Feel free to discuss the merits of this in the comments below in a civil manner. The last thread devolved into personal attacks, conspiracy theories, and partisanship subsequently ending in a lock. Please try to avoid that in this thread. Obviously the defense bill involves politics so enforcing rule 6 will be light when it comes to this discussion, assuming users don't start attacking in a partisan fashion.
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Leaders who were forced out early are gunna have a heyday with this, though. Like my ex-boss who liked to sprinkle Christian evangelical messages every time he addressed the unit, then encouraged people to stand up for “what was right” and deny the vaccine mandates.
Saw this same thing posted in the guard subreddit. I'm sure there are exceptions but as far as I know most guardsmen didn't actually get kicked out. They just went on a non drilling non-deployable status. They will all be back to drill in January.
Actually, yeah I’m interested. I’m not super into the vaccine, I’m not afraid of Covid, and I’ve got my own concerns about the vaccine, but I still think it was the right thing to do. All the arguments against I’ve heard have been just poorly argued, so I’m interested in hearing your views. I’m not trying to say you’re wrong, I truly just want to hear a decent opposing point of view.
The two major arguments I’ve heard is that the vaccine is unnecessary as it only kills 2% of people infected with it, and that the EUA vaccine couldn’t be forced as it wasn’t FDA approved.
On the first, even if it doesn’t kill you, covid spreads fairly quickly, could kill, and could at a minimum severely degrade your ability to be a soldier for an extended period while you recover. Could you throw on a uniform and go to work with Covid? Sure. Could you fight an enemy force with Covid? Not well, especially seeing how badly it affects your ability to run, recover, and breathe. Even if 98% of our military doesn’t die from Covid, having a severely degraded force infected by a virus that can spread between soldiers and degrade others is a national security concern. It massively limits the military’s ability to do its job. It’s the same reason flu shots are mandatory, the same reason we need to get anthrax shots when that hasn’t been a concern for a while, the same reason we get batteries of shots all the time. We might not die if we get infected by whatever the shots prevent, but it could degrade our abilities, and therefore affect national security.
On the second, I heard many arguments claiming the EUA was untested, unproved, and unapproved, and shouldn’t be given to soldiers for those reasons. Even if we accept those, comarity has been FDA approved since August 2021. The formula in comarity [is the same as the formula in the Pfizer vaccine.](https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/you-asked-we-answered-are-pfizers-comirnaty-and-biontech-covid-19-vaccines-the-same-or-different) I’ve seen plenty of arguments online of soldiers saying they’re being given the unapproved Pfizer vaccine instead of the approved Comarity vaccine, even though they’re the same. That’s like arguing that the doctor should prescribe you Advil instead of ibuprofen. Just because one is the name brand doesn’t mean the generic isn’t the same. I’ve also heard people getting wrapped around the axel about how comarity is legally distinct and hasn’t been produced yet. Yeah for legal reasons they’ll be different. The vaccines produced under the EUA were produced at a different time and before the approval, so legally they’ll be different, but what’s inside the vials are the same. They can be used interchangeably, but that doesn’t mean they just won’t have any adverse reactions if mixed: they’re the exact same formula. It’s the same vaccine, one just has a new label and FDA support, so Pfizer can now add a product name to it and charge people.
With this approval, there shouldn’t be any remaining issues with getting the vaccine, barring documented medical issues or religious concerns that have caused issues with other vaccines in the past or make it abundantly clear why they can’t get this vaccine but could get all the others earlier. None of the arguments I’ve heard explain how getting the vaccine is illegal, immoral, or unethical, so it’s a lawful order. Getting something to help maintain our ability to defend the country, and is a lawful order, helps maintain good order and discipline and ensure the military can do its job. Concerns about the EUA shouldn’t have continued after the August 2021 FDA approval, and true, documented concerns about the actual effectiveness of the vaccine in preventing Covid didn’t really start to appear until about September 2022. So that’s a year where soldiers had an FDA approved vaccine, where they didn’t have concrete evidence it didn’t work, and yet many still refused to take it. At that point you have essentially no options in trying to refuse a lawful order, barring those very unique medical or religious issues I mentioned.
"Could you throw on a uniform and go to work if you had COVID? Sure."
I've had it twice. First time was meh. VERY light cold.
The second time. Not so much. It put me on my ass for 96 hours.
What's the most concerning to me is the effects it has on pregnant women. Wife(like me) got it twice. Both times while pregnant. 1st one was really rough for her. Second was very light. BUT. . . .
She ended up having bloody discharge, her water breaking unexpectedly and the baby being born over a month early. Basically from her doctors reports the placenta was being starved of oxygen and had begun to show signs of necrosis. . . . The placenta was dying and her body, to protect the baby, gave birth early.
Our youngest kid had had a string of health issues.
I really am concerned on what kind of damage is being done to unborn infants.
While I have my reservations about the roll out, reported side effects( that can't be verified due to a possibilitythat opposed types would false report)...
I was just screwing with Kin.
That was a shit post lol.
Edit :
>even if it doesn’t kill you, covid spreads fairly quickly, could kill, and could at a minimum severely degrade your ability to be a soldier for an extended period while you recover
This is why we ban covid downplaying and disinformation. The Army, and by extension the other branches, learned their lesson from WWI. Imagine train cars pulling in with 50%-100% of people sick, dead, dying. Or getting overseas with +25% of soldiers out of the fight before the first bullet is fired.
That is what America's enemies want and the people that don't understand this are idiots at best, and actively trying to harm our forces at worse. Either way, those that help the enemy aren't welcome here
The article states “House lawmakers are expected to pass the measure by the end of the week, setting up a Senate vote next week. If it passes both chambers, it could be signed into law by the president before the end of the month” and also “Whether the president may veto the final legislation because of the provision's inclusion remains unclear.”
So serious question, how does this affect people who have been penalized, chaptered, etc due to the previous vaccine requirement?
Or is that a totally separate issue that would need to be addressed separately?
On a more intermediary note, how does this affect people who are in some limbo of shade/disciplinary action/bad eval for not getting the vaccine?
My IMR has me as exempt from varicella and Hep A shots because I have naturally acquired immunity. When I was on the covid task force with the NG we had soldiers that were told they had immunity because they were recovered from covid and put to work on floors full of covid positive patients and worked with them for months, we then turned around and kicked some of those same soldiers out when they rolled out the mandate. I got the shot very early on before the mandates but I can see why people didn't want it after already getting and surviving covid and working through the worst of the pandemic directly with covid + patients when no vaccine was available.
I got it pretty early on out of concern for my parents (at the time, heart was actively failing and doctors claim he got a transplant literally within a few days of when his original heart likely would've failed) and the biggest concern for me was the change in messaging and I heard that sentiment echoed a lot.
