Missouri public universities should mandate vaccine

Dear Editor:

Missouri has become the latest battleground in the war against COVID-19. Not only are we battling the delta virus and its uncontrolled spread, we are also battling the clock — or should I say calendar? The summer is quickly passing and before too long we will be back in the fall. Thus entering another cold and flu season, headlined by a global pandemic. The one thing Missourians have working for us is a miracle of science: vaccines.

Pfizer and Moderna have proven their worth in the time of the delta variant, the severity of COVID-19 cases and the spread of the highly contagious variant rests squarely within unvaccinated populations. However, Missouri is still overwhelmingly unvaccinated (40 percent of Missouri’s population is fully vaccinated when herd immunity doesn’t start until about 70 percent). Therefore, the chief actor to fight back against the delta variant, and protect our state as our cooler months approach, must be schools. Specifically public universities.

Recently, a federal judge in Indiana upheld Indiana University’s vaccine mandate, stating that under the Fourteenth Amendment, the school had the authority to require a vaccine, in an emergency situation, out of interest in defending the campus and public good. With this ruling, public universities in the state of Missouri

ought to follow suit and begin mandating the vaccine for the fall 2021 semester. Not only is there now legal justification, Missouri is seeing spikes that we haven’t seen since before the vaccines were available. Furthermore, according to the New York Times COVID-19 map, the counties that house three major state schools, the University of Missouri, Missouri State and Truman State, are all high-risk or hotspot areas (Boone, Greene and Adair). This means that as the school year starts, these communities that are already under attack from this virus fill up with students from across the state. We will only see an increase in cases and a worsening of the situation in college towns.

With all of this in mind, there is no reason the vaccines should not be required to attend a public college in the state of Missouri. The vaccines are safe, effective, and our best defense at slowing the speed of the virus and its variants.

Stop the vaccine shaming

Dear Editor:

There is a load of information available about the vaccines — good and bad. What really burns me is the attitude of the pro-vaccine people. The attitude is what every elitist out there has for everything, which is: “If you weren’t so ignorant you would agree with me.” “You don’t care about others.” “You are gullible and therefore misled by fake news and disinformation.” “You need an incentive to get you to vaccinate cause you are too selfish to make the right choice without it.” “You must do your duty to protect society.” “You’re just evil and want people to die.”

The reality is that most people who don’t want to be vaccinated against COVID-19 already have heard the facts. It is constantly being shoved down our throats at every turn. The real problem is the more pressure that is put on people to get vaccinated the more they will dig their heels in, resist and question the motives. High pressure sales tactics, hype, virtue signaling and incentives work on some people but in others it makes them distrustful. Not to mention trying to shame people or paint them as evil creates an adversarial dynamic so people are less likely to listen.

When it comes down to it, it is the choice of the individual, it is their body and haven’t we been hearing “my body, my choice” for all these years when it comes to abortion? Didn’t Roe v. Wade clearly define privacy which should offer us protections from vaccine passports? We, after all, wouldn’t let a business fire a woman from her job for having an abortion, so why would we do so because of a vaccine? One might argue that not taking the vaccine “could” cost someone their life where we know for sure that a life was taken from an abortion. Just as abortion isn’t the only option, neither are vaccines.

People will weigh the risks and rewards for themselves. While you might see a greater reward-to-risk ratio for the vaccine, someone else might see social distancing as a better option, someone else might see homeopathic vitamins and medicines, and others masks. So leaders stop forcing others to your beliefs as to what the best option is and let people have the God-given right to choose for themselves.

Inflation claim contested

Thomas Minihan

Jefferson City

Dear Editor:

It’s getting ridiculous, U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer is regularly using the News Tribune to concoct things and present them in an essay that gets published as if it was fact. His latest attempt at this is to claim the actions taken by the current “administration” in the last six months have caused inflation to rise, “at the fastest rate in 13 years.” In 2008, you might remember we had a different type of catastrophe; it was called the subprime mortgage crisis. Today the country is facing a crisis of equal or greater circumstance. To lay the blame on a jump in the inflation rate on the current “administration” by an individual who pretends to be bipartisan seems to be very partisan. Especially if you consider the alternative could have very easily been a recession, if the current “administration” had not taken swift and intelligent action to jump-start a stalled economy.

Then he claims, “I have worked tirelessly with my colleagues to provide much-needed relief for small businesses.” I guess he thinks he can say anything he wants because the News Tribune simply publishes anything he sends them. The American Rescue Plan, which he said last week in his partisan proclamation from our nation’s capital, “I voted against the bill,” included that much-needed relief he mentioned. However, he had to follow the orders of Kevin McCarthy, his pack leader, and vote no. The U.S. Small Business Administration says the American Rescue Plan had $7.25 billion more for the Paycheck Protection Program. Additionally, there was help in the form of grants, not loans. The Restaurant Revitalization Fund provided a total of $28.6 billion in grants to restaurants and bars with 1-20 locations, and on and on. But no, he voted not to help the American small businessperson, just so he could get an “attaboy” from the guy getting his marching orders from the guy who’s still throwing a tantrum over losing the election.

I believe this should be a sign for the News Tribune to review its “Core Values” and stop publishing partisan opinion pieces from elected officials. Just because you publish these “alternative facts” on the opinion page does not mean people don’t take it for the truth. As your statement of core values indicates, “there needs to be a sharp and clear distinction between news and opinion.”