After fits and starts and shortages and a confounding array of guidelines and tiers, the effort to vaccinate America against Covid-19 has hit yet another snag. Now that shots are finally available to everyone above the age of 16, states are finding it harder and harder to line up people to inoculate.
The various vaccines, minor miracles that they are, are the best defense the U.S. has against the virus. That’s what makes it baffling, and disturbing, to me that so many of the people sworn to defend Americans are refusing to be vaccinated. For a culture that fetishizes these people as guardians of our freedoms who put themselves in harm’s way daily, that these protectors then leave themselves exposed to the virus — and risk passing it on to others — is unconscionable.
According to the Department of Defense, 521,492 U.S. service members — including active duty, National Guard and reserves — have been fully vaccinated as of April 30. Another 277,438 have had at least one shot. But that only represents about 33 percent of the U.S. armed forces, according to Pentagon’s most recent statistics.
It is baffling, and disturbing, to me that so many of the people sworn to defend Americans are refusing to be vaccinated.
As CNN reported April 23, the number of service members who are accepting vaccinations is plateauing or falling. At the same time, the percentage of doses the Pentagon administers out of its stockpile keeps falling.
There’s a variety of reasons why this might be the case, ranging from the fact that many serving in the military are younger and fitter than the average American to this explanation given to the Military Times in March:
An Air Force Technical Sergeant doesn’t like to put anything foreign into his body and will decline the vaccine as long as it’s voluntary. He plans to “detox” the vaccine out of him when the military makes the immunization mandatory, despite the fact that there exists no scientific basis for purging a vaccine from one’s body. “I know my immune system is strong enough to prevent me from getting it,” he told Military Times.
Why then, you might ask, does President Joe Biden — as commander in chief — not just make vaccination mandatory? Well, that’s an option under the law, but it’s a tricky one. All three vaccines in use in the U.S. were granted emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration. That’s different from normal FDA approval — and therein lies the issue.
Under federal law, members of the public have the right to refuse a product that is authorized but not approved — that’s why we haven’t seen the Biden administration roll out mandatory vaccination requirements. The president can order the military to vaccinate its members anyway, whether they want to be vaccinated or not, but “only if the President determines, in writing, that complying with such requirement is not in the interests of national security.”
You’d think that the current pandemic would count, but in an interview with NBC’s “TODAY” show co-anchor Craig Melvin, Biden didn’t give a straight answer on whether he’ll issue such a waiver.
“I think you’re going to see more and more of them getting it,” Biden predicted. “And I think it’s going to be a tough call as to whether or not they should be required to have to get it in the military, because you’re [in] such close proximity with other military personnel.”









