By Kyra Harrison
With the latest release of the BioNTech, Pfizer vaccine, Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and the Moderna, NIAID vaccine there have been 212 million doses given out in the United States alone. Resulting in 85.4 million people that are fully vaccinated, which is only about 26% of the entire population.
One of the most frequently researched questions is, who is going to require the COVID-19 vaccine for work, school, and even travel whether that be inside or outside of the United States. This question is resulting in mixed emotions about receiving the vaccine for many people including me.
In the article by Aaron Siri, how various organizations are allowed to encourage employees to get any of the COVID vaccines are discussed. However, they are not allowed to require them for their place of work.
There has been information posted about different universities requiring their students to be fully vaccinated when they return for the fall semester. Universities such as Yale, Duke, Brown, and Weslyn are requiring all of their undergraduates, graduates, and professional students who choose to return to campus to be vaccinated prior to their return.
Personally, I am back and forth with my feelings towards the covid vaccinations. I believe that we took the appropriate precautions when the pandemic first began and even still now with everyone following the guidelines and mask requirements that we can lower the risk naturally. But I am aware that some people would like a more permanent solution.
The vaccinations definitely work more in the favor of a permanent solution and offer a sound piece of mind for those looking more in that direction. I do believe that vaccinations would be a wonderful choice for those who want the lingering fear of covid out of their minds.
I also believe that we should all be able to have the choice of whether or not we decide to get the vaccine. Companies and schools moving forward with making the vaccine a requirement take away our freedom of choice, which is something that is very important to us as Americans. Freedom of choice is a privilege, not a right and should not be taken away by companies or schools.
Another idea that is floating around the local news is that documentation of any of the vaccines may be required in order to fly internationally. If this were to happen I could completely understand the desire to require this in order to ensure that the risk of covid spreading is truly going down and wanting to keep as many people as safe as possible.
I think that not having the required vaccinations may persuade more people to actually get vaccinated because they will do so of their own accord instead of feeling as though they are being told to do so. But then again you do run the risk of covid continuing to spread and potentially get worse if there is a higher number of people against receiving the vaccine.
Keeping everyone safe is essential to keeping not only the United States safe but also the rest of the world as a whole. Requiring the vaccine is not guaranteed to have this outcome but it will most likely be a better outcome than covid continuing to spread due to people deciding against it.
