Student who nearly died after COVID vax granted booster exemption following outrage over denial

Students hoping to overcome campus COVID mandates that now flout CDC guidance may be heartened by the quick reversal of a major public university that was outed for requiring a student who nearly died following vaccination to get a booster.

Michigan State University quickly backtracked after the public learned it had rejected a medical exemption for a student who suffered a life-threatening blood clot two months after his second Pfizer dose, which MSU also forced him to take.

It granted the unnamed student's request a day after lawyer Jenin Younes, whose New Civil Liberties Alliance previously challenged its employee vaccine mandate in court, tweeted the rejection and said she had "verification/documentation."

Younes shared those redacted documents with Just the News, including the student's vaccination record card from a year ago and his medical provider's documentation of his January 2021 COVID infection. The provider filed an exemption request on his behalf, giving the university documentation of his November 2021 blood clot and results of his followup visit in July.

MSU rejected his appeal and threatened to punish him Aug. 22. In emails a minute apart Aug. 24, the university told the student the exemption had been approved based on "further review" and would last through Nov. 24, according to screenshots from Younes.

She also provided a letter written to MSU on the student's behalf, but not sent before its reversal, by a member of the medical coalition Urgency of Normal, which is skeptical of child-focused COVID mitigations.

The doctor, who teaches at an elite medical school, reviewed the student's history and explained up-to-date research on the comparability of natural immunity to vaccination, lasting "immune memory" from infection, the rapid waning of boosters and heart-inflammation risks from mRNA vaccines.

"As a physician and a data-scientist, the current controlled experimental evidence and revealed ecological epidemic waves globally, locally, and even within our hospital do not support the position that boosting on top of robust 'hybrid immunity' will further decrease" the student's risk from COVID, the doctor wrote. 

MSU has not responded to Just the News queries before and since the reversal, including when shown the Urgency of Normal letter.

Just the News is withholding the doctor's name based on stated fear of a medical board investigation, as a number of  doctors have faced threats to their licenses for criticizing common COVID interventions.