As students return to school, some are facing COVID-19 vaccine mandates doctors say stunt learning and don’t substantially impact public health 

More COVID-19 mandates are in store for students in two major U.S. cities, and some doctors argue the costs outweigh the benefits. 

Schools in New Orleans and Washington, D.C. are mandating COVID-19 vaccines for students returning to classes this fall.  

In New Orleans, students ages 5 and up must receive two shots to attend in person. For D.C. students, those 12 and up must receive a booster in addition to the initial two jabs. 

Some doctors are skeptical of the mandates, pointing to two-years’ worth of data on widespread learning loss as a result of various mandates and remote learning, as well as the relative ineffectiveness of the vaccines. 

“There is ample evidence that online schooling and pandemic education have been an abject failure,” pediatricians Eliza Holland and Nikki Johnson wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. “By the end of the 2020-2021 school year, students were behind several months in reading and math, effectively widening the white-black achievement gap that had been narrowing for 30 consecutive years.” 

The doctors were especially concerned with huge demographic gaps between those who have and have not had the vaccine. 

In D.C., just 36% of children aged 12 to 15, and 43% of 16- and 17-year-olds, are fully vaccinated, booster included. For black children, who make up 60% of enrolled students in D.C. schools, those rates are 23% and 31%, respectively.  

Similarly, in New Orleans, only 52.5% of children aged 5 to 17 are fully vaccinated. 

“If school began today and the mandates were strictly enforced, at least two-thirds of black adolescents in Washington and almost half of all children in New Orleans wouldn’t be allowed in the classroom,” Holland and Johnson wrote. 

Additionally, vaccines scarcely benefit public health since they are not as effective at preventing illness caused by new strains of the virus, according to the authors. 

Criticism of the mandates has come from other quarters, as well. 

“Of course, these mandates come from the same city and school administrators who claim to be extremely concerned with ‘equity’, which attempts to force all racial groups to achieve the same outcomes,” fierce mandate opponent Ian Miller writes at Outkick.com. “Now they’re willing to hurt predominantly minority students by excluding them from school yet again. 

“Parents who make the entirely reasonable and defensible decision to avoid a shot with minimal efficacy and potential for negative side effects will now see their children punished due to biased, purposeful incompetence.”