In January 2024, Covid vaccine mandates continue to persist at 70 of the top 800 colleges in the US, raising questions about when or if they will ever be lifted. It is ironic that colleges can still enforce these mandates despite the growing understanding that they do little to protect vulnerable members of the community. Colleges that never mandated Covid vaccines often had lower infection rates than those that did.
An open letter by Jerome Adams, the Surgeon General at the time, urges colleges to mandate Covid vaccines on their campuses. The letter emphasizes the importance of achieving a high vaccination rate and suggests various strategies to make vaccination easy and accessible for students, faculty, and staff.
The American College Health Association (ACHA) created a toolkit with false statements and coercive tactics to promote vaccine uptake. The toolkit, funded by Pfizer and the CDC, targeted college student influencers who were hired to pressure other students into getting vaccinated. The false marketing materials have since been removed from the ACHA website. You can read them here.
The White House's College Covid-19 Vaccine Challenge also aimed to promote vaccine uptake among college students. The challenge was filled with propaganda and false narratives, without any data or scientific backing.
The testimony of Dr. Anthony Fauci during private sessions held by the US Select Subcommittee advised American universities to impose vaccine mandates on their students. Representative Brad Wenstrup criticizes the lack of consideration for dissenting opinions during these sessions.
Many colleges and universities removed their Covid dashboards, citing high vaccination rates as the reason. However, this may have been done to avoid evidence that pointed to the failure of Covid vaccine mandates.
Despite growing evidence of their ineffectiveness, colleges and universities that still mandate Covid vaccines continue to emphasize the need to prevent the spread of the virus. Here is a list of colleges that still mandate vaccines and those that never did.
It is surprising that in 2024, there are still 70 colleges refusing to drop Covid vaccine mandates, despite limited scientific endorsement.
