For many UO students, fall 2021 marked a major milestone in a slow return to normalcy — a return to in-person learning and activities, a vaccine-driven end to COVID-19-related anxieties and an opportunity to return to some semblance of normal life. But for immunocompromised UO freshman Gigi Baur, a chemistry major, returning to the classroom posed a major risk.
“I’ve always been super cautious around people who were sick because like the common cold can take me out for a literal week,” Baur said. “So when I decided to live on campus and actually come in person for classes, that was me really taking a risk.”
Baur has a neuromuscular condition that weakens her immune system, making her body less likely to produce the antibodies needed to fight off COVID-19. And she’s not alone; a 2013 CDC study found that approximately 3% of all U.S. adults are immunocompromised, either by an immunologic condition that attacks their immune response or by taking immunosuppressive therapies that intentionally weaken the body’s immune system.
This makes them among the most vulnerable populations to illness, whether it’s COVID-19 or the common cold. Multiplestudies have also found that immunocompromised patients are significantly less likely to respond to COVID-19 vaccines, often forcing them to evaluate their personal risks differently than their peers.
“The narrative pushed throughout this whole pandemic has been, ‘Don’t worry, you’ll probably be fine with COVID if you don’t have disabilities,’” Baur said. “To me that’s just a dog whistle saying that, if you get COVID and you’re disabled, there’s nothing more anyone can do.”
After graduating high school in 2020, Baur made the difficult decision to defer coming to UO until fall 2021. For the first eight months of the pandemic, she hardly left her house and felt frustrated by those who she felt weren’t taking the pandemic seriously.
“By the end of that eight months, I just felt so isolated,” Baur said. “I had to leave social media for a week in November because I just could not stand seeing people going out maskless, going on vacation, and it just felt like this huge echochamber that I could not deal with.”
Eventually, after being vaccinated, Baur decided to move to Eugene. But while fall term may have been relatively light on COVID-19 cases, Baur said she felt frustrated by UO’s decision-making surrounding the Omicron variant.
“You have people coming to this enormous campus [after winter break] from all over the country, all over the world,” Baur said. “And now you’re gonna be forced to go do classes in-person unless your professor grants mercy on you and the 20% who are out for COVID reasons?”
In January, UO announced instructors can move courses online if 20% or more of the students are absent for COVID-related reasons and community members must get a COVID-19 booster shot by the end of January.
“The health and safety of students, faculty and staff has been a top priority throughout the pandemic and the university has put into place proven mitigation tools of vaccination, testing, and masks since the start of the academic year. Over 95 percent of the community is vaccinated,” UO spokesperson Saul Hubbard wrote in a statement. “The UO has provided flexibility in its policies for both students and employees who have medical conditions that may place them at higher risk from COVID-19.”
UO community members must get the booster shot by Jan. 31 or 30 days after they become eligible. But in the meantime, in-person activities have largely continued, despite multiple studies suggesting a typical two-dose regimen of COVID-19 vaccine is largely ineffective against the Omicron variant. That’s presented challenges for vulnerable UO community members, be they students, instructors or staff members.
“The thing that’s terrifying is that, if people are exposed to COVID and I place myself around them, even with masks and even if they’re vaxxed, there’s genuinely no way of predicting how it will hit me,” Baur said.
Students at higher risk for COVID-19 can turn to the Accessible Education Center to seek accommodation for their medical conditions, particularly when it comes to testing and note-taking accommodations like recording lectures or reserving exam rooms. Likewise, at-risk instructors and other employees can request accommodations with the UO’s Americans with Disabilities Act Coordinator through the Office of Human Resources and/or with their individual departments, including a potential move to remote work. Each of these requests are reviewed on a case-by-case basis.
For Baur, recent developments have drastically impacted her mental health. “The fact that we work shoulder-to-shoulder in class with no breathing room, and now they’re saying that cloth masks can’t stop you from getting it, and the booster can’t necessarily either, makes me really scared,” Baur said. “This has all been massively disheartening and frustrating.”
