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Those are both public schools. Why isn’t proof of immunity required at registration? It is likely I am just uniformed as to the California school system. Texas

Those are both public schools. Why isn’t proof of immunity required at registration? It is likely I am just uniformed as to the California school system. Texas schools require immunization records.

tapland 8y ago
Could be visiting from elsewhere or somehow not enrolled. Requiring immunization papers of anyone on campus would be very hard to do.
- gonzo41 8y ago
  Probably easier to just roll in the vaccinations as part of the uni fee's.
  - microcolonel 8y ago
    Vaccinations are free of charge in most (all?) of the U.S, in California any pharmacy can be reimbursed. This isn't an issue of funds, it's an issue of unwillingness to vaccinate.
    - gonzo41 8y ago
      That's nice to know. I assumed that there would be a cost barrier too access as with most US health care.
      - microcolonel 8y ago
        Genuine Merck MMR vaccine comes in packs of ten, priced at ~$21 USD (for CDC, standard MSRP is 75, still not really expensive), takes about ten seconds to administer. It's an amount of money that any number of people in anyone's life (unless you have no friends, family, neighbours, or colleagues at all) in the U.S. could lose by accident on a given day. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/programs/vfc/awardees/vaccine-management/price-list/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/programs/vfc/awardees/vaccine-m...
      - amluto 8y ago
        Last flu season, I walked into Kaiser and got a flu shot in about five minutes total. I’m not a Kaiser member, and they didn’t even ask for billing info.
        wemdyjreichert 8y ago
        That's one thing we've done pretty well, bringing down the cost of critical vaccines. Others are expensive, but they are mostly elective. If you look at the CDC price list [0] for kids, only 2 vaccines are over $200 for private sector cost, and they're not too important (one is MMR/Varicella which covers what would otherwise be two vaccines, and the other is HPV which is unimportant). Even cheaper for adults. That's within the price range of pretty much anyone.
        bmalak 8y ago
        > HPV which is unimportant Wrong. HPV vaccine is super important. In 2018 nearly 580k women were diagnosed with cervical cancer. 70% of said cancer is caused by HPV (by two strains of it to be exact). So that is 406k women each year getting cervical cancer which could have been prevented if they were vaccinated, and that’s only counting people who were diagnosed. Now consider that HPV is also known to cause cancers in other organs, both reproductive and non-reproductive, and that these affect not only women but men as well. Granted only 14 of the 100+ strains are linked to cancer, but still. That’s a lot of preventable cancer. The CDC recommends the vaccine for basically everyone up to 26, and the FDA has approved a vaccine for up to 45. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/human-papillomavirus-(hpv)-and-cervical-cancer https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/human-papil...
        wemdyjreichert 8y ago
        HPV is elective, because activities that cause it are elective. Cancer-causing strains are transmitted largely by risky behavior, which is a choice. That is why I called it elective. Being in a room with someone with measles can cause you to get it; being in a room with someone with cancer-causing HPV cannot. It requires a conscious choice. Edit: down-voters care to explain why I'm wrong?
      - rchaud 8y ago
        "By taking a strong pro-choice stand on vaccinations, we'll be saving the American healthcare system millions in costs while ignoring the time bomb that'll realistically only go off when the opposition is in power". Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if that's the route the US is headed regarding vax policy.
      - droithomme 8y ago
        > That's nice to know. It's also not correct. I have to pay for all my vaccinations, and have had to do so in all the various states I've lived in, including California. The US does not have a program of free vaccines for the population. If people have insurance that pays for it, the insurance covers it, but that's not the same as free. Elsewhere in this thread a med student relates his experience of getting his MMR booster for "free", but administering it was $500 per shot, later raised to $700. The free was also not free, the student insurance paid for the shot itself and he merely had to pay for the administration. This is a more typical vaccination scenario in the US. Also worth noting is that very very few of the people commenting in any discussion of vaccines are up to date with their boosters because very few adults in general are up to date.
        tapland 8y ago
        Yes. The whooping cough vaccination is active for little over 10 years.
