Growing Number of Colleges Dropping COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates

COVID-19 vaccines in a file photograph. Jacquelyn Martin/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

A growing number of U.S. colleges and universities are rescinding their COVID-19 vaccine mandates, as activists and experts note that the vaccines provide little protection against transmission.

On Feb. 9, Emory University in Georgia became one of the latest, dropping COVID-19 vaccine requirements for most staff members and all students except for those studying health sciences in the university’s School of Medicine or School of Nursing.

The changes stem from guidance from Emory’s health experts, Emory President Gregory Fenves wrote in a message to students and faculty.

The University of Illinois–Springfield is among the other schools to rescind a mandate in 2023.

“Vaccines have been and remain an effective tool for preventing serious illness, especially in those at higher risk for complications. The primary vaccination series, however, is significantly less effective at preventing transmission of the emerging and prevalent subvariants of the virus. For this reason, we no longer require the COVID-19 primary vaccine series,” the school said in an update in January.

More than 50 higher education schools have dropped mandates during the 2022–2023 academic year, according to No College Mandates—a group of parents, students, professors, and experts who try to convince institutions to get rid of COVID-19 vaccination requirements.

Other universities dropped mandates over the summer.

“We’ve had some of those colleges write us and say, ‘We want you to know we dropped our vaccine mandate,’” Lucia Sinatra, co-founder of the group, told The Epoch Times.

Growing Awareness

Sinatra and group members describe mandates as unethical and dangerous, noting that the vaccines don’t prevent transmission—undercutting a key rationale listed by schools—as well as the growing awareness of vaccine side effects such as myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation that can lead to death.

Young people, particularly young males, face the highest risk of myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mandates at colleges cause more heart inflammation cases than they prevent, according to a risk-benefit estimate published in 2022. The estimate was later published by the British Medical Journal following peer review.

“Our estimate suggests an expected net harm from boosters in this young adult age group,” Kevin Bardosh, an affiliate assistant professor at the University of Washington who studies public health, and his co-authors wrote.

Besides the unfavorable risk-benefit calculus, the authors calculated that at least 31,207 young adults aged 18 to 29 would need a booster vaccination to prevent just one COVID-19 hospitalization over six months.

Top officials from several schools, including Tufts University and Harvard University, said in a response that “hospitalizations averted is not the only marker of morbidity that is relevant to the college student population and given the rarity of severe disease requiring hospitalization in young, generally very healthy adults, hospitalization is not a good choice for a marker of COVID-19 related morbidity.”

The risk of missed classes, severe illness, and long COVID-19 was also taken into account when imposing mandates, the officials said, adding that they’re “cautious about changing policy in reaction to a single study, although we are actively reviewing new information.”

They didn’t offer their own risk-benefit analysis calculations, and the universities didn’t respond to requests for them.

Bardosh and his co-authors wrote in their paper that “the now high prevalence of prior infection, data regarding the lack of sustained transmission reduction by current vaccines and the age at peak risk for myo/pericarditis being young adults aged 16–17 years all undermine the case for two-dose vaccine mandates.”

‘Needed to Protect Our Community’

Harvard is among the schools that began requiring in 2022 one of the new, unproven COVID-19 booster shots on top of a primary series.

Harvard says that “high levels of vaccination” are “needed to protect our community.” No studies or other data are cited.

U.S. regulators cleared the new boosters in August 2022 despite a lack of clinical data. Six months later, that data still remains unavailable. In the near future, the United States is expected to replace all of the original vaccines with unproven bivalent shots.

Many universities don’t provide scientific justification for their mandates, Sinatra said. When parents, alumni, and students have asked for justification, the schools don’t provide any, she said.

“If anything, we get boilerplate responses with similar language that this is the best way to protect our community, but there is zero justification whatsoever and zero engagement,” she said.

Mila Radetich, a college student, said she felt forced to get vaccinated when her school announced a mandate midway through the fall 2021 semester. She didn’t want to get kicked out, so she received a dose of Pfizer’s vaccine. She experienced a number of problems, including difficulty walking, and was later diagnosed with a vaccine injury.

“I’m disabled now, and I never had any pre-existing health conditions before I received the vaccine,” Radetich told The Epoch Times. “I was an athlete. I didn’t have any problems. But now I do.”

Clinical trials for the vaccines didn’t provide sufficient data to conclude they protected against transmission, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Observational data have indicated some level of protection against transmission, but the vaccines have performed worse against infection and transmission against newer variants. Further, some research has shown that the vaccinated and unvaccinated have similar viral loads, one way to measure potential transmission.

Radetich had recovered from COVID-19 before getting vaccinated. Many other students have as well. That gives them strong protection against severe disease and some shielding against re-infection.

Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine on leave from Harvard Medical School who helped start a new organization called the Norfolk Group, said there was never any reason for colleges to implement vaccine mandates.

“The mandates covered those who already had COVID, so they were already protected, so there’s absolutely no reason to mandate them to take the vaccine. But even for those who haven’t had COVID, for students in their 20s, they’re at extremely low risk,” Kulldorff told The Epoch Times. “At the same time, there are adverse reactions to some of these vaccines, especially among young men, like myocarditis. We don’t know the full extent of that, so you’re mandating something which has minimal benefit and a small but true risk in these young people.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) questioned forcing students with natural immunity to get shots during a recent hearing on health care worker shortages.

“Here’s the problem: If you exclude everybody from being a nurse who believes in basic immunology, you’re going to include a lot of smart people, people who believe that you can get immunity from both vaccination as well as infection,” Paul, a doctor, said.

While some schools have entirely rescinded mandates, others have kept in place the primary series mandate while removing requirements for boosters.

“The bivalent (Omicron) booster is no longer required, but it is strongly recommended,” Tufts University stated in a recent message.