Many colleges are requiring students to get vaccinated for COVID-19 before returning to campus, discriminating against those who have medical reasons for not doing so. Action Alert!
An increasing number of schools are announcing that students will be required to receive COVID vaccinations before returning to campus. This raises serious concerns that those with legitimate medical reasons for not getting vaccinated will be discriminated against by not being able to fully take advantage of a school’s services and facilities. We have to push back against this growing wave of mandatory vaccinations wrought by social pressure and coercion.
The list of schools requiring vaccination is too long to reproduce here but includes many high-profile private institutions in addition to state schools. All of the “Ivy League” schools, for example, will require COVID vaccines. A smaller subset of schools will only require the vaccine if the FDA fully approves one of the shots (currently all of the COVID vaccines are being administered under an emergency use authorization which falls short of full approval). The California University system, for example, has said that it will require COVID vaccines for students if one becomes FDA approved, as have the State University of New York (SUNY) and City University of New York (CUNY) systems.
The list of schools that have announced they will not require COVID vaccination is far smaller, including Georgia public universities, Ohio State University, the University of Iowa, and the University of Florida.
Note that many states have religious or personal belief exemptions to vaccination (with the exception of CA, MS, NY, WV, ME, and CT). All states have medical exemptions, but these are incredibly difficult to get. The CDC lists medical contraindications for required vaccines, but these are absurdly narrow, limited for the most part to those who have a documented, serious allergic reaction to a previous vaccine.
Last week, ANH-USA and ANH-International launched a campaign to allow patients with autoimmune conditions, or a risk for developing autoimmunity, to refuse COVID vaccination. The available scientific data clearly demonstrates that these patients are at increased risk of suffering from the serious, life-threatening blood clots associated with COVID vaccination. Yet we’re also increasingly seeing COVID vaccination as the prerequisite for participation in many activities. This unfairly discriminates against individuals who have legitimate medical concerns with receiving a COVID vaccine.
Policies requiring COVID vaccination are putting students in danger. The University of California system has over 273,000 students; the SUNY system has 424,000. We know that autoimmune disease affects roughly 8 percent of the population. In California and New York alone, that means there could be as many as 55,760 students in those state university systems that have an autoimmune condition and are at risk of developing vaccine-related blood clots in the brain.
We cannot allow students who have a legitimate medical reason to avoid COVID vaccination to be forced out of their college campuses, denied the right to attend in-person classes, attend university events, and more. We cannot deny rights to those who wish to avoid preventable danger from a COVID vaccine.
Action Alerts! Write to the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and tell them to recommend that colleges do not mandate the COVID vaccine, especially for autoimmune patient. Please send your message immediately.
Additionally, please write letters or call your local universities to oppose vaccine mandates, and let us know what kind of response you get at [email protected].
