This anti-vax insanity makes no sense. There are soldiers who are balking at getting a COVID-19 vaccine.
In a recent viral video, a senior airman in the Air Force asks viewers to help find jobs for service members leaving the military because they refuse to take the mandatory COVID-19 vaccine.
The unidentified senior airman, who posted her video on TikTok on Sept. 16, speculated that “a lot of the military is about to take an administrative discharge” for refusing the vaccine, which means they’ll be out of a job and presumably in need of work.
“Some people are doing it for medical reasons, some people are doing it for personal reasons, beliefs, whatever it may be, it’s about to suck,” the airman said. “What I’m looking for right now is if you’re an employer or you know employers that will undoubtedly employ us, a lot of us are looking at discharge and we weren’t expecting this so we have no idea what to plan for and I’m sure a lot of people are trying to plan for their future right now.”
You voluntarily enlisted in a job in which you can be ordered to charge into situations where people are shooting at you, and you will obey. You’re in a job where you can be ordered to kill other people, and you will do it. When you show up for training, they will give you a battery of vaccinations, and you accept it. You may get assigned to serve in tropical locations, and you will get vaccinated against diseases like yellow fever and Japanese encephalitis. You may get vaccinated against anthrax; I’ve never had the anthrax vaccine, how many of us civilians have?
And yet here’s an exceptionally useful vaccine that millions of civilians have taken with negligible deleterious side effects, that prevents a disease that is sweeping through the population, that protects against death and prolonged intensive care, and now you want to chicken out, and further, beg civilian employers for a job?
Or worse, this sanctimonious bullshit.
Earlier this month, Army Lt. Col. Paul Hague claimed that he would resign his commission just short of retirement, saying that he believed that mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations were an “unlawful, unethical, immoral, and tyrannical order.”
You could be ordered to drop a bomb on an Afghan village, and that’s OK, but taking personal responsibility and getting a nearly painless shot that protects the lives of your fellow soldiers and citizens, and suddenly that’s “unlawful, unethical, immoral, and tyrannical”? Jesus. That’s a new level of hypocrisy.
I have no sympathy with George Patton slapping a soldier with PTSD (a soldier who had faced far more serious threats to his life than a needle in the arm, and no, more violence isn’t a treatment for trauma), but by god we need another Patton in this case.
Kick them out, there is a reason you follow orders without question. It may not always be the right the thing or the best thing, but it is what will keep more servicemen and women alive (following orders). If they think this is BS, they should have served in The Marine Corps with me back in 1971. There was no BS back then.
Could say the same thing about nurses/doctors? They largely follow the “state of the art” and apply it to others as well.
Although especially for doctors, there might be a more back and forth where they also contribute to the knowledge. Although i am sure on many things they mainly follow? (not a biologist or any such, i just think Dictyostelium Discoideum is cool)
One other problem is that these chickenshits are going to rejoin the civilian populace expecting jobs, and also expecting deference. Say “Thank you for your service”, give me your veteran discounts, honor me, me, me.
They were willing to courtmartial Ehren Watada for saying, “I’ll go to Afghanistan, but not Iraq”, imprison conscientious objectors who refused to participate in two illegal invasions? But those who refuse to be vaccinated will be charged for refusing to follow a lawful order?
I’ll bet the anti-vaxxer clowns had no problem with mefloquine (aka larium) and its permanent effects on people. They were given no choice about taking it, punished if they refused.
https://www.legion.org/magazine/246284/mefloquine-mondays
“will not be charged”.
Oops.
They’ve, obviously, not been paying attention to what is happening in the civilian world. OSHA regs are being put in to require vaccination or frequent testing. More and more companies and government entities are requiring vaccinations, some with no exemptions–a Federal judge just ruled that everyone who works in the California prison system will be required to get jabbed.
Even recreation will be off limits in some places without the shots. Not only bars, restaurants and the like in some places now require proof of vaccination, but at least two sports facilities in the SF Bay Area are requiring proof of vaccination, with no exemptions for the fans.
Side note…I think San Francisco made a major blunder by allowing exemptions at their basketball arena for visiting players, but got it right with no exemptions for local team.
May the slap inflicting ghost of Patton forever haunt them in their dreams.
Before taking this too seriously-there’s a similar story about the Massachusetts State Police. There were allegedly dozens of state cops (the story has since expanded to hundreds of cops) who said they’d resign rather than take the COVID vaccine. Turns out it was only one officer who made that threat.
@8, That one officer is going though with it… and retiring. It’s the brownshirt’s union who is making the apparently absurd claims about dozens / hundreds resigning rather than getting vaccinated. (As an aside, the mandate in question requires vaccination, there is no option for testing-instead; I don’t not how people who cannot be vaccinated are being handled, or if there is anything other than a (presumed) medical exemption.)
@8 @9 The Massachusetts deadline is Oct. 17 so I guess they have to file the paperwork to resign before that date so there is still time. The article does note that requests to retire can go directly to the State Retirement Board. There is probably no real way to tell whether they retired to avoid the vaccine or retired for other reasons though a look at whether retirements are greater than expected might give some indication.
Lt Col Hague obviously never paid attention to his surroundings on any overseas tour other than as a source of armed threats and not as people. Which makes him unsuitable as a citizen-soldier, as an officer, in the first place.
If he had developed and displayed mission-appropriate situational awareness of his surroundings,{note 1} he might have pondered the threat to his personnel posed by an unvaccinated population of furriners, and considered — just considered — that “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” includes not bringing avoidable microorganismic colonies home with you (whether home from “the field” or “the officers’ club” is rather beside the point, isn’t it?).
{note 1} One wonders whether phrases like that might crop up in his performance reports. Naaah (but they should).
Fortunately, the soldiers making these claims are probably lying too. Like the cops mentioned above, the numbers willing to throw away their careers and pensions are few and far between.
