Elizabethtown College’s immunization policy dictates that all first-year and transfer students be vaccinated prior to matriculation against a battery of contagious and life-threatening illnesses.
To attend the College, documentation must be provided to establish that a student has received two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella shot; two doses of the chickenpox shot or documentation of prior contamination; a tetanus booster shot within ten years of an initial dose; three doses of the hepatitis B vaccination; a polio vaccination; and as required by Pennsylvania’s College and University Student Vaccination Act of 2002, a meningitis vaccination, with a booster dose required if the initial dose was given prior to the student’s sixteenth birthday.
Exceptions to this policy are granted given blood test evidence of natural immunity to any of the above, except for the meningitis vaccination.
Making it to the College unvaccinated is circumstantially unlikely, if not impossible—as such, Etown students who claim to be unvaccinated for religious or other personal reasons are probably unaware that they have met these requirements. To matriculate to the college, students must submit documentation with a physician’s signature indicating that this standard battery of vaccinations has been administered. Barring fraud, other interference or special exemptions—unmentioned in college policy—vaccination status is essentially a fact of life at Etown.
It is, of course, theoretically possible that unvaccinated students may have made it to the campus. No credible, documented cases could be found for reporting, and no credible firsthand testimony of purportedly unvaccinated students could be accepted due to problems with individual reliability and fact-checking procedures.
Regardless, the ethical debate surrounding mandatory vaccinations is getting more and more heated, as outbreaks of measles and mumps, as well as broader popular science discourse, have become more common.
A common criticism of mandatory vaccination policies is that they sideline those who may experience severe allergic reactions to vaccines. It is not clear whether the College’s policy makes exceptions for such students with documented allergies, but some students believe this would be reasonable.
One of the reasons that vaccinations have been broadly considered a medical success is the “herd immunity” phenomenon. When significant levels of a population are protected against diseases like rubella and measles, the benefits tend to extend to unvaccinated populations as well, as general infection levels decrease.
Another hot-button concern is the inclusion of thimerosal as a preservative in some vaccines. Thimerosal is present in some, but not all vaccinations, and versions of vaccines that do not contain thimerosal are typically available upon request—it is a controversial compound in part because it contains mercury. There are allegations and anecdotal evidence that thimerosal vaccines could be linked to autism and circulatory problems, but research has failed to establish any such relationship.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), only 10 percent of measles outbreaks worldwide are typically reported in news media. One such underreported outbreak in Madagascar has killed at least 922 people since October. The estimated immunization rate of Madagascar in 2017 was reported to be around 58 percent, drastically lower than the WHO’s 2008 estimate for Europe of 94 percent.
Even though measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, scattered outbreaks have occurred in recent years.
In 2019 alone, more than 120 cases of measles have been recorded in New York, Texas, Washington and other states.
The majority of these 120 cases in America since 2000 have been the result of people coming from countries where measles is prevalent because of little vaccination.
One person who contracts measles could infect up to 18 others, according to the CDC. Those 18 people would then transmit the virus to another 18 people.
At that rate, an outbreak would quickly grow out of control. There is no cure for measles; there is only prevention in the form of vaccination.
One dose of the measles vaccine is 93 percent effective, and two doses raise it to 97 percent, according to the CDC. People who do not receive the vaccine are at a very high risk of contracting measles.
In part due to vaccinations, it is probably unlikely that Etown will experience a mass outbreak on this scale.
Were the College to lose 922 students to measles, the drop in tuition revenue alone could have a major impact on the College’s day-to-day financial descisions. The college’s vaccination policy behaves both as a public health directive and a financial and credibility safeguard, in that respect.
Unvaccinated students at Etown do a very good job of keeping that information under wraps, if they are among us at all. Spooky!
