Thursday, May 20, 2021 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
U-M community reacts to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for students in on-campus housing hope was that in two years, we would
JUSTIN O’BEIRNE, LIZ HWANG & have a vaccine that might be effective ISABELLE REGENT at the 50% level,” Jacobson said. “We Daily Staff Reporters
University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel announced on Apr. 23 that any students who decide to live in on-campus housing for the 2021-2022 school year must be fully vaccinated to be eligible for housing. Students planning to live in the residence halls must provide proof of vaccination by July 15, barring limited exemptions that have not yet been laid out. A large contingent of higher education institutions have set forth vaccination requirements for their students, while other universities and colleges are reluctant to mandate vaccines due to legal and ethical reasons. In an email to The Michigan Daily, Dr. Robert Ernst, Associate Vice President for Student Life and Executive Director of the University Health Service, wrote that the University will accept COVID-19 vaccinations that are approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration or the World Health Organization. The accepted vaccines currently include the Pfizer BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson/Janssen, and AstraZeneca (Covishield) vaccines. The University recommends that all students, regardless of living location, upload proof of their COVID19 vaccination to Wolverine Access before the beginning of the fall semester. Ernst said this information will be used to inform plans for the fall. Ernst said that Michigan Housing is working on a specific plan for how exemptions will be managed and will share this information soon. Students who are vaccinated will not be required to adhere to on-campus testing requirements in the fall semester. “This (vaccine) information will be used to protect our community in many ways, including waived testing and quarantine requirements, social distancing needs, public healthinformed housing decisions and administrative planning,” Ernst said. Professor Emeritus Peter Jacobson, professor of health law and policy, said that although the vaccines did not go through the normal three-phase process of approval, they are still safe and effective. “Nothing is perfect, but just think of it this way: a little over a year ago, the
now have, in one year, a vaccine that’s effective in the 95% level.” Regardless of the public concern, Jacobson said the vaccine mandate at the University will protect the overall community as long as the University gives students and staff of different socioeconomic backgrounds equal access to the vaccine. Jacobson said he is a firm believer in vaccinating everyone, with the exception of certain students and staff due to medical reasons. “You’re in a small community,” Jacobson said. “You’re in dorms, you’re in classes, you’re exposing professors. You’re exposing U-M staff. It seems to me that the University has every right to protect itself.” Some critics argue that vaccine mandates are a violation of the Nuremberg code, which was created after World War II to
increased testing and mask wearing. “Given the politicized environment we’re in, there is this threat of backlash and I think before we go there, we should consider there’s a lot of options on a continuum here,” Roberts said. Additionally, Roberts said, clear and early communication to all campus community members is vital to the peaceful enforcement of vaccine requirements on the U-M campus. “Historically, there was great trust in government public health, and even reasonable trust in the pharmaceutical industry not so long ago, but you think both of those actors have suffered from a loss of public trust,” Roberts said. International Students Even if international students arriving on campus in the fall are unable to get vaccinated in their home country, Ernst said the University will provide easy access to vaccination. The University has partnered with Michigan Medicine, the Washtenaw
TESS CROWLEY/Daily Students and staff following COVID-19 precautions in Bursley Hall.
protect people from non-consensual experimentation. Jacobson said the vaccines are not experimental because there is concrete evidence the vaccines are not harmful to human beings. “How do you then have so few side effects after millions of doses — after a hundred million doses — in the U.S., two hundred million shots in the U.S.?” Jacobson said. J. Scott Roberts, professor of health behavior and health education, said each university should set policies according to the needs of their specific community. One example of this, according to Roberts, is the execution of soft mandates, where colleges set consequences for students and staff who do not get vaccinated, such as
County Health Department and several local pharmacies to help the campus community get vaccinated. Ernst said students who arrive on campus unvaccinated, including international students who were not able to get vaccinated before the fall, will be expected to undergo surveillance testing until they are fully vaccinated. At the time of publication, 12.2% of people living in China have been vaccinated against COVID-19. China is using the Sinopharm vaccine, which has a lower efficacy rate than the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. In 2020, there were 3,493 Chinese-born students enrolled at U-M. Read more at michigandaily.com
NEWS 3
It’s been one month since the FDA paused the Johnson & Johnson vaccine: Here’s how vaccine hesitancy has been impacted EMILY BLUMBERG & MADELEINE BAUER Daily Staff Reporters
The Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a joint statement on April 13, recommending an immediate pause on administering the Johnson and Johnson/Janssen COVID-19 vaccine “out of an abundance of caution.” The ensuing 11-day pause was a result of six reported cases in which women ranging from 18 to 48 years of age experienced severe blood clots — a new condition known as thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) — less than two weeks after receiving the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. By the time the vaccine had been brought to a halt, 6.8 million doses of the vaccine had already been administered in the U.S. The J&J vaccine is one of three CDC-authorized and recommended COVID-19 vaccinations, along with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. The J&J vaccine is currently only approved for those 18 and over and was reported as 66.3% effective in clinical trials at preventing COVID19 two weeks after vaccination, compared to Pfizer and Moderna, which were 95% and 94.1% effective respectively. Despite the lower efficacy, the J&J vaccine was 100% effective in trials against hospitalizations and death from COVID-19. Unlike the Pfizer and Moderna vaccinations, the J&J vaccination does not need to be stored at sub-zero temperatures and is administered in one shot rather than two. The single required shot makes administration and distribution easier for communities with limited access to health resources and may be more attractive to individuals with needle anxiety or busy schedules. Less than a week before the recommended pause of the J&J vaccine, University President Mark Schlissel sent out an email to the campus community announcing that 7,500 doses of the J&J vaccine would be available for students to receive at locations across the three University of Michigan campuses at no cost. After the recall was announced, student appointments for the J&J vaccine were either switched to Pfizer
vaccine or cancelled altogether. On April 23, Martino Harmon, vice president of student life, announced that being fully vaccinated against COVID-19 would be required for all students living in on-campus housing for the Fall 2021 semester. The University said students are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after receiving a single dose vaccine — like J&J — or two weeks after receiving the second shot in a two-dose vaccine series. On that same day, the FDA and CDC put out an additional statement lifting the pause on the J&J vaccine, publicly reaffirming that it is both safe and effective. As of May 14, including the six reported cases before the pause, there have been 28 total confirmed cases of TTS — six of them males. All of them were individuals who had recently received the J&J vaccine, and three patients died as a result. Campus community remains confident in Johnson and Johnson vaccine safety Although there were concerns regarding the J&J vaccine’s safety after the recall, a national poll conducted by the de Beaumont Foundation reported that 76% of those surveyed were just as likely to get a COVID-19 vaccine as they were before the pause. Additionally, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that only 18% of Hispanic women, 11% of Black men and 7% of white women said the news regarding the TTS cases made them less likely to get vaccinated. U-M students have also expressed minimal concern about the recall of J&J or campus vaccination requirements. As of May 13, Michigan Medicine had administered over 126,000 COVID-19 vaccines with no signs of slowing down. LSA sophomore Sophie Rogoff received the J&J vaccine prior to the recall and said she has no concerns about the safety of the vaccine. She mentioned her experience with using birth control, which the FDA states has between a 0.09% and 0.3% chance of causing blood clots. The risk of developing TTS after receiving the J&J vaccine is significantly lower than the blood clots occasionally caused by birth control. Read more at michigandaily.com
