The Military and Veterans' Room
I wonder if the military will kick them all out? I have not seen an update about the quarter of the Seal force whose time limit to get vaccinated already passed.
Hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops have not yet complied with vaccine mandate as deadlines near.
Hundreds of thousands of U.S. service members remain unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated against the coronavirus as the Pentagon's first compliance deadlines near, with lopsided rates across the individual services and a spike in deaths among military reservists illustrating how political division over the shots has seeped into a nonpartisan force with unambiguous orders.Overall, the military's vaccination rate has climbed since August, when Defense Department leaders, acting on a directive from President Joe Biden, informed the nation's 2.1 million troops that immunization would become mandatory, exemptions would be rare and those who refuse would be punished. Yet troops' response has been scattershot, according to data assessed by The Washington Post.
For instance, 90 percent of the active-duty Navy is fully vaccinated, whereas just 72 percent of the Marine Corps is, the data show, even though both services share a Nov. 28 deadline. In the Air Force, more than 60,000 personnel have just three weeks to meet the Defense Department's most ambitious deadline.Military officials may have other concerns that limit how aggressively they push reservists to comply with the vaccine mandate, including lessons learned from past attempts to do so, said Trupti Brahmbhatt, a senior policy researcher and military health expert at the Rand Corporation.
The Air Force experienced significant blowback following Pentagon requirements for anthrax vaccine regimens in the late 1990s. The mandate "adversely" affected the "retention of trained and experienced guard and reserve pilots," according to a Government Accountability Office sample survey cited in a 2002 report. About 16 percent of pilots and crew members in reserve units either sought a transfer to another unit to delay or avoid the process, switched to an inactive status or left duty altogether, the report found.
"The Army probably does not want to risk those retention problems," Brahmbhatt said.What polls don't capture, however, is how many Marines and other combat-focused troops, compared to civilians who are the same age, generally are more physically fit and, as a consequence, may doubt the need to be vaccinated.
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Originally Posted by RMNIXON