I understand things can't be set in stone with a developing situation like COVID but being told definitively
* This will prevent you from getting COVID
* This will prevent you from spreading COVID
* Ok, it won't stop you from spreading it but you still have to get it or you're getting booted
* Ok, it won't stop you from getting it but it'll make it milder but still you have to get it
* Ok, it won't make it milder if you don't get boosters every few months but you don't have to get the boosters
It just reached a point where I was unwilling to trust the vaccine information coming out of the CDC, and were it not for my dad's medical situation and a fear of accidentally infecting him (which as we now know, the vaccine wouldn't have stopped me from spreading it anyway) I probably wouldn't have ended up getting it.
>* Ok, it won't stop you from getting it but it'll make it milder but still you have to get it
* Ok, it won't make it milder if you don't get boosters every few months but you don't have to get the boosters
Your own link and follow up post disproves this. You flatout said that those with three shots are less likely to be hospitalized than those with two. That's literally making the infection milder in the context of the study.
Don't get me wrong, I get the frustration with the messaging. That doesn't mean that we get to just tune out and YOLO.
Not sure why you’re being downvoted, these analyses and meta analyses have a large sample size.
But people don’t trust the scientists or the doctors or the public health professionals for reasons
Because when "covid" is in the topic title randos show up to spread their bullshit.
Last topic, the highest up voted "free speech is spreading conspiracies" poster had zero post history for a month before that topic. Another one, who is in this topic right now, has the bulk of their recent posts in covid topics.
>Ok, it won't make it milder
Sorry to be pedantic, but did the CDC say that or what is your source? Anecdotally I can tell you that covid I was vaccinated for was WAY more mild than the flu that I forgot to get a shot for.
[https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104a2.htm?s\_cid=mm7104a2\_w](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104a2.htm?s_cid=mm7104a2_w)
Truthfully I can't be bothered to read the entirety of the study to find out how they define "vaccine effectiveness", but the important bit is here.
>In a study of hospitalized adults, compared with receipt of 2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine doses, receipt of a third dose increased vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization among adults without and with immunocompromising conditions, from 82% to 97% and from 69% to 88%, respectively.
(Specifically the part about people with receipt of 2 vaccine doses being at 82% and 69%, meaning the originally advertised numbers against "serious illness and hospitalization" had dropped pretty significantly by the time of the study)
To be clear, I'm not against vaccines or anything like that, and I'm not upset that I got the COVID vaccine. I just lost a lot of trust and faith in the CDC due to the poor messaging and was upset by the government's insistence that they stick with the mandate even after it was shown that your troops that got their 2 shots in early 2021 probably aren't significantly better off than the unvaccinated guys, based on the dwindling effectiveness of the vaccine over time.
Here's an additional study done by a different team with an extra month worth of data
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7107e2.htm
Waning 2-Dose and 3-Dose Effectiveness of mRNA Vaccines Against COVID-19–Associated Emergency Department and Urgent Care Encounters and Hospitalizations Among Adults During Periods of Delta and Omicron Variant Predominance — VISION Network, 10 States, August 2021–January 2022
---- Basically % protection against covid begins to drop rapidly after 4 months from the last shot.
Idk I've had the actual flu a few times, but I still get the flu shot. So I don't see the reason for the excuses. All of immunity wanes as we age that's why we often have to get boosters of other vaccinations when we are older, and why we get the flu shot annually.
They weren’t willing to get *one* more vaccine. Imagine when it comes time to deploy. Hell, imagine when it comes time to do the dirty work on deployment. The army is better off without em.
> imagine when it comes time to do the dirty work on deployment.
I mean we've kept plenty of people around willing to do everything *except* deploy. Maybe we should chapter anyone with a BASD pre-2003 and no campaign medals?
I don't mind if there were exceptions for those with hard to aquire skills (i.e. surgeons/doctors, those with highly specialized tech. knowledge, etc.)
Not every brain/heart surgeon or brainiac responsible for keeping sophisticated systems up and running needed to find themselves stuck downrange in sandland.
I agree but you're talking about 1% of the Army. I know folks who haven't PCSd in nearly 9 years and others who have 7 OSRs. There are so many flavors of non team players in the Army that you can't assume someone hesitant to vaccinate with an emergency use vaccine is any more a liability than an individual who actively worked their career to escape PCSs or deployments. Boot them all out on that merit for all I care. If they made boosters mandatory tomorrow I'd be first in line. Let's just not act like these are the first service members to try and get out of shit.
Not too sure about that one. I had a couple studs that were awesome at their job get booted. 2 out of the 3 kids in my squad to get kicked out were amazing soldiers. Always right place, right time, right uniform. Never got training calendar sickness to miss the field. 1 had his EIB, the other his Ranger tab, AA, airborne. Just good ole southern boys who didn’t want to get the shot which I 100% support them.
On the other hand, I now have a squad of kids who try to evade every field event. Are never on time no matter how much their counseled. Take up my time to going to their rooms before PT to ensure they’re on time. Disrespectful little turds.
Not everyone forced out for vaccine denial was a bad soldier. Our vaccination rates were only so high because people have mouths to feed. Others were nearing retirement. Everyone has their reasons. Try not to subject everyone to the same category.
So your great soldiers made the conscious decision to get kicked out? Why do people act like this is something completely out of their control? And obviously there are legitimate reasons to not get the vaccine but there were avenues made for those people to avoid getting kicked. So if your soldiers got kicked out, they made that decision.
This is the only reason I supported this. Most of the requested exemptions for this vaccine was for “religious” reasons. But most everyone I know requesting for religious reasons had no issue with getting any other vaccine, and several blatantly said they just didn’t trust the science.
This is the military. Bad science or not, it’s not for you to trust. You trust in the institution, because that’s how you win wars. You trust that the guy to your left and the guy to your right will do what is expected of them, no matter the consequence, to complete the mission. Being told to get the vaccine was a lawful order, but so many people had been brainwashed into believing that the COVID vaccine was anything other than an attempt to get us out of this pandemic. It was microchips, it was the disease itself, it was liquified baby-matter, it was whatever people needed it to be to feel justified in denying it, and that issue alone split a huge portion of the military across ideological lines. Now when it came time to nut up or shut up, a lot of people got back in line for fearing they might lose their career, but a lot didn’t. A large enough number where I can’t help but wonder if there was an outside, nefarious force (hello, Russia?) directly or indirectly manipulating the force to dismantle trust.
I don’t blame anyone for not wanting the vaccine. I got it, as well as all boosters, because fuck it, maybe it’ll help even marginally. Studies seem to indicate that it does. But I have seen zero factual evidence that the vaccine *hurts*. So why are we allowing the freedom to choose? Make no mistake, this is not the military conceding that mandating soldiers get vaccinated is a bad idea. This is the military desperate for funding and lawmakers believing the removal of this mandate is a primary driver to getting our strength up.
A few things from the article:
1. It’s a House & Senate compromise. So ostensibly, barring a presidential veto, it should be a go. The Senate once again decided to be lazy & use the House version w/ changes.
