Agency
Virginia Department of Health
 
Board
State Board of Health
 
chapter
Regulations for the Immunization of School Children [12 VAC 5 ‑ 110]
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10/14/21  12:19 pm
Commenter: Sam Barnett

Reject this call for a vaccine mandate
 

I strongly object to the imposition of a vaccine mandate on public and private school students and staff, particularly one which does not permit a religious exemption.  Mandating COVID-19 vaccinations for staff and for any student, let alone private school students, puts the government between patients and their doctors, and parents and their children.  This negates the reason many parents enroll their children in private schools in the first place.  Asserting that this is not the case because other vaccinations are required for school attendance is logically faulty. 

  • First, the Virginia legislature has enacted those requirements, not the health department.  No such mandate should be issued outside the regular legislative process, where legislators are directly responsive to and represent the interests of their constituents.
  • Second, the standard testing/review period for vaccines is 5-10 years (Vaccine Research & Development - Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center (jhu.edu)), which encompasses clinical, safety, and efficacy trials.  Long-term risks of COVID-19 vaccines to younger persons are not yet known, rendering a mandate for K-12 students much riskier than other vaccines they are currently required to take. 
  • Moreover, currently-required vaccines are generally sterilizing vaccines – meaning that when taken, they prevent illness.  COVID-19 vaccines were studied/tested for less than a year prior to their introduction under federal Emergency Use Authorization, and they are non-sterilizing – meaning that they do not stop the spread of COVID-19.  (“Our vaccines are working exceptionally well.  They continue to work well for Delta, with regard to severe illness and death – they prevent it. But what they can't do anymore is prevent transmission.” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, CNN interview Thursday, August 5, 2021.).  A vaccine that does not halt the spread of a respiratory virus should not be mandated in order to stop the spread of that respiratory virus. 

Calling for a vaccine mandate that will not stop the spread of a disease and that excludes exemptions on religious grounds violates the constitutional rights of students and staff to whom it would apply.

  • The Fulton v. Philadelphia ruling requires that a religious exemption be provided if any other exemption is allowed.  Federal courts are already reviewing vaccine mandates that exclude religious exemptions and ruling consistently with the Fulton v. Philadelphia ruling:
    • 9/24/21 - A judge for the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked imposition of a vaccine mandate for New York Teachers.
    • 10/12/21 NY Federal Northern District Judge granted an injunction against the mandate for NY healthcare workers who have claimed and were denied religious exemptions.
    • US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled that W. Michigan University violated student-athletes First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion by conditioning their ability to compete on being vaccinated.

COVID-19 vaccines do not stop the spread of the disease, and in fact there is evidence to suggest that they increase case rates. 

 

Mandated vaccination fails to account for better immunity of those who have recovered from COVID-19 than those who are only vaccinated:  Comparing SARS-CoV-2 natural immunity to vaccine-induced immunity: reinfections versus breakthrough infections | medRxiv

 

The COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States are still under emergency use authorization (Pfizer’s COMINRATY is not yet available in the United States despite FDA approval; thus BioNTech received EUA extension and is in continued use), have not been reviewed for long-term impacts, and show evidence of greater risk to young people than the risk from COVID-19 itself:

COVID-19 is minimally harmful to children, despite the existence of tragic outliers:

 

There is no legitimate public health rationale for a vaccine mandate for public or private school children, and no legitimate legal ground to prohibit religious exemptions should one be imposed.  As the COVID-19 vaccines are admittedly non-sterilizing, the choice to be vaccinated or not should be made at the individual level, or in the case of a minor child, in concert with the child’s parents and doctor.  Evidence indicates that COVID-19 vaccines help to reduce hospitalization and death at the individual level for those in higher risk categories (older, co-morbidities), but that they fail to stop transmission at the societal level, which is what a K-12 mandate purports to achieve. The calculation for those under 18 points toward a higher degree of relative risk in taking a COVID-19 vaccine than in getting the COVID-19 illness itself.  Based on the sheer volume of adverse impacts and significant uncertainty about the vaccines’ safety for younger persons who are already at order of magnitudes lower risk from COVID-19 illness, any public official should reject this call for a mandate which could potentially cause irreparable harm to the children it would impact.

CommentID: 110076