Vaccine Mandates for faculty, staff, and students?

[marshwiggle]

OP here. My institution has reversed the in-person instruction policy and moved to remote classes for the first six weeks of the semester (until mid October). Over 900 students have signed a petition refusing the vaccine and they can't afford to de-enroll all those students. They are now giving students a deadline of October 15 to be fully vaccinated but many predict this is unlikely to happen. So for now, I am happy with this outcome and hope that we will continue remotely until 2022 at least.

Texas governor has issued executive order prohibiting most state agencies from mandating any COVID-19 vaccines, even those FDA has fully approved. His earlier order was just not-fully-FDA-approved vaccines. Sigh.

Hooray for Texas! We must not allow tyranny of the majority.

I am genuinely baffled about what you see as the desired endgame, unless it's working from home forever. Until covid infections have reached a low enough steady state to avoid clogging up ICUs, then there will have to be *restrictions on gatherings among other things. The only way to speed this up is to get as close to universal vaccination as possible.

So honestly, what exactly is the "ideal" future you're looking for?


*I really would like to eventually be able to go to concerts, church, and to eat in restaurants. Those can't happen as before unless and until we've reached a steady state with very low hospitalizations and without risk of outbreaks from these sorts of gatherings.

[Hibush]

I've been particularly curious about the situation at the University of Florida, where the faculty know what needs to happen and the Governor has prohibited that. The President is in a tough spot. Now CHE has a long article describing why. The president is in effect a gubernatorial appointee, and is charged with executing the governor's policies. Glad not to be him!

The school board in Gainesville has order mask and vaccine mandates in direct opposition to the order from the state. In Texas, enough school boards are defying a similar gubernatorial effort to cause some backtracking. Will the same happen in Florida?

[Anon1787]

As expected, OP is an anti-vaxxer who has moved the goal posts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUTzrMZVAAw

[Hibush]

Well, a quick development in Florida. The 10 school district that defied the governor's ban on mask mandates won in the Florida Supreme Court. The ban was found unconstitutional. Will the state universities be able to institute these mandates, or are the subject to the governors administrative whim? Will the president of UF be able to (quietly) get proper actions in place?

[Aster]

It's kind of weird in Florida. The Governor's executive order than bans mask mandates was specifically written for public K-12 schools. It never applied to universities. Or anything else.

But then the Governor of Florida had two *other* executive orders, which gutted local municipalities' ability and options for undertaking many emergency health actions pertaining to covid.

And then there was a *fourth* executive order that banned covid vaccine mandates for any business in the state. It even included *private* businesses, which was some rather odd overreach.

None of these executive orders specifically prevents public universities from enacting mask mandates. But altogether, all of these executive orders creates an environment which puts a lot of *pressure* on the public universities to not rock the governor's private power trip.

[Caracal]

OP here. My institution has reversed the in-person instruction policy and moved to remote classes for the first six weeks of the semester (until mid October). Over 900 students have signed a petition refusing the vaccine and they can't afford to de-enroll all those students. They are now giving students a deadline of October 15 to be fully vaccinated but many predict this is unlikely to happen. So for now, I am happy with this outcome and hope that we will continue remotely until 2022 at least.

This describes a rather specific set of circumstances that you would assume would have gotten some media attention. I did a quick google search and didn't find anything that matches this. Not trying to out the OP if they are a real person, describing actual events, but has anyone seen anything that would fit this set of circumstances? (I guess if you have, don't give the name of the school)

Otherwise, I'm becoming skeptical that the OP isn't some form of troll playing a game. If so, we don't need this kind of thing on here.

[Caracal]

To be fair, OP has posted before this going back two years. Only six posts, but perhaps it wasn't fair of me to insinuate they might be fake. I still am skeptical about the series of events they lay out here though at their institution.

[mleok]

To be fair, OP has posted before this going back two years. Only six posts, but perhaps it wasn't fair of me to insinuate they might be fake. I still am skeptical about the series of events they lay out here though at their institution.

The facts may have been changed to protect the guilty.

[niwon88]

To be fair, OP has posted before this going back two years. Only six posts, but perhaps it wasn't fair of me to insinuate they might be fake. I still am skeptical about the series of events they lay out here though at their institution.

Thanks Caracal! I usually lurk here and am not a troll.. I am not anti-vax, which is silly really. It's a way to dismiss people who have different opinions. I do support people's rights not to take this PARTICULAR MRna injection for a host of reasons. I am not alone at all.

I mentioned that I wasn't willing to lose my job but I have a tenured colleague who refused the vaccine and may be placed on leave without pay. Exemptions are very difficult to obtain. My update is that some of our students have been de-enrolled for refusing the vaccine mandate but not the large numbers we expected. Most students caved in to the mandate.

You can see that nurses who are medically trained, witnessed the first hand impact of COVID, have quit in large numbers after refusing the vaccine mandates. Do we think they are all misinformed in spite of their medical training? I highly doubt that. In my city, we have hundreds of nurses staging protests against vaccine mandates.
I don't think we can write off the vaccine resisters as ignorant.