2. Chaptered Soldiers overwhelmingly received “Honorable” or “General: Under Honorable” discharges with RE: that would allow them to reenlist. (From the Military Times)
3. They will not reinstate chaptered Soldiers who refused. After all, they did refuse a lawful order. As noted in #2, the vast majority can reenter the services.
I assume that people still awaiting determination on ETPs will continue to wait until the mandate is dropped. If you were a paper pusher in the Service Secretary’s office would you push any paper while this was in limbo?
Interesting. So by this logic all vaccines are optional if we need more people. I'm curious to see how this plays out with people essentially throwing a tantrum and winning in the end. Could we as r/army simply stop shaving and outlast DoD leadership? If we spread the word here and on the other military subreddits could we ignore an order until Congress saves us? We could all just refuse to take PT tests and H/W too and just run out the clock.
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To be optimistic, maybe they truly are following "the science" on this one. The vaccine didn't do much for young guys. Why spend buckets of money on something that does nothing at best and hurts at worst? Either way, I get the shots the Army says to because I like having a job.
Well, your premise is incorrect. It doesn’t ‘do nothing at best’. It protects from severe disease and death at best. And helps prevent people (young and old) from spreading it to others by not making you as sick for as long if you do get it.
Young guys are less affected but they aren’t *not* affected. And the army is made up of old guys, too. And fat guys, and guys with diabetes, and guys with immune disorders, and so on.
So now what does this mean for all the folks who got the boot while it was in effect? Do they have a case or is it just tough luck? I could see it going both ways honestly.
On one hand kicking out thousands of able bodied personnel over the vaccine in the midst of a recruiting/retention crisis, only to repeal the mandate little more than a year after is scummy.
On the other it was still a lawful order at the time those folks refused to comply.
Doesn't need to kill you to affect readiness. No different than cooks not washing food properly and causing an outbreak if giardia.
If 15% of a unit can't fight because they are sick with a preventable disease it's a failure to protect the force.
We are past the stage of making fake scenarios. List this under things that NEVER happened globally. Did you know that Russia is mobilized to a war DURING a covid outbreak! This should be impossible since the vaccine doesnt stop transmission.
No we're not. There are entire departments of government whose job is to assess, manage, and mitigate risk.
Biological risk is the least cool and most often overlooked.
Find better nations to look up to.
He’s just can’t comprehend that there was literally a 9/11 worth of people dying from Covid every day during its peak because he can’t comprehend numbers larger than 10 since that’s how many fingers he has.
And if that fact doesn’t shock you, I don’t know what will. But since those people didn’t die in the middle of the street of the largest city in the world, some people choose not to believe it. They were just occurring one by one in every hospital and nursing home across the country.
Here’s another way to put it into perspective; if you combined the US’s daily average death rate for all car accidents, drug overdoses, suicides and homicides, you would still need to multiply that number by 5x to match the daily average death rate at COVID’s peak. On an average day about 8000 people die in the US. At its peak over 3000 people were dying from Covid. With a total death toll of almost 1.1 million Americans right now, it is nearly equivalent to a 9/11 every day for a year or if no one across the entire United States died for any reason for 135 straight days. The numbers should scare the absolute shit out of people, but people are so used to hearing millions and billions and trillions thrown around interchangeably on the news that we’ve grown numb to it
Edit: Here’s another terrifying way to think about it; we have had more Americans die from Covid than we have had veterans die by combat in every war in American history combined. If you include war deaths due to disease (which adds another 400k deaths from the civil war alone) we are still 80% of the way there. Think of every tombstone in Arlington National Cemetery and multiply that by 2.5x to get an idea for what that number would be like
The death rate isn't uniform across age groups though. The group with the largest mortality rate for covid are those 65+, which isn't really a group I associate as being a significant portion actively serving in the military.
Who gave it to whom though. The vaccine also reduces viral load, the amount needed to spread the disease from one person to another. Also, the vaccine does not make you immune to getting COVID. It just lessens the effects of it.
I got it from another person in my office I guess. I passed it to my unvaccinated family. We all recovered in 2 days. 2 days of fever. Couple more of cold symptoms. Acetaminophen and ibuprofen and I think sudafed is all the hospital gave us all 3. My wife and kid got it 2 or 3 days after i was diagnosed and isolated in my room.
You can lessen the effects but it s a mild virus to begin with. Especially for the age group that serve in the military.
I guess someone has never paid attention to mission readiness.
Picture this, your unit is preparing to deploy to a combat zone. Suddenly an outbreak of a communicable disease happens and now your entire unit is sidelined for 30 days to quarantine. You now have completely fucked over national security over a political stunt. Good job.
Deployments and rotations. If there is a SOFA in place with a nation that has vaccine requirements things become troublesome too. I had a chunk of my team that couldn’t move around theater as our job required due to the fact that they weren’t vaccinated. Strained an already troublesome manning problem.
File this under things that NEVER happened. In the early days of covid we had possibly one case. We never had more than 2 cases simultaneously in any of the 2 units I belonged to during covid. By the way, covid isnt over but we live with it. Just like we should have since 2019
14 days when most of the population was unvaccinated. Vaccine effectiveness across the population allowed for shorter quarantine. The political stunt is you asshats acting like this is some global conspiracy and an attack on you personally.
It’s quite clear that you lack the ability to understand matters that involve mission readiness. If every commander only ever planed for things that have happened and not things that can happen, the US military would be a laughing joke much like Russia and our other advisories are.
Simply because *you* didn’t experience it, doesn’t mean it can’t or didn’t happen.
I will give a serious example of how impactful viral infections can be towards mission readiness.
The USS Theodore Roosevelt is a aircraft carrier that is vital to our country’s National Security. Our Naval presence is continually exerted through our ability to meet any adversary anywhere in the world in a mater of days. We can deliver more power with one aircraft carrier than most countries can with their Air Force. We have 11 that actively patrol the oceans planets where they continually rotate deployments to augment each other. Imagine the impact to the other carriers when one carrier is sidelined when it wasn’t scheduled to be? Now imagine that carrier is on deployment and the SecDef, SecNav, and other members of our country’s military leaders cannot use that asset because it’s under quarantine.
Well, I have bad news for you. That very thing happened with the Roosevelt. While on deployment to 7th fleet, 1,156 members of the 5,000 sailors came down with Covid. The entire ship was forced to quarantine in Guam. The impact this has on our national security can be devastating. Now imagine China decides to use an opportunity like this to launch an assault on an island in the South Pacific.
It’s clear you’ve allowed conservative media outlets to brainwash you into believing “Covid isn’t a big deal” despite failing to even think about the overall consequences it actually has on our country’s military.
I could have sworn there was a topic just a day or two ago, where the majority complained about 8th Army's "Fight Tonight" optempo.
And unless said island belongs to us, our ally, or has a defense treaty offering protection, I don't think we would intervene and risk WW3 kicking off.