- Balgair 8y ago
  UCLA is an open campus. Anyone can, and does, just walk onto campus. There are some folks that just audit classes and are not enrolled. Some people from greater LA just like to spend time in Powell Library and read/study. It's not uncommon at all to have random people from across the planet just walk onto campus.
mcshicks 8y ago
I didn't look up the Cal State LA, but UCLA does require it. https://www.immunizationrequirement.ucla.edu/ https://www.immunizationrequirement.ucla.edu/ I went to UCLA, one of my kids did, and the other went to UCI. As far as I remember it's always been required. But it could be people are getting waivers for sketchy reasons or just lying about it. I view this outbreak more of a symptom of the problem (people not wanting their kids vaccinated) than the universities having a lax policy as a cause.
ilarum 8y ago
Yes, proof of immunity is required at registration for UCLA. https://www.immunizationrequirement.ucla.edu/Portals/98/ImmunizationsReq%20FAQ%202019.pdf https://www.immunizationrequirement.ucla.edu/Portals/98/Immu...
Balgair 8y ago
Oh man! Have I got a story on schools and Immunizations! My grad school was CU Anschutz Med Campus. They also require immunization records to attend in the event of an outbreak. This is important as it is a med-campus and there are a lot of sick people, immuno-compromised people, infants, and a CDC infectious disease center. If you are not immunized, you will be staying at home in the event of an outbreak and you will fail your finals. There were a few issues though. One was that you had to send in your immunization records. Per various rules in various bureaucracies, Kaiser in CA would only send out faxes. CU-AMC would not ever accept a fax. Both cited HIPAA law as the reason. Many of the students, including the med students, spent years figuring these things out as each hospital system battled it out from the various states and countries that students came from. No joke, it took me just over 3 semesters to get it hammered out, about 1.5 years. Eventually, my records were sent out via snail-mail. The second issue was the bilking of the students. Every single student that I personally knew was told that their MMR titers were out of date (essentially, the test to see if you are in fact immunized). Thus, they needed to get their titers pulled again. So, we all go down to the students' nurses office to get the titers pulled. Every single student is then told that they are deficient in their titers. So, we all then go to get our MMR booster shots. Wham, bam, you now have your booster shot. Mind you, this is all personal stuff. You don't really talk about it over lunch. Nothing was amiss to anyone at this point. Then, the ~ $500 bill came to us. Yes, really. $500 for an MMR booster shot. Looking closer, it's not that the shots were themselves $500, the vaccine was itself free. It was the administration of the shots. Having that nurse give you the shot, a 5 minute process, was $500 after the student health insurance kicked in. Every single student I knew also received one of these bills. Understandably outraged at this, we all go to our respective department heads and ask what the hell is going on. They, also are surprised. After a few months of meetings and whatnot, my department states that they will pay out for our costs. Nice, but not that it mattered. Many of us, waiting on these things to suss out, were sent to collections. Lab phones were ringing off the hook, PIs and advisors were getting calls from scummy collectors about our debts, there were loads of very threatening emails sent to official university addressed, etc. The insurance that the students all went through was not going to budge, you had to pay out. It was a mess. Some of the other departments decided to try to just have the students sign religious waivers for the next incoming class. This worked. That next class that was in a department that had the students go off and sign waivers didn't have to deal with this nonsense. My department was not one of them. As such, some of my new lab-mates got ~ $700 bills for the MMR boosters (I assume the upped the price to make-up for lost revenue, but have no proof). My new lab mates had to go through all the rigmarole as I had to as well, with debt collectors, lazy departments, and bad billing. Well, then all the departments figured this out. All the students are told to just go down and get religious waivers for the shots. This includes the med students, the dental students, the NPs, etc. This bypasses the insane student health insurance (no idea why it was still there after this, but, again, bureaucrats). In the event of an outbreak, all the students will need to stay home and fail all of their classes. So, AFAIK, all/most of the students at CU-AMC are on religious waivers as of today, due to scummy insurance and a bureaucratic fight with the various departments.

