Should Vaccination Be Mandatory in a Public Health Emergency?

The needle felt cold against my arm as I sat in the campus health center last October, surrounded by a dozen other students waiting for flu shots. A guy across from me scrolled through his phone, reading something that made him frown. "Says here some states tried to make this required during COVID," he muttered to his friend. His friend shrugged and rolled up her sleeve anyway. That moment stuck with me because it captured a tension I had been thinking about since the pandemic: when disease threatens entire communities, can the government force people to get vaccinated? After watching my hometown struggle through COVID and losing my aunt to complications that might have been prevented, I believe mandatory vaccination during severe public health emergencies is justified.

Individual freedom matters deeply, but so does protecting people who cannot protect themselves.

My understanding of this issue started forming in March 2020 when my high school in Ohio closed overnight. For months, my family barely left our house while case numbers climbed. My aunt, who had diabetes, caught the virus before vaccines became available and spent two weeks on a ventilator before dying in May 2020. That loss changed how I thought about public health. When vaccines finally arrived and my parents got their shots, I felt relief mixed with anger that some of our neighbors refused theirs, claiming personal freedom. I started reading about vaccine mandates and discovered they were not new. Schools have required certain vaccines for decades, and the Supreme Court upheld mandatory smallpox vaccination back in 1905.

The strongest argument for mandatory vaccination during emergencies is that contagious diseases do not respect individual choices. When I took Introduction to Biology last year, Professor Chen explained herd immunity: once enough people gain protection, even those who cannot get vaccinated stay safer because the disease cannot spread easily. Babies too young for vaccines, cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, and people with severe allergies all depend on the rest of us to block transmission. During my aunt's hospitalization, I learned she caught COVID from a coworker who refused masks and later refused the vaccine. That coworker exercised his freedom, but his choice helped kill my aunt. In a true emergency where a disease spreads rapidly and kills significant numbers of people, mandatory vaccination creates a barrier that saves the most vulnerable. Personal liberty is important, but it cannot include the freedom to endanger others through inaction.

Making vaccination mandatory also addresses the problem of misinformation, which spreads almost as fast as disease. My roommate's mother sent her dozens of messages last year claiming vaccines contained microchips or altered DNA, none of which was true. Because these false ideas gain traction quickly, voluntary vaccination programs sometimes fail to reach the threshold needed for herd immunity. I saw this in my own county, where vaccination rates stalled at sixty percent and a measles outbreak hit an elementary school last spring. Three children too young for the measles vaccine got sick, and one ended up in the hospital. If vaccination had been required except for legitimate medical reasons, that outbreak probably would not have happened. During emergencies, waiting for education and persuasion to work can cost lives. Mandates cut through confusion and ensure that protection reaches critical levels quickly.

I do take seriously the argument that government-forced medical procedures violate bodily autonomy and could set a dangerous precedent. My friend Marcus, a political science major, argues that once we allow the state to mandate one injection, we open the door to other intrusions on personal medical decisions. He worries about governments abusing this power, especially since marginalized communities have historical reasons to distrust medical authorities. The Tuskegee experiment, in which Black men were deliberately left untreated for syphilis, is not ancient history. I cannot dismiss these concerns. Any mandate must include strict limits: it should apply only during genuine emergencies with diseases that spread easily and cause serious harm, and it must allow medical exemptions for people who could be harmed by the vaccine. Safeguards matter. But the existence of potential abuse does not erase the reality that refusing vaccination during an emergency can kill other people.

I now think about public health differently than I did before losing my aunt. Rights come with responsibilities, and living in a community means sometimes accepting limits on personal choice to protect others. Mandatory vaccination during true emergencies balances individual freedom against collective survival, and in the worst moments, survival has to come first. I still believe people should have control over their bodies in nearly every situation, but a pandemic is not a private matter. The person who refuses a vaccine does not simply risk their own health; they become a potential vector who might infect someone like my aunt. I wish we lived in a country where everyone voluntarily chose to protect their neighbors, but we do not. Until that changes, I accept that sometimes the government must require us to do what we should have done anyway.

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