[TrumpCard]

Anyone else concerned that our vaccination policy might be affecting recruiting?  Healthy teenagers, not at any real risk of hospitalization or death from Covid - football being more dangerous, for example - have no reason to take the injections...all risk, no benefit. I'm new to the board, having just discovered this site recently, but am interested in hearing what others think on the subject.

Hi Alvin.  I see you are new to the site.  Welcome.  Maybe you are a parent of a recruit.  If so, I hope your son chooses Stanford; it's a great place to spend 4 years.  If your son is unvaccinated and cannot attend Stanford as a result, that would be his loss twice over.  He'd miss out on protection from a potentially serious illness and he'd miss out on a great school.  Although I don't agree at all with your assessment of the risks and benefits associated with the vaccine, I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment that playing football is a significant risk.  As the risk of concussions has become clear, I have felt a lot of cognitive dissonance over my interest in football and I have become more and more concerned for the safety of kids who play college football.  

Although I had not previously reflected on this, your hypothesis that football families may be vaccine resistant makes sense to me.  A significant portion of the overall population fits that description.  Also, given the fact that football families have pre-selected for accepting the risk of concussions their kids face, I agree that football families may lean more in that direction than the average folks.  There might well be a disproportionate number of football families who weigh health risks associated with lots of other choices (such as getting the COVID vaccine) based on instincts that don't accurately reflect true risk.  

From the perspective of a Stanford fan, however, I would not think twice about any reduction in Stanford's yield rate (whether for football players, other scholarship athletes, or the rest of the population) as a result of the vaccination policy.  Whatever the loss would be is worth protecting the lives of faculty, staff, and other students.

[TrumpCard]

Anyone else concerned that our vaccination policy might be affecting recruiting?  Healthy teenagers, not at any real risk of hospitalization or death from Covid - football being more dangerous, for example - have no reason to take the injections...all risk, no benefit. I'm new to the board, having just discovered this site recently, but am interested in hearing what others think on the subject.

Hi Alvin.  I see you are new to the site.  Welcome.  Maybe you are a parent of a recruit.  If so, I hope your son chooses Stanford; it's a great place to spend 4 years.  If your son is unvaccinated and cannot attend Stanford as a result, that would be his loss twice over.  He'd miss out on protection from a potentially serious illness and he'd miss out on a great school.  Although I don't agree at all with your assessment of the risks and benefits associated with the vaccine, I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment that playing football is a significant risk.  As the risk of concussions has become clear, I have felt a lot of cognitive dissonance over my interest in football and I have become more and more concerned for the safety of kids who play college football.  

Although I had not previously reflected on this, your hypothesis that football families may be vaccine resistant makes sense to me.  A significant portion of the overall population fits that description.  Also, given the fact that football families have pre-selected for accepting the risk of concussions their kids face, I agree that football families may lean more in that direction than the average folks.  There might well be a disproportionate number of football families who weigh health risks associated with lots of other choices (such as getting the COVID vaccine) based on instincts that don't accurately reflect true risk.  

From the perspective of a Stanford fan, however, I would not think twice about any reduction in Stanford's yield rate (whether for football players, other scholarship athletes, or the rest of the population) as a result of the vaccination policy.  Whatever the loss would be is worth protecting the lives of faculty, staff, and other students.