Opinion: Concern has shifted from Penn State to Centre County’s vaccination rate
Like many students and faculty members of Penn State, I was critical of the university’s policy of not imposing mandatory COVID-19 vaccines for all students and employees until a few weeks ago, when President Eric Barron personally explained to me about the COVID-19 situation at the university. From subsequent research on COVID-19 characteristics, I have become sympathetic to the current university policy.
My concern now is the vaccination rates for Centre County as a whole.
Scientists generally agree that the COVID-19 pandemic will not end unless herd immunity is achieved. Herd immunity occurs when a large portion of a community becomes immune to a disease. Attaining herd immunity for COVID-19 requires at least 70-90% of the population to gain antibodies against COVID-19, either through infection or by vaccinations.
As of Sept. 13, 94.4% of all academic personnel and 84.7% of all students in the entire Penn State campuses have indicated they are fully vaccinated. These data suggest that herd immunity may have been achieved in the Penn State community. In comparison, the vaccination rate at the Ohio State University was about 71% when they imposed the mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy. The vaccination rate at the University of Wisconsin, where the mandatory vaccination policy has not been imposed, was about 90% in August.
What concerns me most is that the rate of fully vaccination in Centre County is still low. As of Sept. 13, only 50.53% of the residents of Centre County were fully vaccinated. This corresponds to 81,400 persons with the population of about 161,400. If the population data included about 40,000 of students in the university campus, but the vaccination data did not, then the vaccination rate increases to about 68% for the residents, but still below the rates to achieve herd immunity.
The survival rates of viruses that are transmitted through the air are strongly dependent on the air temperature. For example, when the air temperature drops from 30 degrees Celsius to 0 degrees Celsius, the survival rates of COVID-19 may increase by about 1,000 times. This explains why the rates of influenza infections tends to increase in fall and winter. The threat of COVID-19, especially of the new variants, is very likely to exponentially increase through fall and winter. Consider also that the current COVID-19 vaccines are about 95% effective. That is, about 5% of the people who have been vaccinated may not have developed the immune system against COVID-19. Furthermore, effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines continuously decreases over time, possibly to below 50% levels after 6 months. From these facts, it becomes obvious that we should do the following:
Encourage the residents of town and gown to achieve more than 90% vaccination rates as soon as possible,
Encourage those vaccinated more than 6 months ago to receive booster vaccines, and
Encourage all people to wear masks to reduce the chance of infection while in indoors.
My family loves State College, as we have lived here for 50 years. We have learned that Americans in general are individualistic and proud people. They do not like to be “ordered” by authorities or “bribed” with incentives (e.g., cash, football tickets) to get vaccinated. They are intelligent, kind and caring people. They understand that everyone has the right to refuse vaccination, but no one has the right to bring in deadly weapons (e.g., COVID-19) to public places to harm their neighbors, much like the regulations for guns. I believe that the rates of vaccinations in the communities will continue to increase to over 90% once they have recognized the consequences of refusing the vaccinations and wearing masks.
If we all take our responsibilities seriously and care for each other, we should be able to exist victoriously from the COVID pandemic in spring 2022.