[niwon88]

OP here. My institution has reversed the in-person instruction policy and moved to remote classes for the first six weeks of the semester (until mid October). Over 900 students have signed a petition refusing the vaccine and they can't afford to de-enroll all those students. They are now giving students a deadline of October 15 to be fully vaccinated but many predict this is unlikely to happen. So for now, I am happy with this outcome and hope that we will continue remotely until 2022 at least.

This describes a rather specific set of circumstances that you would assume would have gotten some media attention. I did a quick google search and didn't find anything that matches this. Not trying to out the OP if they are a real person, describing actual events, but has anyone seen anything that would fit this set of circumstances? (I guess if you have, don't give the name of the school)

Otherwise, I'm becoming skeptical that the OP isn't some form of troll playing a game. If so, we don't need this kind of thing on here.

There are TONS of petitions online protesting vaccine mandates at colleges and universities. What I mentioned above would not be worthy of media attention because it's commonplace. Do a quick search at Change.org and see for example:
https://www.change.org/p/texas-christian-university-petition-to-end-the-mask-mandates-at-texas-christian-university
https://www.change.org/p/university-of-manitoba-stop-vaccine-mandate-at-university-of-manitoba
https://www.change.org/p/samuel-l-stanley-immediate-cease-of-human-rights-violation
https://www.change.org/p/michael-lovell-marquette-university-lift-the-anti-science-mask-mandate

[Hibush]

As a Federal contractor with more than 100 employees, we now require everyone to be vaccinated.

Those who are not vaccinated because the don't wanna are now ex-employees and ex-students.

We were at >95% vaccinated, so this vast majority is mostly thinking "good riddance."

[downer]

I have had a couple of online students disappear from the roster. I suspect that it is because they were not vaccinated.

I am not sure if the policy is that completely online students have to be vaccinated, but it would seem to be an overreaching policy if they do.

[Caracal]

To be fair, OP has posted before this going back two years. Only six posts, but perhaps it wasn't fair of me to insinuate they might be fake. I still am skeptical about the series of events they lay out here though at their institution.

Thanks Caracal! I usually lurk here and am not a troll.. I am not anti-vax, which is silly really. It's a way to dismiss people who have different opinions. I do support people's rights not to take this PARTICULAR MRna injection for a host of reasons. I am not alone at all.

I mentioned that I wasn't willing to lose my job but I have a tenured colleague who refused the vaccine and may be placed on leave without pay. Exemptions are very difficult to obtain. My update is that some of our students have been de-enrolled for refusing the vaccine mandate but not the large numbers we expected. Most students caved in to the mandate.

You can see that nurses who are medically trained, witnessed the first hand impact of COVID, have quit in large numbers after refusing the vaccine mandates. Do we think they are all misinformed in spite of their medical training? I highly doubt that. In my city, we have hundreds of nurses staging protests against vaccine mandates.
I don't think we can write off the vaccine resisters as ignorant.

I don't like the idea of writing anyone off, and usually simply deciding that people with some set of views are just dumb or crazy is a failure of both empathy and imagination. There are obviously a lot of things contributing to vaccine hostility and suspicion. In no particular order:
1. A generalized distrust in expertise-I don't like the term anti-science-sometimes linked to divides in education and class but sometimes not.
2. Anxiety about the power of large companies and wealthy people.
3. A very particular set of partisan dynamics relating to Trump and the Republican Party and the particular way Covid became politicized in the US
4. The role of messaging and policies around the pandemic, which have often failed to take account of basic human needs, as well as poverty and other factors. https://thefora.org/Themes/default/images/bbc/sub.gif

Understanding why people might think and do things is different, however, from thinking their decisions are reasonable or smart. Some of the distrust is rational enough, but it is being manipulated by charlatans and hucksters who are just interested in making money and gaining influence and the result is really tragic, people dying because they believed these bad people.

Your arguments aren't very persuasive, a small number of nurses have quit, but we are talking about a couple percent. Why would I believe those nurses have some special knowledge that other nurses lack? You're an academic. Surely you know that getting a specialized degree doesn't confer good judgment?

I support people's rights to not take the vaccine too. I wouldn't agree with forced vaccinations. However, if you are unwilling to get vaccinated to protect the health of others, that might lead to some consequences. If I worked at your university, I shouldn't have to be at a greater risk of contracting and spreading covid because you have ill founded beliefs about the vaccines and your school isn't required to have you working from home indefinitely because you pose a greater risk if you come to campus.

[Stockmann]

As someone else put it, mandates get rid of nurses who don't believe in medical evidence, teachers who don't believe in science and statistics, and cops who don't believe in public safety. Doesn't sound like there's much actual downside. Yes, some of the antivaxers are trained nurses, etc - that doesn't trump actual empirical evidence, or negate the fact that many of those who voluntarily got vaccinated, or for that matter developed or approved vaccines, also have medical training, etc - this is pretty much logical fallacies 101.

[downer]

Mandates also get rid of libertarians.