Those are both public schools. Why isn’t proof of immunity required at registration? It is likely I am just uniformed as to the California school system. Texas schools require immunization records.

tapland 8y ago

Could be visiting from elsewhere or somehow not enrolled. Requiring immunization papers of anyone on campus would be very hard to do.

gonzo41 8y ago
Probably easier to just roll in the vaccinations as part of the uni fee's.
- microcolonel 8y ago
  Vaccinations are free of charge in most (all?) of the U.S, in California any pharmacy can be reimbursed. This isn't an issue of funds, it's an issue of unwillingness to vaccinate.
  - gonzo41 8y ago
    That's nice to know. I assumed that there would be a cost barrier too access as with most US health care.
    - microcolonel 8y ago
      Genuine Merck MMR vaccine comes in packs of ten, priced at ~$21 USD (for CDC, standard MSRP is 75, still not really expensive), takes about ten seconds to administer. It's an amount of money that any number of people in anyone's life (unless you have no friends, family, neighbours, or colleagues at all) in the U.S. could lose by accident on a given day. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/programs/vfc/awardees/vaccine-management/price-list/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/programs/vfc/awardees/vaccine-m...
    - amluto 8y ago
      Last flu season, I walked into Kaiser and got a flu shot in about five minutes total. I’m not a Kaiser member, and they didn’t even ask for billing info.
      - wemdyjreichert 8y ago
        That's one thing we've done pretty well, bringing down the cost of critical vaccines. Others are expensive, but they are mostly elective. If you look at the CDC price list [0] for kids, only 2 vaccines are over $200 for private sector cost, and they're not too important (one is MMR/Varicella which covers what would otherwise be two vaccines, and the other is HPV which is unimportant). Even cheaper for adults. That's within the price range of pretty much anyone.
        bmalak 8y ago
        > HPV which is unimportant Wrong. HPV vaccine is super important. In 2018 nearly 580k women were diagnosed with cervical cancer. 70% of said cancer is caused by HPV (by two strains of it to be exact). So that is 406k women each year getting cervical cancer which could have been prevented if they were vaccinated, and that’s only counting people who were diagnosed. Now consider that HPV is also known to cause cancers in other organs, both reproductive and non-reproductive, and that these affect not only women but men as well. Granted only 14 of the 100+ strains are linked to cancer, but still. That’s a lot of preventable cancer. The CDC recommends the vaccine for basically everyone up to 26, and the FDA has approved a vaccine for up to 45. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/human-papillomavirus-(hpv)-and-cervical-cancer https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/human-papil...
        wemdyjreichert 8y ago
        HPV is elective, because activities that cause it are elective. Cancer-causing strains are transmitted largely by risky behavior, which is a choice. That is why I called it elective. Being in a room with someone with measles can cause you to get it; being in a room with someone with cancer-causing HPV cannot. It requires a conscious choice. Edit: down-voters care to explain why I'm wrong?
    - rchaud 8y ago
      "By taking a strong pro-choice stand on vaccinations, we'll be saving the American healthcare system millions in costs while ignoring the time bomb that'll realistically only go off when the opposition is in power". Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if that's the route the US is headed regarding vax policy.
    - droithomme 8y ago
      > That's nice to know. It's also not correct. I have to pay for all my vaccinations, and have had to do so in all the various states I've lived in, including California. The US does not have a program of free vaccines for the population. If people have insurance that pays for it, the insurance covers it, but that's not the same as free. Elsewhere in this thread a med student relates his experience of getting his MMR booster for "free", but administering it was $500 per shot, later raised to $700. The free was also not free, the student insurance paid for the shot itself and he merely had to pay for the administration. This is a more typical vaccination scenario in the US. Also worth noting is that very very few of the people commenting in any discussion of vaccines are up to date with their boosters because very few adults in general are up to date.
      - tapland 8y ago
        Yes. The whooping cough vaccination is active for little over 10 years.
Balgair 8y ago
UCLA is an open campus. Anyone can, and does, just walk onto campus. There are some folks that just audit classes and are not enrolled. Some people from greater LA just like to spend time in Powell Library and read/study. It's not uncommon at all to have random people from across the planet just walk onto campus.

