Pentagon Drops DOD COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate, Ceases Review Of Vax Exemptions

According to a memorandum generated today by Secretary of Defense Austin, the August 24th Armed Forces vaccine mandate of Aug. 24, 2021 has officially been rescinded. According to the new memo,

“No individuals currently serving in the Armed Forces shall be separated solely on the basis of their refusal to receive the COVID-19 vaccination if they sought an accommodation on religious, administrative, or medical grounds. The Military Departments will update the records of such individuals to remove any adverse actions solely associated with denials of such requests, including letters of reprimand.”

“The Secretaries of the Military Departments will further cease any ongoing reviews of current Service member religious, administrative, or medical accommodation requests solely for exemption from the COVID-19 vaccine or appeals of denials of such requests.”

Finally! There are quite a few dedicated service members who have been in limbo since August of 2021 because they were unwilling to subject themselves to an unnecessary and minimally tested COVID therapeutic. Virtually all of them have had COVID and thus have natural immunity, which science tells us is superior to COVID vax-induced immunity. They all submitted the proper paperwork have have jumped through more hoops than every tiger in every circus to ever happen, and yet their paperwork is being arbitrarily rejected, usually without proper review and certainly contrary to science and the constitution.

The memo also reiterates,

“Religious liberty is a foundational principle of enduring importance in America, enshrined in our Constitution and other sources of Federal law. Service members have the right to observe the tenets of their religion or to observe no religion at all.”

That is absolutely correct, and yet they forgot about that for the last year of an unconstitutional mandate and the unconstitutional denial of almost every single exemption request. I have to admit, I’m kind of shocked that they actually said this because, by the way things have been in the military recently, I wondered if they would ever acknowledge this again.

To top it off, Austin explained that service members who were administratively discharged “on the sole basis that the Service member failed to obey a lawful order to receive a vaccine for COVID-19” can petition to have their discharge records reflect a “general under honorable conditions” discharge, thereby allowing them future professional possibilities.