A professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School is suing the university over its COVID-19 vaccine mandate, Fox News reported Monday.
Professor Todd Zywicki argues that he should not be forced to get the vaccine because he is protected due to natural immunity from a previous coronavirus infection. (RELATED: Pentagon Set To Mandate COVID-19 Vaccination For All Service Members)
George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicki said in a lawsuit that the university’s reopening policy is “unmistakably coercive” and an “unlawful mandate” that places unfair additional burdens on unvaccinated employees who come on campus https://t.co/NMz2QeDo0E pic.twitter.com/6VgdfoyNJ6
— Reuters Legal (@ReutersLegal) August 5, 2021
“I did get COVID and now my college wants to make me get vaccinated in order to do my job and the evidence is clear on this, which is that natural immunity is as least as good as, if not better protection against COVID infection than any of the vaccines that are on the market,” he said Monday on “Fox & Friends.”
Zywicki’s complaint claims that because he contracted the virus before and subsequently tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, he should be exempt from any vaccine mandate. There lacks any “compelling governmental interest in overriding Professor Zywicki’s personal autonomy and constitutional rights by forcing him, in essence, to either be vaccinated or to suffer adverse professional consequences,” the complaint claimed.
Zywicki also argued in his lawsuit that his doctor advised him that receiving the vaccine wouldn’t provide him any additional protection given the fact that there are antibodies. Zywicki said he was told that any vaccine could expose him to a “heightened risk for adverse side effects.”
“For me, it’s literally all of the risk and none of the benefits of getting vaccinated at this point,” Zywicki said on “Fox and Friends.”
A study released Aug. 6 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that for those who previously contracted COVID, “being unvaccinated was associated with 2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with being fully vaccinated.”
The CDC also encouraged people who have previously had the virus to get vaccinated “because experts do not yet know how long you are protected from getting sick again after recovering from COVID-19.”