the least vulnerable population of Americans.
The graduating class of 2023 has hardly known the freedoms older generations enjoyed — exuberant and unrestricted socializing, in-person intellectual debates and, of course, the freedom to choose whether to take an experimental medical intervention. Is it any wonder college enrollment is down? CUNY just reported a decline of 9%.
While many were willing to accept a temporary suspension of rights when little was known about this mysterious virus, there has been a dramatic shift in public opinion of late. Even those who advocated for vaccine mandates and lockdowns now talk of “pandemic amnesty,” quietly turning their attention to unintended consequences of the pandemic response instead.
hard toll? wtf how about the students stand up and say no. no more money that college will roll over in a new york minute. but alas asking the majority of college kids to do anything other then wokeism is most likely not going to happen. what kind of parenting skills do you have to have to raise children like that? sad!