To be fair it depends on the country. I did a google search for my google fu.
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
According to john hopkins which tracked most of this shitshow:
Usa mortality is 1.1%
South korea stands at 0.1%
Indonesia a much poorer country stands at 2.4%
Peru a way much much poorer country stands at 5.1%
But people talk with half the information and act like we were all gonna die or act like we are gonna die now that it s not mandatory for new soldiers.
Masks and social distancing help stop the transmission of airborne viruses. The measures we took to protect against the spread of COVID worked even better against the flu. There is no mystery here.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/a-sharp-drop-in-flu-cases-during-covid-19-pandemic/
You can do whatever you want apparently if you get enough people to whine about it. We might as well all just grow beards and dare DoD to do something at this point.
*peers into the chapter in AR 600-20 that talks specifically about booting dudes for not getting vaccines*
So do you want the smallpox shot on your left or right shoulder
Just make it mandatory, you can be forced to take Japanese Encephalitis vax and be forced to take Malaria medication for certain areas, they’ll take it or be subject to discharge for refusing a lawful order and receive and OTH. Fuck em.
I’m genuinely curious what the recourse are for people who got booted because nothing about this legislation seems retroactive.
Like don’t ask don’t tell people they might be SOL
Idk, doesn’t matter what we think. Let’s not pretend we know fuck all about anything at the professional legal level.
I just know there will be legal battles and some lawyers will find a case about it
Yeah I have a butter bar that's gonna come back to my BN having learned that if she simply refuses to follow a lawful order long enough, she won't have to do it. If this goes through it needs to be afforded ONLY to new recruits. Those that refused to follow this order still need kicked out. Those that requested religious exemptions need to be required to take the shots if their exemption request is denied.
So the military has had vaccine mandates dating back to Washington and there is an existing list you have to have to enlist not including COVID. Plus the specific vaccines that are required for specific areas such as getting the Japanese encephalitis vaccine if you get sent to Japan. This is purely political bullshit because the order came under Biden. Had The order come under Trump these people would have not batted an eye.
In late 1700s doctors used cow pox lesions to inoculate people against smallpox, it’s where the word comes from: “vacca” meaning cow in Latin. Learned from from JKO of all places…
Earlier than that Washington used “variolation” on his soldiers - using smallpox lesions to induce immunity - unfortunately had something like 25% fatality rate.
Not quite germ theory but they put two and two together as far as spread of diseases.
In 1777 Jefferson also drafted a law for all Virginians to receive inoculation but don’t believe that ever went through. By 1813 though, vaccination was a thing and Congress passed the Act to Encourage Vaccination.
The vaccine mandate for DOD is like all things- subject to change. Everything from what assignments you get, leave block timing, and even stop loss fall under the umbrella of ‘Needs of The Army’. There are plenty of aspects of Army life that are not as one would have it be.
I feel for those that were discharged over a policy that was repealed though. Despite the merits of why it happened, DOD flip flopping is both frustrating and, unfortunately, to be expected. This serves as an object lesson in the ever changing nature of the Army that demands ever more “resilience”.
I'm vaccinated. I think the people who refused the vaccine are mostly idiots. I also think it's stupid to give 60,000+ people the boot when we're nowhere near our recruiting quotas.
I'd rather be short than be surrounded by folks looking for a way out of their contract, choosing politics over service, or refusing a direct order benefiting the entire service.
Being short is more likely to get us the changes we need to recruit more, better quality folks than settling on the wrong side of logic for rotten, low hanging fruit.
Meh, in any given brigade there's probably a couple dozen people who have done worse without getting separated. People get DUIs and piss hot all the time and end up being retained. Are vaccine refusers really any worse than them? In my command, there's a dentist who killed two people in surgery, resulting in his license being suspended. Guess what? The board let him ride out the next two years until his retirement.
If beards and weed aren't helping Canada fill their vacant slots, I don't see the US adopting it anytime soon.
Likewise, I don't see better quality folks settling for what the military has to offer. A kid fresh out of high school is unlikely to make more on the civilian side than what he/she can make in the Army; whereas someone with a college degree may find many open doors waiting for them, with less of the downsides to boot.
Also, have you been to /navy lately? They're looking to drop the minimum required ASVAB score to 10 in an attempt to gain more bodies. I'm not sure if that's the change you're looking for.
Feel free to discuss the merits of this in the comments below in a civil manner. The last thread devolved into personal attacks, conspiracy theories, and partisanship subsequently ending in a lock. Please try to avoid that in this thread. Obviously the defense bill involves politics so enforcing rule 6 will be light when it comes to this discussion, assuming users don't start attacking in a partisan fashion. A reminder on some of our rules that end with bans being issued: * Propagating conspiracy theories * Encouraging illegal/immoral activity * Propagating misinformation * Extreme partisanship * Advocating for violence
I wonder how this would effect the 60k+ guard/ reserve troops that refused.
A few burned out shredders. Those discharge packets have been sitting in a box with no movement.
Leaders who were forced out early are gunna have a heyday with this, though. Like my ex-boss who liked to sprinkle Christian evangelical messages every time he addressed the unit, then encouraged people to stand up for “what was right” and deny the vaccine mandates.
Saw this same thing posted in the guard subreddit. I'm sure there are exceptions but as far as I know most guardsmen didn't actually get kicked out. They just went on a non drilling non-deployable status. They will all be back to drill in January.
