Against CUNY and SUNY Vaccine Mandates

Stephen Kershnar

Kathy Hochul’s Mandate

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

January 10, 2021

 

            Kathy Hochul recently required CUNY and SUNY faculty members be vaccinated.

            The state should not protect faculty against themselves. That is, the state should avoid paternalistic employment conditions. The state would not be justified in requiring that faculty – or other employees – avoid divorce, obesity, or gender-transition even if such requirements were good for the faculty. Here I take no position on whether such requirements would be good for them. In addition, the state should not interfere with whether a faculty member gets an abortion because a woman owns her own body. This is true regardless of whether abortion makes a woman’s life go worse.

            The issue, then, is whether the vaccine mandate protects the unvaccinated from harming others. First, consider whether unvaccinated faculty endanger students. Students are in little danger from Covid. John Hopkins Medical School professor Marty Makary points out that over the last 6 months, the chance of a younger person (15-24) dying from or with Covid is 0.001%, that is, 1 in 100,000. Because the data does not distinguish between dying from Covid or dying from something else while infected with Covid, let us assume that the number overestimates Covid deaths by a factor of 2 (I made this number up). Thus, the chance of a younger person dying of Covid is 1 in 200,000. This still overestimates the risk an unvaccinated person imposes on a student because the unvaccinated person has less than a 100% chance of getting Covid and less than a 100% of passing it on – whether directly or indirectly - to a vulnerable person. Let us again assume that these numbers are 33% each –likely an overestimate - and we end up with a 1 in 1.8 million chance that someone choosing not to be vaccinated causes a student to die. This is too low a risk to have the state require an employee put an unwanted substance into her body.  

            By analogy, many people – including me – think that the state should permit abortion even if the fetus is a person because the fetus infringes on the woman’s right to control her body. This is true even if abortion has a 100% chance of killing a person. In short, we do and should take very seriously a person’s right to control her body. This applies to unwanted vaccinations in a manner similar to abortion, although the former involves a less significant impact on a woman’s body. On a side note, zygotes and embryos are not people, but this is a discussion for another day. 

            Second, consider whether unvaccinated faculty endanger vaccinated employees, for example, vaccinated faculty. Vaccinated people have a 0.003% chance of dying from Covid, that is, 3 in 100,000. On campuses, the risk is noticeably lower because they have fewer people 75 and older than does the general population. Again, given this low risk and the small risk that an unvaccinated person transmits the virus to a vulnerable, vaccinated employee, this is too low a risk to pressure someone to take a strongly unwanted substance into her body. By analogy, CUNY and SUNY do not require faculty to get a flu, pneumonia, or shingles shots despite these being contagious diseases. CUNY and SUNY also do not require that faculty not be obese, get divorced, or gender transition, even though these have contagion-like effects.

            Third, consider whether unvaccinated faculty endanger unvaccinated employees, for example, unvaccinated faculty. Such faculty have chosen to assume a greater risk than if they were vaccinated. By analogy, we do not and should not require that faculty members get the flu shot in order to protect those who choose not to get a flu shot. Because they assumed the risk, the unvaccinated have no special claim to state protection, especially if the protection involves strongarming people to put unwanted substances into their bodies. In any case, the risk is not all that great because in the US, the unvaccinated are only 7 times more likely to die from Covid than the vaccinated and the risk of the former is quite small.

            Fourth, consider the public. If Hochul’s order is designed to protect the public, then it is not faculty-specific. If Hochul wants to require it of all New York employees, she should do so. Singling out the faculty is just taking advantage of their weakness – specifically, their far-left ideology – and is not a principled attempt to focus on a dangerous group. By analogy, if the New York wants to lessen or eliminate gun ownership, it should not do so by requiring that CUNY and SUNY faculty not own guns as a condition on employment. Rather, it should mandate this for all of its employees.

            One expects this sort of virus-related idiocy on campuses these days. Amherst requires students to wear two masks if they are not wearing a KN95 mask. Cornell recommends its students wear masks outdoors. Georgetown requires events be held virtually or outdoors. Princeton requires that vaccinated students not leave the county unless they are on a sports team.  

            One objection is that vaccination provides a public good. A public good is one that for which people cannot be excluded and for which one person’s consumption of the good does not make less available to others. Examples include clean air and nuclear defense. The state should be wary of requiring important rights be waived in order to bring about public goods. For example, consider an imaginary scenario in which that contraceptive implants and IUDs in teenage girls produce very good results because they significantly reduce the number of dropouts, out-of-wedlock births, and welfare usage. Further assume that these things are a public good because of their effects on communities. New York still should not require this for teenage girls who attend public schools. Nor should it require this for girls whose mothers work for CUNY or SUNY. We should take a person’s right to control her body seriously.  

Disclosure: I had three Moderna-shots.