Lockdowns, mandates, and masks are things we have had to put up with for over a year, taking away much of what our lives would have been. There is a solution: required COVID vaccines will bring us back to the lives we once knew. With them being required at school, it will reduce the risk of widespread COVID cases, preventing another grueling year of virtual learning.

In San Diego Unified,  those sixteen and older must be vaccinated or go back to virtual learning. Since the requirement to get vaccinated has been put in place, that district can expect daily infections to go down rapidly and reduce the risk of superspreader events that would force it to close. 

In the Los Angeles School District, students are required to be vaccinated against COVID to attend school in person. Because of this, COVID cases are already decreasing rapidly and each day, as more students get vaccinated, there are fewer community based cases spreading in the schools encompassed by the LA School District.Support with data

Some will argue that mandatory vaccination is trampling on people’s rights and the freedom to choose what is best for them. Ironically, these are the same people that have been going to school for their entire academic lives, and  unless they have been blatantly lying on their medical records, they have received all of their required vaccinations to attend, so why should a COVID shot be any different? 

It is not really about personal choice for those who do not want a vaccine mandate, rather a political statement in which they wish to defy the “establishment” which is based on nothing but conspiracy theories, misinformation, and outright lies. This manipulation has made them lose faith in anything that is required by the government, especially mandatory vaccinations.

To ensure that school is not  shut down again, students of all walks of life should unequivocally support mandatory vaccinations at Poway High. The needs of the many far outweigh the misgivings of the few, because of this, mandatory vaccinations are the best step forward so that we will never have to go back to 2020.