Vaccine Requirements Keep Students Safe

"Rebuttal" Illustration by Max Hollinger/The Guardsman. @mxwsh

By Ava Cohen

avaocohen@gmail.com

 

Over 400 colleges and universities across the U.S. are requiring students to show proof of vaccination against COVID-19 in order to return to in-person learning, with a whole lot of pushback from many different students for a variety of reasons.

Some folks are skeptical of the vaccine for reasons concerning the validity of it, and how quickly it was produced. However, the vaccine is based on research that goes back 100 years, to the first known coronavirus. Additionally, virtually no disease or virus vaccine has had a consumer base of the entire global population. The way our world functions through capitalism and labor requires us to use our bodies as a product, so of course we need to be physically fit to produce profit. There’s no reason big pharma would create a vaccine that would deliberately harm us. 

“Rebuttal” Illustration by Max Hollinger/The Guardsman. @mxwsh

Conspiracies such as Plandemic, a movie featuring discredited scientists, have played off people’s fears about the vaccine and COVID-19 in general. A study done on the spread of misinformation through the ‘Plandemic’ movie shows that the campaign deliberately uses 

he safety of ourselves and those around us. Are you going to always run red lights because you don’t like being told what to do? If you work in the food industry are you going to violate health codes just because you’ve been told to follow them?

Requiring students to be fully vaccinated in order to return to in person learning seems like a minuscule price to pay in order for people to feel safe and comfortable in a learning environment. School is already stressful, and to have to worry about our physical health on top of that creates unnecessary strain. What most of the aversion to getting vaccinated really strikes me as is some weird sort of power complex, like their faux sense of ‘American independence’ is being threatened.