The COVID-19 pandemic is over.

Our masks are off, our small businesses are open, and Americans have returned to normal life.

Most of us wake up every morning and rejoice that the darkest days of the pandemic are long gone.

But far-left legislators in Albany are desperately hanging on to the past, clinging to unscientific hysteria to justify their continued control over our daily lives.

I have been standing against this unjust overreach from very early days.

We have succeeded in lifting the vaccine mandate on our military personnel, and we defeated President Joe Biden’s proposed Occupational Safety and Health Administration vaccine mandate on small businesses in the courts.

Just weeks ago, House Republicans passed legislation with bipartisan support to end the vaccine mandate for our health-care heroes, which Gov. Kathy Hochul has stubbornly kept in place despite acute staffing shortages across our state.

That’s not the only vaccine decree she’s needlessly persisted in continuing.

As our nation moves forward, the vaccine mandate on students attending State University of New York institutions remains, for reasons that defy logic and the best available scientific evidence.

We must end SUNY’s vaccine mandate now.

I have heard from countless young people throughout New York who have been forced to withdraw from school or forgo applying altogether because of this ridiculous and unscientific mandate.

Many have even pointed to the mandate as a reason for declining enrollment, which has had economic ripple effects across New York communities.

In Congress, I recently introduced the Ending COVID Vaccine Mandates for Colleges and Universities Act.

This bill restricts federal aid to colleges and universities that keep COVID-vaccine mandates in place.

We should not reward institutions like SUNY with federal taxpayer dollars as they willfully ignore the science and infringe on your rights.

As our understanding of COVID-19 has expanded, two things have become abundantly clear.

First, college-age students are and always have been at relatively low risk of death from COVID-19.

A 2020 study found infection fatality rates for COVID-19 are .002% at age 10 and .01% at age 25. Subsequent studies have confirmed similar findings.

For young people, this very likely puts COVID-19 in a similar category as influenza when it comes to risk of death or serious illness.

Second, the vaccine and boosters do not confer the protection we once thought. Vaccinated and boosted individuals routinely contract and spread the virus today.

It’s one reason most vaccine mandates came to an end months ago.

And that’s not to mention studies that have found the COVID vaccine results in a small but significant increased risk of myocarditis among young men.

Why force low-risk populations to receive a vaccine with questionable efficacy?

Armed with new information, colleges across the country have answered this question by rightly lifting their mandates.

But not SUNY. It continues to impose a cruel and unfair ultimatum on healthy young men and women who are at low risk of death or serious illness from the virus: Get the vaccine or you’re not welcome to study here.

That’s not science, it is state-sponsored coercion, and it must end.

I will continue my fight to safeguard our personal freedoms and to ensure educational opportunities are not withheld from students simply because they have decided not to receive a COVID vaccine.

This decision should be made among students, their families and their doctors.

It should not be a decision made by the government and certainly not by a college or university.

Every student in New York and across America should have the freedom to attend the college of his or her choice without unscientific and unconstitutional vaccine mandates limiting educational opportunities.

All who support science, freedom and preserving the American experiment should join me in this fight to save individual liberty and opportunity for all. 

Claudia Tenney represents New York’s 24th Congressional District.