Vaccine squeeze

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 17th of August, 2021.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. First up: vaccine mandates.

As the Delta variant spreads across the country, so are vaccine mandates. Businesses, cities, universities, hospitals and parts of the federal government are all beginning to require proof of the COVID-19 vaccine.

REICHARD: Those vaccine mandates are leading to frustrations and legal challenges. I told you about one of those legal challenges yesterday, but today, WORLD’s Sarah Schweinsberg reports on the deepening friction between public health and personal liberty.

SARAH SCHWEINSBERG, REPORTER: Kaitlyn is a second year post-grad student. She’s studying to be a physician’s assistant at a school in New York. We’re only using her first name to protect her position in the program.

Kaitlyn says throughout the summer, her school asked about her vaccination status.

KAITLYN: We were constantly getting vaccination surveys and even in the surveys we had to put our name, so it wasn't even anonymous.

Kaitlyn held off on getting vaccinated. Then about a month ago, she got a call from her program director.

KAITLYN: So he was asking, like, I see that you're not vaccinated? You want to tell me why?

She explained.

KAITLYN: I was uncomfortable that it's not FDA approved. I’m a young woman. I don't know how it's gonna affect my fertility in the future… I have had COVID. And again, I just feel uncomfortable with it being developed so quickly and pushed out so quickly.

Then…

KAITLYN: He just casually slips in there, that well, you know, if you don't get vaccinated, then it's, it's probably going to affect your graduation.

The program director said that without the vaccine, Kaitlyn can’t fulfill the hospital hours required to graduate. But she says those rounds don’t start for another year. Another year she could go without the vaccine.

KAITLYN: That allows, one, more time for them to do studies… Also, they'll probably have to tweak and do different things now that the Delta variant is running rampant... So a year will allow them a lot more time to do that.

Across the country, students and employees are being put in similar conundrums. Vaccination or job? Vaccination or graduation? It’s even affecting less important decisions, like vaccination or eating at a restaurant?

Jonathan Emord says this is an unprecedented choice. He’s an attorney who specializes in health law claims.

EMORD: We really have no parallel as to the degree of government restriction on individual liberty that we now experience in our history.

That’s why a growing number of lawsuits are challenging vaccine mandates.

Students and professors have filed suits against a handful of schools. Some workers are also challenging employer vaccine mandates.

The lawsuits make a variety of arguments: the mandates violate religious beliefs under the First Amendment. They violate due process rights under the Fifth Amendment as well as the right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment. And it’s illegal to require vaccines that are not fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Todd Zywicki is a law professor at George Mason University, a public college in Virginia. He’s suing his school, arguing he has natural immunity to COVID-19, and, therefore, he shouldn’t have to get vaccinated. The university won’t grant him an exemption.

ZYWICKI: The university is trying to essentially punish me for not undergoing this unnecessary medical procedure, unnecessary because I have natural immunity already.

If Zywicki doesn’t get the vaccine, he has to be tested regularly and wear a mask. And if he chooses not to disclose his vaccine status, his job could be at risk. And he won’t be eligible for merit pay increases.

ZYWICKI: I want to teach my students… And I would like to do this in person without and do my best for my students, without these handicaps, without being stigmatized by, by all this disparate treatment.

But some public health experts say when it comes to COVID-19, far-reaching vaccine mandates are necessary and legal. Lawrence Gostin directs the Center on Global Health Law at the World Health Organization.

GOSTIN: People have an absolute right to make whatever decision they want about their own bodies. But they do not have a right to expose other people to a potentially dangerous infectious disease.

Gostin says there has to be consequences for not complying with mandates … like losing a job.

GOSTIN: You can't simply say, well, it's my right to go into my job and infect others. That's not a right any of us have.

Still, other healthcare experts think that vaccine mandates could be more narrowly tailored to protect especially vulnerable populations.

Zach Jenkins is a clinical specialist in infectious diseases and a professor at Cedarville University.

JENKINS: So a good example might be someone who works in a long term care facility in and around, you know, patients that are immunocompromised and can't receive a vaccine themselves. Well, we know looking at all the data, those people are at incredibly high risk of fatality when associated with COVID-19. So that'd be a really good example of a place where it makes sense.

Jenkins worries that all-encompassing vaccine mandates are further eroding trust in public health institutions. Trust they can’t afford to lose more of.

JENKINS: So the more of these mandates and things like that rollout, I fear that people will think this is just kind of the long arm of these authorities, pushing down on people and can drive them away from what could be a solution.

Courts have only ruled on a couple of mandate challenges. And so far, they’ve sided with the mandates. Lawyer Jonathan Emord says the courts are wrongly relying on a 116-year-old Supreme Court decision.

It involved a man who didn’t want to get a small-pox vaccine. He argued the government was violating his due process and equal protection rights under the fifth and 14th amendments.

The high court ruled against him.

EMORD: It denied the true meaning of the 14th amendment in that it rendered the general public interest in public health superior to the individual rights of dissenting individuals…

Emord says those bringing lawsuits against today’s mandates will have to ask the courts to reinterpret that precedent.

In the meantime, people worried about COVID-19 vaccines will have to make difficult choices. Ones that don’t always feel right.

Back in New York, Kaitlyn decided to get vaccinated. But she says her school put her in a position that will frustrate her for a long-time to come.

KAITLYN: It's really angering because it feels like I'm being pushed into a corner, where it's like, well, this is what you've worked for, this is what you've worked your butt off for your entire life. And in order to pursue it, you have to make a very rash decision for something that could physically, mentally, and emotionally impact you.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Sarah Schweinsberg.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.