TAKING A SHOT

Written By Valerie Miller

No one could blame Nevada college students if they are a little confused at this point about exactly what they are required to do to fight COVID-19 on campus. The on-again, offagain COVID-vaccine mandate for students at the state’s public colleges and universities could be on-again in the fall. But not everybody thinks forcing people to take the jab is the best way to go.

State Senator Joe Hardy, who ultimately voted not to mandate the COVID vaccine for students at a December meeting, is a proponent of students voluntarily getting vaccinated against COVID. In the case of the student COVID-vaccine requirement, however, Hardy is against the idea.

“In this case, I am against people getting forced to something that they have reservations about,” explained Hardy, who is himself a physician. “If we put those kinds of mandates in place, what happens to the people that will not – or cannot – get vaccinated? We have taken away their freedom to go to college.”

The student COVID-vaccine mandate has a somewhat complicated history: In the fall of 2021, a COVID-vaccine mandate was recommended by the Nevada System of Higher Education’s Board of Regents and put in place by the Nevada Board of Health – the body that the Board of Regents determined had the authority to temporarily impose the mandate. Then, right before Christmas, a 12-member commission of the Nevada Legislature blocked the COVID-vaccine mandate when it tied 6-6. Hardy, a Republican state senator from Boulder City, was one of the “no” votes on that commission.

“I am not against all mandates, but this one had challenges, and legitimate challenges,” he says.

“But I do believe this (COVID) vaccine is good.” Hardy is also concerned that forcing people to get vaccinated against COVID will only harden their resolve to never get vaccinated against the virus. Nevertheless, the lawmaker says getting the COVID shot will make students less infectious and “protect your grandma” from getting very sick or dying.

Right before Christmas, the contentious mandate seemed to have come to an end. NSHE directed all registration holds, related to the COVID-vaccine requirement, to be removed from students’ college accounts. Thus, the unvaccinated students could now be free to enroll in in-person classes for the spring semester.

End of story, right? Not so fast. Roughly a week after the Nevada lawmakers seemingly put an end to the vaccine mandate, the NSHE Board of Regents vowed to fight on for the COVID-shot requirement.

A Dec. 30th statement from NSHE Board of Regents stated that “the Board of Regents directed (NSHE) Chancellor Melody Rose to prepare a written letter of support for an NSHE student COVID-19 vaccine requirement to the Governor (Steve Sisolak), the state Board of Health, and the Nevada Legislature that will be reviewed at the Board’s Jan. 14, 2022, meeting.”

The regents are now aiming for another COVIDvaccine mandate to be put in place in time for the fall 2022 semester, when a whole new group of students arrive at UNLV and other Nevada colleges. A letter of support was put forth by the Board of Regents as a result of the Jan. 14th meeting.

While the COVID-shot requirement was ultimately shot down by the Nevada legislative commission, the mandate was a prerequisite for November 2021 enrollment for the spring 2022 semester. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas and the University of Nevada, Reno; Nevada State College, the College of Southern Nevada and all other publicly-funded schools under NSHE enforced that requirement on students – prior to the December legislative decision.

Those who did not provide proof of being fully vaccinated for COVID would not be allowed to register for in-person classes. The unvaccinated students could still take online classes, if they agreed to abide by those rules.

Not all college and university classes lend themselves to be taken online – such as science labs, Hardy acknowledges as one of the problems. Nevada colleges and universities did allow for religious and medical exemptions, but there might be a lengthy wait while the exemption requests were reviewed. If such exemptions were approved, stricter masking requirements and COVID testing were required to take in-person classes. Many students likely took the COVID vaccine as a result of these factors. UNLV has reported that over 90 percent of its student body is now vaccinated for COVID.

And, while the COVID-vaccine mandate for students has been blocked for now, Brian Labus, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics says the mandate did succeed in pushing up the COVID vaccination rates for Nevada college students. He points to UNLV’s vaccination rate of more than 90 percent.

While young people have a low rate of death from COVID overall, Labus argues that getting vaccinated also protects those around them, including those who might be more vulnerable to the virus that has now killed more than 900,000 Americans.

In addition, there is a practical aspect of preventing a massive number of people from getting sick at the same time, and not being able to continue operations at a college, he explains. “We are trying to keep our campus and our community and classes safe,” Labus continues. “And, even if it is not killing people, we can’t have (so many) staff out sick that we can’t function – if everybody is out sick.”

Labus acknowledges that there are fears of rare side effects of the COVID mRNA vaccines in students, especially young males. The epidemiologist points to a study that looked at the rate of heart muscle inflammation, or myocarditis, in non-vaccinated young men.

“The instance of myocarditis is far rarer with the vaccine,” Labus says. “So, it is a perception of risk (from the COVID vaccine).

Labus remains firmly behind the idea of a student COVID-vaccine requirement. “We want to show that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the harms that are there,” he maintains. “This is a standard that we have always used for vaccines.”

The student COVID-shot mandate was blocked. But all faculty and staff, employed at NSHE institutions, had their own COVID-vaccine requirement. Between the end of December and the end of January, nearly 600 people were scheduled to leave their jobs, as a result of failing to get fully vaccinated for COVID, or have approved exemptions.

In the midst of the battle over NSHE’s Board of Regents’ student- and staff- vaccine mandates, the Omicron COVID variant emerged in the United States. Today, the strain is the dominant COVID cause in Nevada, as well.

The rise of Omicron complicated the case for requiring all Nevada public college students to take the COVID shot. Omicron has also accounted for many breakthrough infections among the fully vaccinated. The variant also re-infected some of those who had already recovered from COVID in the past.

Hardy says one of the problems with the regents’ vaccine mandate was that it wanted students to “prove they are immune” to COVID.

Valerie Miller is an award-winning journalist based in Las Vegas. She can be reached at (702) 683-3986or valeriemusicmagic@yahoo.com.