Link:
Two points/questions:
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Well, this is dismaying.
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Why the hell do they have a choice? You volunteered, asshole. Take the shot or hand in your kit and find a civvie job.
The answer is in your cite:
The military cannot make the vaccines mandatory now because they have only emergency use authorizations from the Food and Drug Administration, meaning service members who are required to receive a series of other vaccinations have the option of declining shots to protect against Covid-19.
There are valid reasons for refusing a vaccine, such as allergy. If it is true that 40% of Marines are refusing it, it is disheartening that so many presumably believe the vaccine is ineffective, the risks outweigh the benefits, or that they are personally immune. Or perhaps that it is full of saltpetre or spirochetes designed to quell resistance and libido.
Maybe they’re declining them out of courtesy because other people need the vaccines more than they do. The article suggests the possibility.
I’ll bet you see a similar percentage of the American populace refuse it, too. We are going to be unable to ever really get a handle on the spread of this virus. The best we can do is to personally decide to mask up, and hope that it actually does, eventually, diminish on its own. We don’t have enough team players to accomplish this goal that requires a team effort.
What’s the timeline for moving from emergency use to full approval?
Latest polls I’ve seen are ~25% in early March and holding roughly steady in late March. France is actually rather worse at around 40% similar to the Marines, countries like the UK rather better.
The problem is in today’s global world we’re all so interconnected that even one outsized population block abstaining anywhere is a potential threat. Mostly the trends have been positive with people coming around. But it really is a global issue.
I’ve been wondering the same. Once a vaccine has full approval, schools and employers (and the military) can mandate vaccination.
If they could only include it in tobacco, they’d have 99% of them inoculated in a week.
(every retired Marine I ever knew has dipped or smoked like a fiend)
Can countries refuse to let in unvaccinated U.S. troops?
I have not seen any indication that any of the three US domestic manufacturers are seeking full FDA approval for their respective vaccines. The approval process is extensive and costly, and given the likelihood that they will likely have to modify their vaccines to deal with variants that resist the immunogenicity that the current vaccines provide, it probably doesn’t make either fiscal sense or is a best use of research resources. (There is an argument for streamlining the full approval process to address the much faster developments possible with genetic sequencing and mRNA pharmaceuticals, and not just for vaccines, but the primary mandate of the FDA is to protect the public interest which definitely means not approving a medication with severe adverse reactions.)
The Department of Defense could, if it was so inclined, require vaccination whether it is under an EUA or full approval. That it does not despite the risks this poses to troops that are often unable to physically distance in operational duties and for whom the wearing of masks and other protective equipment is difficult to enforce, indicates the concern about the morale issues this would cause and the reality that many members of the military hold very politically and social conservative, anti-vax and conspiracy-inclined views. This is a serious security issue that the DoD does not know how to handle, witness the contagion on the USS Theodore Roosevelt last year and the complete ineptitude and finger-pointing that resulted from bureaucratic indifference even as the commanding officer warned of outbreak, requested help, and was then blamed for the resulting inaction.
Stranger
This is also possible, to be fair.
When I was in kindergarten, I remember kids getting kicked out of school if they weren’t vaccinated. Good to know the Marines were waiting to take them in.
You realize there’s massive vaccine resistance in hospital staff and everywhere else, right? This isn’t the first story you’ve read, is it?
This is why people talking tough on vaccine passports are so detached from how things work. It’s logistically quite difficult to come down hard on 30% or so of the population, especially if police and the military also contain 30% heads you want to crack.
I think you are not getting the concept of the military. 
Massive? Forty percent? Let’s see a cite for that.
cite for hospital staff at 40% refusal rate please?
There should be a carrot and stick approach. Wanna fly somewhere? Proof of vaccine. Wanna to school? Proof of vaccine? Wanna go to some big stadium event? Proof of vaccine.
Not forcing people to inject, but public health and safety over-rides precious snowflakes thinking they can be plague carriers. You know, every state in the union has laws against public defecation. Just 'cause it might be inconvenient to wait for a stall at Walmart, doesn’t mean it’s legal to drop a steaming load in the aisle. Not vaccinating makes one a public health hazard, and risks shutting down the health care system, thus putting Grandma at risk. You were on the barricades 'cause Obama care was going to pull the plug on Grandma (hyperbole at best), but now you’re just fine putting Grandma at risk???
Of course we’re aware. But the military isn’t the general population. We tend to expect more out of them. And it seems that, instead, they’re actually worse off.
It doesn’t help that they can’t as effectively isolate, due to the communal nature. Or that we’d expect any country to have a vested interest in forcing the issue, just like we’d expect any employer to do so. It’s bizarre they allowed rules that don’t allow them to order the shots.
And the whole point of the stuff with vaccine passports is that it would make it much easier to actually filter out the people. It’s not logistically hard to require people to show proof of vaccination in various situations. I’m not sure why you seem to be treating it like a legal thing. The plan is that actual enforcement will be from the private sector.
More vaccine refusers may make it politically harder (i.e. what you describe about a percentage of the police not being on board) but the logistics seem basically the same: some sort of card and some sort of database that can verify said card. Or some way to link it to current IDs.
nm…