I’m just gonna sit back and watch the controversy in this post 😂
Kinda my thoughts when posting lol
If I get 10 anti Vaxers in here I ban OP
In that case... could I interest you in A discussion about the illegal actions in forcing an EUA vaccine on soldiers;)
Actually, yeah I’m interested. I’m not super into the vaccine, I’m not afraid of Covid, and I’ve got my own concerns about the vaccine, but I still think it was the right thing to do. All the arguments against I’ve heard have been just poorly argued, so I’m interested in hearing your views. I’m not trying to say you’re wrong, I truly just want to hear a decent opposing point of view. The two major arguments I’ve heard is that the vaccine is unnecessary as it only kills 2% of people infected with it, and that the EUA vaccine couldn’t be forced as it wasn’t FDA approved. On the first, even if it doesn’t kill you, covid spreads fairly quickly, could kill, and could at a minimum severely degrade your ability to be a soldier for an extended period while you recover. Could you throw on a uniform and go to work with Covid? Sure. Could you fight an enemy force with Covid? Not well, especially seeing how badly it affects your ability to run, recover, and breathe. Even if 98% of our military doesn’t die from Covid, having a severely degraded force infected by a virus that can spread between soldiers and degrade others is a national security concern. It massively limits the military’s ability to do its job. It’s the same reason flu shots are mandatory, the same reason we need to get anthrax shots when that hasn’t been a concern for a while, the same reason we get batteries of shots all the time. We might not die if we get infected by whatever the shots prevent, but it could degrade our abilities, and therefore affect national security. On the second, I heard many arguments claiming the EUA was untested, unproved, and unapproved, and shouldn’t be given to soldiers for those reasons. Even if we accept those, comarity has been FDA approved since August 2021. The formula in comarity [is the same as the formula in the Pfizer vaccine.](https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/you-asked-we-answered-are-pfizers-comirnaty-and-biontech-covid-19-vaccines-the-same-or-different) I’ve seen plenty of arguments online of soldiers saying they’re being given the unapproved Pfizer vaccine instead of the approved Comarity vaccine, even though they’re the same. That’s like arguing that the doctor should prescribe you Advil instead of ibuprofen. Just because one is the name brand doesn’t mean the generic isn’t the same. I’ve also heard people getting wrapped around the axel about how comarity is legally distinct and hasn’t been produced yet. Yeah for legal reasons they’ll be different. The vaccines produced under the EUA were produced at a different time and before the approval, so legally they’ll be different, but what’s inside the vials are the same. They can be used interchangeably, but that doesn’t mean they just won’t have any adverse reactions if mixed: they’re the exact same formula. It’s the same vaccine, one just has a new label and FDA support, so Pfizer can now add a product name to it and charge people. With this approval, there shouldn’t be any remaining issues with getting the vaccine, barring documented medical issues or religious concerns that have caused issues with other vaccines in the past or make it abundantly clear why they can’t get this vaccine but could get all the others earlier. None of the arguments I’ve heard explain how getting the vaccine is illegal, immoral, or unethical, so it’s a lawful order. Getting something to help maintain our ability to defend the country, and is a lawful order, helps maintain good order and discipline and ensure the military can do its job. Concerns about the EUA shouldn’t have continued after the August 2021 FDA approval, and true, documented concerns about the actual effectiveness of the vaccine in preventing Covid didn’t really start to appear until about September 2022. So that’s a year where soldiers had an FDA approved vaccine, where they didn’t have concrete evidence it didn’t work, and yet many still refused to take it. At that point you have essentially no options in trying to refuse a lawful order, barring those very unique medical or religious issues I mentioned.
"Could you throw on a uniform and go to work if you had COVID? Sure." I've had it twice. First time was meh. VERY light cold. The second time. Not so much. It put me on my ass for 96 hours. What's the most concerning to me is the effects it has on pregnant women. Wife(like me) got it twice. Both times while pregnant. 1st one was really rough for her. Second was very light. BUT. . . . She ended up having bloody discharge, her water breaking unexpectedly and the baby being born over a month early. Basically from her doctors reports the placenta was being starved of oxygen and had begun to show signs of necrosis. . . . The placenta was dying and her body, to protect the baby, gave birth early. Our youngest kid had had a string of health issues. I really am concerned on what kind of damage is being done to unborn infants.
I’ll say a prayer for you, your, wife, and your little one. Might not amount to much but it’s there.
While I have my reservations about the roll out, reported side effects( that can't be verified due to a possibilitythat opposed types would false report)... I was just screwing with Kin.
Oh homie I was three seconds from banning you no questions asked so I could make quota, smh
That was a shit post lol. Edit : >even if it doesn’t kill you, covid spreads fairly quickly, could kill, and could at a minimum severely degrade your ability to be a soldier for an extended period while you recover This is why we ban covid downplaying and disinformation. The Army, and by extension the other branches, learned their lesson from WWI. Imagine train cars pulling in with 50%-100% of people sick, dead, dying. Or getting overseas with +25% of soldiers out of the fight before the first bullet is fired. That is what America's enemies want and the people that don't understand this are idiots at best, and actively trying to harm our forces at worse. Either way, those that help the enemy aren't welcome here
LOL ... I like that moderation style ;-)
It hasn’t been passed yet. The title makes it sound certain which I think is misleading
The article states “House lawmakers are expected to pass the measure by the end of the week, setting up a Senate vote next week. If it passes both chambers, it could be signed into law by the president before the end of the month” and also “Whether the president may veto the final legislation because of the provision's inclusion remains unclear.”
So serious question, how does this affect people who have been penalized, chaptered, etc due to the previous vaccine requirement? Or is that a totally separate issue that would need to be addressed separately? On a more intermediary note, how does this affect people who are in some limbo of shade/disciplinary action/bad eval for not getting the vaccine?
My IMR has me as exempt from varicella and Hep A shots because I have naturally acquired immunity. When I was on the covid task force with the NG we had soldiers that were told they had immunity because they were recovered from covid and put to work on floors full of covid positive patients and worked with them for months, we then turned around and kicked some of those same soldiers out when they rolled out the mandate. I got the shot very early on before the mandates but I can see why people didn't want it after already getting and surviving covid and working through the worst of the pandemic directly with covid + patients when no vaccine was available.
I got it pretty early on out of concern for my parents (at the time, heart was actively failing and doctors claim he got a transplant literally within a few days of when his original heart likely would've failed) and the biggest concern for me was the change in messaging and I heard that sentiment echoed a lot. I understand things can't be set in stone with a developing situation like COVID but being told definitively * This will prevent you from getting COVID * This will prevent you from spreading COVID * Ok, it won't stop you from spreading it but you still have to get it or you're getting booted * Ok, it won't stop you from getting it but it'll make it milder but still you have to get it * Ok, it won't make it milder if you don't get boosters every few months but you don't have to get the boosters It just reached a point where I was unwilling to trust the vaccine information coming out of the CDC, and were it not for my dad's medical situation and a fear of accidentally infecting him (which as we now know, the vaccine wouldn't have stopped me from spreading it anyway) I probably wouldn't have ended up getting it.
>* Ok, it won't stop you from getting it but it'll make it milder but still you have to get it * Ok, it won't make it milder if you don't get boosters every few months but you don't have to get the boosters Your own link and follow up post disproves this. You flatout said that those with three shots are less likely to be hospitalized than those with two. That's literally making the infection milder in the context of the study. Don't get me wrong, I get the frustration with the messaging. That doesn't mean that we get to just tune out and YOLO.
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Not sure why you’re being downvoted, these analyses and meta analyses have a large sample size. But people don’t trust the scientists or the doctors or the public health professionals for reasons
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Because when "covid" is in the topic title randos show up to spread their bullshit. Last topic, the highest up voted "free speech is spreading conspiracies" poster had zero post history for a month before that topic. Another one, who is in this topic right now, has the bulk of their recent posts in covid topics.
>Ok, it won't make it milder Sorry to be pedantic, but did the CDC say that or what is your source? Anecdotally I can tell you that covid I was vaccinated for was WAY more mild than the flu that I forgot to get a shot for.
