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His company, Tully Rinckey, has heard from hundreds of soldiers, Marines and Sailors wanting to know their rights and whether they can take legal action if they are ordered to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.
“A lot of American soldiers contacted us saying, ‘I don’t want a vaccine that hasn’t been tested, I’m not sure it’s safe, and I don’t trust the government vaccine. What are my rights? ‘”Rinckey mentioned.
In general, their rights are limited as vaccines are widely considered essential for the military to carry out its missions, as the military often eat, sleep and work nearby.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said he is working quickly to make the COVID-19 vaccine mandatory for military personnel and should ask Biden to waive a federal law that requires individuals to have a choice if the vaccine doesn’t. is not fully licensed. Biden also ordered that all federal workers be vaccinated or be subjected to frequent testing and travel restrictions.
Lawyers say the waiver will put the military on a more solid legal footing so it can avoid the legal battles it faced when it commissioned the anthrax vaccine for troops in the 1990s, so that it was not fully approved by the Federal Food and Drug Administration.
The distrust of some military personnel is not only a reflection of the feelings of the general public towards the COVID-19 vaccines, which were quickly cleared for emergency use, but stems in part from the problems of the anti-virus program. anthrax.
Dozens of soldiers refused to take this vaccine. Some have left the service. Others have been disciplined. Some were court martialed and expelled from the military with other than honorable discharges.
In 2003, a federal judge ruled in favor of the military who filed a complaint that the military could not administer a vaccine that had not been fully authorized without their consent, and stopped the program.
The Pentagon relaunched it in 2004 after the FDA issued an approval, but the judge re-arrested it after ruling that the FDA had failed to follow procedures.
Eventually, the FDA issued the appropriate approvals for the vaccine, and the program was reinstated on a limited basis for troops in high-risk locations.
Military experts say legal battles over the anthrax vaccine could be the reason the Biden administration has been cautious. Until now, the government has relied on the encouragement of troops rather than the obligation to fire. Yet coronavirus cases in the military, as elsewhere, have increased with the most contagious delta variant.
If the military makes the vaccine mandatory, most military personnel will need to be vaccinated, unless they can claim to be among the few to be granted an exemption for religious, health, or other reasons.
According to the Pentagon, more than a million military personnel are fully immunized and more than 237,000 have received at least one injection. There are approximately 2 million soldiers on active duty, guard and reserve.
Many consider the COVID-19 vaccine necessary to avert another major outbreak like last year’s that sidelined the USS Theodore Roosevelt and resulted in more than 1,000 cases of crew members and one death .
An active-duty military officer said he would welcome the vaccine among the military’s mandatory vaccines. The soldier, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said he was concerned unvaccinated military personnel could abuse the honor system and go to work without a mask.
He recently got into a car with others for work, but didn’t feel like he could ask if everyone was vaccinated because it has become such a political topic. Commanders struggled to separate vaccinated and unvaccinated recruits during the early parts of basic training across departments to prevent infections.
Housing unvaccinated troops would be a burden on service members who are vaccinated, as it would limit who is selected for deployment, according to active-duty troops and veterans.
“The military is reaching out to vulnerable populations around the world to be able to better serve the United States,” said the former Air Force Staff Sgt. Tes Sabine, who works as an X-ray technician in an emergency room in New York State. “We need to have healthy military personnel to carry out missions, and if the COVID-19 vaccine does, that’s a very positive thing.”
Dr Shannon Stacy, who works at a hospital in suburban Los Angeles, agreed.
“As an emergency physician and former flight surgeon for a Navy heavy helicopter squadron, I can attest that COVID-19 has the potential to upgrade a fully trained unit from mission ready to non-deployable status in a matter of minutes. days, ”she said. .
The biggest challenge will be scheduling the shots around the training sessions, said Stacy, who left the Navy in 2011 and performed group vaccinations before deployment.
Army Col. Arnold Strong, who retired from the military in 2017, said he believed it wasn’t something the US military couldn’t overcome: troops working in the corners the most remote on Earth have access to doctors. Since most people sign up to follow orders, he thinks this time will be no different.
“I think the majority of the military are going to line up and get vaccinated as soon as it is a defense ministry policy,” he said.
Strong lost five friends to the virus, three of whom were veterans.
His hope is that the military can set an example for others.
“I hope that if people see the military come in and say, ‘Yeah, let’s shoot guns,’ that will set a standard for the rest of the country,” he said. “But I don’t know because I think we are facing such a strong threat of disinformation deployed on a daily basis.”
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Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2021 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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