Wow.
These reports of US military personnel balking at Covid vaccination requirements are just mind boggling.
Anyone (I’m 62, but not necessarily wise) should be aware that military (public) health provisions call for a slew of mandatory vaccinations required on enlistment and deployment, and various pharmaceutical prophylactics (eg, malaria) can be required on deployment to certain foreign areas.
No room for snowflakes, requirements have been mandated, based on… say centuries of experience fielding armies of hundreds of thousands? Dealing with issues more pressing than routine prevention of diseases? Tick that box.
I have never heard of anyone refusing these requirements, or that it could possibly be “a thing”.
Until now.
WTF??
The simplest google search re: army vaccine requirements puts this at the top:
https://usarmybasic.com/about-the-army/army-shots
It’s notable above that you don’t bring your childhood vaccination records to boot camp, re-vaccinations are administered “to all recruits regardless of prior history.”. So there.
I’d rather spend 5 minutes on something else, but army prophylaxis for diseases is obviously a thing also:
https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2455&context=dissertations
people are talking about how great we are and we will be colonizing Mars soon and are such an advanced civilization. It is such myopic utter B.S. when the current situation so clearly illustrates just how irrational we are and how much the profoundly ignorant still have so much influence.
I have always laughed at the science fiction movies were people do such stupid things thinking that no one would really do that kind of thing but I have failed to look at what is continuing to happen in the real world. It will never happen without a few avoidable inevitable disasters.Willful ignorance has always seemed to have an inordinate influence on humanity through out history. I failed to realize that it was not just in the past but it seems to be the state of humanity now as well.
The selectivity of the current objections takes my breath away. I do not see how to come up with any of them it almost looks to be completely random.
I just got the booster shot yesterday. As with the first two shots, the worst after-effect for me is a very slight sore spot where the needle went in. And since March, when I got two Pfizer vaccines, I have not grown a tail, turned into a DNA-damaged zombie, or lost any other functions that I can identify. (:I do wonder a bit if those little bulges on the sides of my hands are new fingers about to sprout. I will report on that if it happens.:) ) Of course, I know that some people have had more severe reactions, and based on what I’ve read over the years, every vaccine always has serious side-effects for an unfortunate few who get them.. But compared with the far-greater risks from the diseases they protect us against, I consider the tiny risk from a vaccine to be trivial by comparison. I just read a story today about a man who was bitten by a rabid bat, refused the rabies vaccine, and subsequently died the ugly death caused by rabies.
prior usmc enlisted. Got all kinds of vaccinations, but I didn’t mind, because I’m not a willfully ignorant jackass.
Even got a few rounds of the anthrax vaccine (I don’t think I got the full course, but I can’t even remember how many shots that was…). That one seemed to have a higher rate of side effects, and left an above-average amount of people with especially sore arms, but I was lucky and didn’t suffer any side effects. Some of the people I went to boot camp with, or in my first unit, got the smallpox vaccine. I didn’t, but wish I could have had the opportunity. It sounded like there was some unpleasant side effects for a week or so, and it’s not a disease that’s currently circulating in the human population, but I’d still be interested in getting vaccinated against it (just in case).
Two times I refused medical orders (might not be the correct term, it’s been a while…) – once when a dentist decided I should get my wisdom teeth pulled (previous couple said if they weren’t bothering me, they weren’t likely to later), and one corpsman (platoon/company level Navy medic attached to USMC units) who wanted to use an abrasive pad to scrub an abrasion injury I had, to “clean it out and prevent infection”, and fuck no, it hurts enough already, I don’t need more pain on top. Anyways, when I refused treatment, both informed me that if my health suffered as a result of refusing treatment, I could be court-martialed for any lost time or reduced effectiveness/etc. I hope that wasn’t an idle threat, and can be levied against these conspiracy theorist/vaccine deniers. They so much as spend half a day on light duty for COVID after refusing the vaccine, nail them to the wall with a court martial. And give them an Other-Than-Honorable Discharge, so they can pay for their own needless medical care as well. I’m long out of sympathy for these willfully ignorant assholes endangering everyone else out of sheer contrarianism.
These are the sorts of idiots who, back in the dirty days of WWII, had stories about them, when told by my dad, and others, ending with, “And so the other troops got fed up with their shit, and somehow they had an accident, and never made it back to camp.” While the idea that such things happened disgusts me, and I never found it all that funny when hearing the stories, I do understand the sentiment….
In the US Air Force about 1975, I went in to get my flu vaccine. The medic said I looked hesitant and I replied that I never had a bad case of the flu, but every time I got the vaccine, I was sick for three days afterwards – which was true. He nodded, aimed the syringe into the sink and said “you’re done”. I didn’t get the flu that year. I get a flu vaccination every year. Sometimes two for good measure.
I would much rather get the Moderna then many of the other vaccines the military now recommends or requires. Refusing COVID vaccine while getting the military’s long list of vaccines is ridiculous…
If you’re willing to risk your life to kill someone, but not to save someone, then what good are you?
LykeX, a good would-be killer, a worse altruist.
(Was that supposed to be a trick question?)
wsierichs @15:
I see what you did here.
So you already had the tail, the DNA damage and gustatory preference for braaaaaaaains, and loss of… that… function before you got the two Pfizer vaccines in March. Perfectly understandable explanation. Not very comforting, but strictly accurate.
depends on the targejt
Credit to the NHL (and the NHLPA for agreeing) to mandatory vaccines. Fringe player Zac Rinaldo (2021 salary of US$750,000) is banned from playing until he gets vaccinated. Rinaldo openly supported the racist “people’s party” in the recent election.
Sadly, the AHL (the NHL’s minor league) doesn’t have the same requirement despite the NHL running those teams. But it’s a start.