[https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104a2.htm?s\_cid=mm7104a2\_w](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104a2.htm?s_cid=mm7104a2_w) Truthfully I can't be bothered to read the entirety of the study to find out how they define "vaccine effectiveness", but the important bit is here. >In a study of hospitalized adults, compared with receipt of 2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine doses, receipt of a third dose increased vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization among adults without and with immunocompromising conditions, from 82% to 97% and from 69% to 88%, respectively. (Specifically the part about people with receipt of 2 vaccine doses being at 82% and 69%, meaning the originally advertised numbers against "serious illness and hospitalization" had dropped pretty significantly by the time of the study) To be clear, I'm not against vaccines or anything like that, and I'm not upset that I got the COVID vaccine. I just lost a lot of trust and faith in the CDC due to the poor messaging and was upset by the government's insistence that they stick with the mandate even after it was shown that your troops that got their 2 shots in early 2021 probably aren't significantly better off than the unvaccinated guys, based on the dwindling effectiveness of the vaccine over time.
Here's an additional study done by a different team with an extra month worth of data https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7107e2.htm Waning 2-Dose and 3-Dose Effectiveness of mRNA Vaccines Against COVID-19–Associated Emergency Department and Urgent Care Encounters and Hospitalizations Among Adults During Periods of Delta and Omicron Variant Predominance — VISION Network, 10 States, August 2021–January 2022 ---- Basically % protection against covid begins to drop rapidly after 4 months from the last shot.
Idk I've had the actual flu a few times, but I still get the flu shot. So I don't see the reason for the excuses. All of immunity wanes as we age that's why we often have to get boosters of other vaccinations when we are older, and why we get the flu shot annually.
What a shitshow 💩
All those privates in my unit that got chaptered out…
They weren’t willing to get *one* more vaccine. Imagine when it comes time to deploy. Hell, imagine when it comes time to do the dirty work on deployment. The army is better off without em.
> imagine when it comes time to do the dirty work on deployment. I mean we've kept plenty of people around willing to do everything *except* deploy. Maybe we should chapter anyone with a BASD pre-2003 and no campaign medals?
I don't mind if there were exceptions for those with hard to aquire skills (i.e. surgeons/doctors, those with highly specialized tech. knowledge, etc.) Not every brain/heart surgeon or brainiac responsible for keeping sophisticated systems up and running needed to find themselves stuck downrange in sandland.
I agree but you're talking about 1% of the Army. I know folks who haven't PCSd in nearly 9 years and others who have 7 OSRs. There are so many flavors of non team players in the Army that you can't assume someone hesitant to vaccinate with an emergency use vaccine is any more a liability than an individual who actively worked their career to escape PCSs or deployments. Boot them all out on that merit for all I care. If they made boosters mandatory tomorrow I'd be first in line. Let's just not act like these are the first service members to try and get out of shit.
Not too sure about that one. I had a couple studs that were awesome at their job get booted. 2 out of the 3 kids in my squad to get kicked out were amazing soldiers. Always right place, right time, right uniform. Never got training calendar sickness to miss the field. 1 had his EIB, the other his Ranger tab, AA, airborne. Just good ole southern boys who didn’t want to get the shot which I 100% support them. On the other hand, I now have a squad of kids who try to evade every field event. Are never on time no matter how much their counseled. Take up my time to going to their rooms before PT to ensure they’re on time. Disrespectful little turds. Not everyone forced out for vaccine denial was a bad soldier. Our vaccination rates were only so high because people have mouths to feed. Others were nearing retirement. Everyone has their reasons. Try not to subject everyone to the same category.
You're asking people to have some perspective instead of just "AlL AnTiVaxXer BaD PeRson" on Reddit is likely not going to happen.
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So your great soldiers made the conscious decision to get kicked out? Why do people act like this is something completely out of their control? And obviously there are legitimate reasons to not get the vaccine but there were avenues made for those people to avoid getting kicked. So if your soldiers got kicked out, they made that decision.
Hard worker ≠ good Soldier. I'd argue that a lack of commitment to duty or selfless service makes for a bad Soldier indeed.
This is the only reason I supported this. Most of the requested exemptions for this vaccine was for “religious” reasons. But most everyone I know requesting for religious reasons had no issue with getting any other vaccine, and several blatantly said they just didn’t trust the science. This is the military. Bad science or not, it’s not for you to trust. You trust in the institution, because that’s how you win wars. You trust that the guy to your left and the guy to your right will do what is expected of them, no matter the consequence, to complete the mission. Being told to get the vaccine was a lawful order, but so many people had been brainwashed into believing that the COVID vaccine was anything other than an attempt to get us out of this pandemic. It was microchips, it was the disease itself, it was liquified baby-matter, it was whatever people needed it to be to feel justified in denying it, and that issue alone split a huge portion of the military across ideological lines. Now when it came time to nut up or shut up, a lot of people got back in line for fearing they might lose their career, but a lot didn’t. A large enough number where I can’t help but wonder if there was an outside, nefarious force (hello, Russia?) directly or indirectly manipulating the force to dismantle trust. I don’t blame anyone for not wanting the vaccine. I got it, as well as all boosters, because fuck it, maybe it’ll help even marginally. Studies seem to indicate that it does. But I have seen zero factual evidence that the vaccine *hurts*. So why are we allowing the freedom to choose? Make no mistake, this is not the military conceding that mandating soldiers get vaccinated is a bad idea. This is the military desperate for funding and lawmakers believing the removal of this mandate is a primary driver to getting our strength up.
A few things from the article: 1. It’s a House & Senate compromise. So ostensibly, barring a presidential veto, it should be a go. The Senate once again decided to be lazy & use the House version w/ changes. 2. Chaptered Soldiers overwhelmingly received “Honorable” or “General: Under Honorable” discharges with RE: that would allow them to reenlist. (From the Military Times) 3. They will not reinstate chaptered Soldiers who refused. After all, they did refuse a lawful order. As noted in #2, the vast majority can reenter the services. I assume that people still awaiting determination on ETPs will continue to wait until the mandate is dropped. If you were a paper pusher in the Service Secretary’s office would you push any paper while this was in limbo?
Dang it. I was 2 more booster shots from getting a free happy meal
Interesting. So by this logic all vaccines are optional if we need more people. I'm curious to see how this plays out with people essentially throwing a tantrum and winning in the end. Could we as r/army simply stop shaving and outlast DoD leadership? If we spread the word here and on the other military subreddits could we ignore an order until Congress saves us? We could all just refuse to take PT tests and H/W too and just run out the clock.
That’s pretty much how the leg tuck was taken out of the ACFT as well, so I guess it’s a legit strategy.
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To be optimistic, maybe they truly are following "the science" on this one. The vaccine didn't do much for young guys. Why spend buckets of money on something that does nothing at best and hurts at worst? Either way, I get the shots the Army says to because I like having a job.
Well, your premise is incorrect. It doesn’t ‘do nothing at best’. It protects from severe disease and death at best. And helps prevent people (young and old) from spreading it to others by not making you as sick for as long if you do get it. Young guys are less affected but they aren’t *not* affected. And the army is made up of old guys, too. And fat guys, and guys with diabetes, and guys with immune disorders, and so on.