mcshicks 8y ago

I didn't look up the Cal State LA, but UCLA does require it. https://www.immunizationrequirement.ucla.edu/ https://www.immunizationrequirement.ucla.edu/ I went to UCLA, one of my kids did, and the other went to UCI. As far as I remember it's always been required. But it could be people are getting waivers for sketchy reasons or just lying about it. I view this outbreak more of a symptom of the problem (people not wanting their kids vaccinated) than the universities having a lax policy as a cause.

ilarum 8y ago

Yes, proof of immunity is required at registration for UCLA. https://www.immunizationrequirement.ucla.edu/Portals/98/ImmunizationsReq%20FAQ%202019.pdf https://www.immunizationrequirement.ucla.edu/Portals/98/Immu...

Balgair 8y ago

Oh man! Have I got a story on schools and Immunizations! My grad school was CU Anschutz Med Campus. They also require immunization records to attend in the event of an outbreak. This is important as it is a med-campus and there are a lot of sick people, immuno-compromised people, infants, and a CDC infectious disease center. If you are not immunized, you will be staying at home in the event of an outbreak and you will fail your finals. There were a few issues though. One was that you had to send in your immunization records. Per various rules in various bureaucracies, Kaiser in CA would only send out faxes. CU-AMC would not ever accept a fax. Both cited HIPAA law as the reason. Many of the students, including the med students, spent years figuring these things out as each hospital system battled it out from the various states and countries that students came from. No joke, it took me just over 3 semesters to get it hammered out, about 1.5 years. Eventually, my records were sent out via snail-mail. The second issue was the bilking of the students. Every single student that I personally knew was told that their MMR titers were out of date (essentially, the test to see if you are in fact immunized). Thus, they needed to get their titers pulled again. So, we all go down to the students' nurses office to get the titers pulled. Every single student is then told that they are deficient in their titers. So, we all then go to get our MMR booster shots. Wham, bam, you now have your booster shot. Mind you, this is all personal stuff. You don't really talk about it over lunch. Nothing was amiss to anyone at this point. Then, the ~ $500 bill came to us. Yes, really. $500 for an MMR booster shot. Looking closer, it's not that the shots were themselves $500, the vaccine was itself free. It was the administration of the shots. Having that nurse give you the shot, a 5 minute process, was $500 after the student health insurance kicked in. Every single student I knew also received one of these bills. Understandably outraged at this, we all go to our respective department heads and ask what the hell is going on. They, also are surprised. After a few months of meetings and whatnot, my department states that they will pay out for our costs. Nice, but not that it mattered. Many of us, waiting on these things to suss out, were sent to collections. Lab phones were ringing off the hook, PIs and advisors were getting calls from scummy collectors about our debts, there were loads of very threatening emails sent to official university addressed, etc. The insurance that the students all went through was not going to budge, you had to pay out. It was a mess. Some of the other departments decided to try to just have the students sign religious waivers for the next incoming class. This worked. That next class that was in a department that had the students go off and sign waivers didn't have to deal with this nonsense. My department was not one of them. As such, some of my new lab-mates got ~ $700 bills for the MMR boosters (I assume the upped the price to make-up for lost revenue, but have no proof). My new lab mates had to go through all the rigmarole as I had to as well, with debt collectors, lazy departments, and bad billing. Well, then all the departments figured this out. All the students are told to just go down and get religious waivers for the shots. This includes the med students, the dental students, the NPs, etc. This bypasses the insane student health insurance (no idea why it was still there after this, but, again, bureaucrats). In the event of an outbreak, all the students will need to stay home and fail all of their classes. So, AFAIK, all/most of the students at CU-AMC are on religious waivers as of today, due to scummy insurance and a bureaucratic fight with the various departments.