A Michigan State University trustee is criticizing higher education institutions like MSU for requiring students to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Republican Pat O’Keefe used his comment time at Friday’s trustees meeting to blast vaccine mandates.
O’Keefe says the decision to vaccinate should be left up to individuals.
“As to freedom of choice and whether a mandate for a COVID drug is appropriate,” O’Keefe said, “I would only offer that it appears ‘my body, my choice’ applies only to killing babies on college campuses.”
He further says statements that the university is following the science in requiring vaccinations are “intellectually dishonest,” concluding that “getting a drug for COVID is clearly a weighing of the cost and benefit, based on your age, health, and another of other variables, and therefore should not be a mandate, but a choice. Your choice.”
O’Keefe says he has had COVID-19 himself.
MSU President Samuel Stanley Jr. is an expert in infectious diseases. He says the evidence is very strong that vaccines are effective.
“I think that’s been documented,” Stanley said. “They are FDA approved, so they are safe, and that’s been documented again.”
Stanley says about 95%t of MSU students have self-reported to have received at least one dose of vaccine.