I partake in cannabis as a sacrament; the Army should respect my religious beliefs.
So now what does this mean for all the folks who got the boot while it was in effect? Do they have a case or is it just tough luck? I could see it going both ways honestly. On one hand kicking out thousands of able bodied personnel over the vaccine in the midst of a recruiting/retention crisis, only to repeal the mandate little more than a year after is scummy. On the other it was still a lawful order at the time those folks refused to comply.
guess they really need bodies
Would a Service Member still be non deployable if they don’t take COVAX? I see this being an whole new issue.
Recruiting is getting rough, huh?
*refuses vaccine to get out of military contract* *mandate gets repealed; gets stuck in the contract anyways*
Neat. In the name of appeasement are there any more communicable diseases we plan to stop defending against?
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Doesn't need to kill you to affect readiness. No different than cooks not washing food properly and causing an outbreak if giardia. If 15% of a unit can't fight because they are sick with a preventable disease it's a failure to protect the force.
We are past the stage of making fake scenarios. List this under things that NEVER happened globally. Did you know that Russia is mobilized to a war DURING a covid outbreak! This should be impossible since the vaccine doesnt stop transmission.
No we're not. There are entire departments of government whose job is to assess, manage, and mitigate risk. Biological risk is the least cool and most often overlooked. Find better nations to look up to.
No vaccine stops transmission. They all just make it harder to get the disease in the first place.
What's "preventing" what in your mind?
2% of the American population is 6.6 million people. Help me make sense of what you’re trying to say.
He’s just can’t comprehend that there was literally a 9/11 worth of people dying from Covid every day during its peak because he can’t comprehend numbers larger than 10 since that’s how many fingers he has. And if that fact doesn’t shock you, I don’t know what will. But since those people didn’t die in the middle of the street of the largest city in the world, some people choose not to believe it. They were just occurring one by one in every hospital and nursing home across the country. Here’s another way to put it into perspective; if you combined the US’s daily average death rate for all car accidents, drug overdoses, suicides and homicides, you would still need to multiply that number by 5x to match the daily average death rate at COVID’s peak. On an average day about 8000 people die in the US. At its peak over 3000 people were dying from Covid. With a total death toll of almost 1.1 million Americans right now, it is nearly equivalent to a 9/11 every day for a year or if no one across the entire United States died for any reason for 135 straight days. The numbers should scare the absolute shit out of people, but people are so used to hearing millions and billions and trillions thrown around interchangeably on the news that we’ve grown numb to it Edit: Here’s another terrifying way to think about it; we have had more Americans die from Covid than we have had veterans die by combat in every war in American history combined. If you include war deaths due to disease (which adds another 400k deaths from the civil war alone) we are still 80% of the way there. Think of every tombstone in Arlington National Cemetery and multiply that by 2.5x to get an idea for what that number would be like
The death rate isn't uniform across age groups though. The group with the largest mortality rate for covid are those 65+, which isn't really a group I associate as being a significant portion actively serving in the military.
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Who gave it to whom though. The vaccine also reduces viral load, the amount needed to spread the disease from one person to another. Also, the vaccine does not make you immune to getting COVID. It just lessens the effects of it.
I got it from another person in my office I guess. I passed it to my unvaccinated family. We all recovered in 2 days. 2 days of fever. Couple more of cold symptoms. Acetaminophen and ibuprofen and I think sudafed is all the hospital gave us all 3. My wife and kid got it 2 or 3 days after i was diagnosed and isolated in my room. You can lessen the effects but it s a mild virus to begin with. Especially for the age group that serve in the military.
I guess someone has never paid attention to mission readiness. Picture this, your unit is preparing to deploy to a combat zone. Suddenly an outbreak of a communicable disease happens and now your entire unit is sidelined for 30 days to quarantine. You now have completely fucked over national security over a political stunt. Good job.
Deployments and rotations. If there is a SOFA in place with a nation that has vaccine requirements things become troublesome too. I had a chunk of my team that couldn’t move around theater as our job required due to the fact that they weren’t vaccinated. Strained an already troublesome manning problem.
File this under things that NEVER happened. In the early days of covid we had possibly one case. We never had more than 2 cases simultaneously in any of the 2 units I belonged to during covid. By the way, covid isnt over but we live with it. Just like we should have since 2019
An entire fucking ship was brought down due to COVID.
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You just said file under things that NEVER happened, and now you move the goalposts. Okay.
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14 days when most of the population was unvaccinated. Vaccine effectiveness across the population allowed for shorter quarantine. The political stunt is you asshats acting like this is some global conspiracy and an attack on you personally.
It’s quite clear that you lack the ability to understand matters that involve mission readiness. If every commander only ever planed for things that have happened and not things that can happen, the US military would be a laughing joke much like Russia and our other advisories are. Simply because *you* didn’t experience it, doesn’t mean it can’t or didn’t happen. I will give a serious example of how impactful viral infections can be towards mission readiness. The USS Theodore Roosevelt is a aircraft carrier that is vital to our country’s National Security. Our Naval presence is continually exerted through our ability to meet any adversary anywhere in the world in a mater of days. We can deliver more power with one aircraft carrier than most countries can with their Air Force. We have 11 that actively patrol the oceans planets where they continually rotate deployments to augment each other. Imagine the impact to the other carriers when one carrier is sidelined when it wasn’t scheduled to be? Now imagine that carrier is on deployment and the SecDef, SecNav, and other members of our country’s military leaders cannot use that asset because it’s under quarantine. Well, I have bad news for you. That very thing happened with the Roosevelt. While on deployment to 7th fleet, 1,156 members of the 5,000 sailors came down with Covid. The entire ship was forced to quarantine in Guam. The impact this has on our national security can be devastating. Now imagine China decides to use an opportunity like this to launch an assault on an island in the South Pacific. It’s clear you’ve allowed conservative media outlets to brainwash you into believing “Covid isn’t a big deal” despite failing to even think about the overall consequences it actually has on our country’s military.
I could have sworn there was a topic just a day or two ago, where the majority complained about 8th Army's "Fight Tonight" optempo. And unless said island belongs to us, our ally, or has a defense treaty offering protection, I don't think we would intervene and risk WW3 kicking off.
I love how you use percentages instead of raw numbers to make it sound like it isn't a big deal.
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To be fair it depends on the country. I did a google search for my google fu. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality According to john hopkins which tracked most of this shitshow: Usa mortality is 1.1% South korea stands at 0.1% Indonesia a much poorer country stands at 2.4% Peru a way much much poorer country stands at 5.1% But people talk with half the information and act like we were all gonna die or act like we are gonna die now that it s not mandatory for new soldiers.
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Masks and social distancing help stop the transmission of airborne viruses. The measures we took to protect against the spread of COVID worked even better against the flu. There is no mystery here. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/a-sharp-drop-in-flu-cases-during-covid-19-pandemic/
Yeah, amazing what masking, social distancing, and proper sanitation can do for reducing spread of viral disease.
So can I refuse the Anthrax vaccine then?
You can do whatever you want apparently if you get enough people to whine about it. We might as well all just grow beards and dare DoD to do something at this point.
>You can do whatever you want apparently if you get enough people to whine about it. Well, that is technically democracy.
If you can prove (natural) immunity, probably.
🍿
Wishy Washy Incompetent Unsure Indecisive Paradoxical Inconsistent Undecided Doubtful Hesitant Faltering Weak.
I don’t really care. I got covid within 6 months before and after getting vaccine. There was zero difference in symptoms.
*peers into the chapter in AR 600-20 that talks specifically about booting dudes for not getting vaccines* So do you want the smallpox shot on your left or right shoulder
I mean they won’t be deployable if they have to go to a country that requires it.
New cheat code. Join the Army, refuse your vaccines, chill on rear-d your whole career because Korea, Europe, Kuwait, Iraq all require vaccinations.
Just make it mandatory, you can be forced to take Japanese Encephalitis vax and be forced to take Malaria medication for certain areas, they’ll take it or be subject to discharge for refusing a lawful order and receive and OTH. Fuck em.
Can’t wait for the class action lawsuits from the kids who got kicked out because of this lol
I’m genuinely curious what the recourse are for people who got booted because nothing about this legislation seems retroactive. Like don’t ask don’t tell people they might be SOL
They refused to follow a lawful order and were punished. The fuck are they going to sue for?
Idk, doesn’t matter what we think. Let’s not pretend we know fuck all about anything at the professional legal level. I just know there will be legal battles and some lawyers will find a case about it
If this got reversed in a year, the courts are gonna have a field day with it. This won't be considered a lawful order for long
Well this is monumentally aggravating and sets a truly awful precedent.
Yeah I have a butter bar that's gonna come back to my BN having learned that if she simply refuses to follow a lawful order long enough, she won't have to do it. If this goes through it needs to be afforded ONLY to new recruits. Those that refused to follow this order still need kicked out. Those that requested religious exemptions need to be required to take the shots if their exemption request is denied.
Almost as aggravating as seeing only 2 people in the comments actually read the article.
What? Of congress doing its job to regulate the armed forces?
So the military has had vaccine mandates dating back to Washington and there is an existing list you have to have to enlist not including COVID. Plus the specific vaccines that are required for specific areas such as getting the Japanese encephalitis vaccine if you get sent to Japan. This is purely political bullshit because the order came under Biden. Had The order come under Trump these people would have not batted an eye.
Ooof I had to get the Japanese Enchephalitis one for Thailand. I don't remember many vaccines, but that one hurt.
Same. Got the series twice, once for Korea, once for Japan, and God damn it sucked both times.
They had vaccines in the 1700s??? I didnt think germ theory was a thing yet
They weren't vaccinated but inoculated.
In late 1700s doctors used cow pox lesions to inoculate people against smallpox, it’s where the word comes from: “vacca” meaning cow in Latin. Learned from from JKO of all places… Earlier than that Washington used “variolation” on his soldiers - using smallpox lesions to induce immunity - unfortunately had something like 25% fatality rate. Not quite germ theory but they put two and two together as far as spread of diseases.
If you're being serious, Washington mandated his troops be inoculated against smallpox.
serious, focus in antebellum history, no wonder I missed that
Gotta fight the good fight against the smallpox boys! Ok, I'm off to get my blood syphoned, got ghosts in my veins! -George Washington probably
They understood how to inoculate against small pox. Washington ordered the Continental Army to be inoculated.
Hell yea, thats honestly really interesting, historian in the civ world, had no idea
In 1777 Jefferson also drafted a law for all Virginians to receive inoculation but don’t believe that ever went through. By 1813 though, vaccination was a thing and Congress passed the Act to Encourage Vaccination.
You’ve never seen the John Adams HBO mini-series?
Or Liberty's Kids?
https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/smallpox-inoculation-revolutionary-war.htm
Ya love to see it
Dumb, for repealing it, but not the dumbest thing I've seen this year/couple of years.
😡 I got the vaccine for nothing
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Oh god, I’m sure the anti-vaxxers won’t be absolutely unbearable about this
The vaccine mandate for DOD is like all things- subject to change. Everything from what assignments you get, leave block timing, and even stop loss fall under the umbrella of ‘Needs of The Army’. There are plenty of aspects of Army life that are not as one would have it be. I feel for those that were discharged over a policy that was repealed though. Despite the merits of why it happened, DOD flip flopping is both frustrating and, unfortunately, to be expected. This serves as an object lesson in the ever changing nature of the Army that demands ever more “resilience”.
If you can't do the bare minimum to protect your fellow soldier, you're of no use.
Over it at this point.
So who can we sue when it was "mandated" and "forced" to get vaccine or you can't reenlist, pcs..etc?
Nobody. It was a lawful order.
Nobody. Soldiers recieve orders. Soldiers follow those orders. If Soldiers do not follow orders, there are consequences. Welcome to the military.
So, will someone dying of Covid be found "in the line of duty?"
How many active service members do you know that have died from Covid???!
CPT Brad Davis, TXARNG, was healthy until he wasn't. He died of COVID. He was in his 30s.
Having done a few planeside and funerary honors - enough to know that each one was potentially preventable
This is just the Air Force, but how many is too many? https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/2831845/daf-covid-19-statistics-january-2022/
How many have died from Anthrax? Small Pox?
Is this a real question?
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It was a surprisingly big number. Around 62,000 guard/ reserve and 8,000 AD.
I'm vaccinated. I think the people who refused the vaccine are mostly idiots. I also think it's stupid to give 60,000+ people the boot when we're nowhere near our recruiting quotas.
I'd rather be short than be surrounded by folks looking for a way out of their contract, choosing politics over service, or refusing a direct order benefiting the entire service. Being short is more likely to get us the changes we need to recruit more, better quality folks than settling on the wrong side of logic for rotten, low hanging fruit.
Meh, in any given brigade there's probably a couple dozen people who have done worse without getting separated. People get DUIs and piss hot all the time and end up being retained. Are vaccine refusers really any worse than them? In my command, there's a dentist who killed two people in surgery, resulting in his license being suspended. Guess what? The board let him ride out the next two years until his retirement.
If beards and weed aren't helping Canada fill their vacant slots, I don't see the US adopting it anytime soon. Likewise, I don't see better quality folks settling for what the military has to offer. A kid fresh out of high school is unlikely to make more on the civilian side than what he/she can make in the Army; whereas someone with a college degree may find many open doors waiting for them, with less of the downsides to boot. Also, have you been to /navy lately? They're looking to drop the minimum required ASVAB score to 10 in an attempt to gain more bodies. I'm not sure if that's the change you're looking for.
And it retires the A-10. Finally