The Republican Party has once again bowed to its radical fringe regarding reasonable precautions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. An $858 billion defense-funding bill that passed the House last week contains a stipulation that the Pentagon lift its coronavirus vaccination requirement. House Republicans threatened to stall the bill unless Democrats agreed to the stipulation.
The rationale is as bogus today as it was back when Republicans first raised their opposition to the vaccination mandate in 2021: that it was coercive and the vaccine was not proven safe. The vaccine has, in fact, been proven safe millions of times over. It also has been proven not only to help prevent infection but also to make symptoms less severe among those who do get infected.
That’s apparently not good enough for the MAGA base that House and Senate Republicans continue trying to placate. The coronavirus vaccine, like masks, remains a symbol of political power in Republican minds, as if those who are trying to save lives by encouraging vaccination are part of a vast plot by President Joe Biden that must be defeated.
Rep. Mary Miller, a hardline Donald Trump supporter who represents Illinois’ 15th District, is emblematic of the anti-vaccine crowd’s attitude. “Today, we can celebrate that the Biden COVID vaccine mandate for our troops will finally end thanks to the hard work of a small group of conservatives who held the line on behalf of our armed forces," she said in a statement Thursday.
She added, "The end of this vaccine mandate will lead to the end of every unconstitutional and unjust COVID mandate, and House Republicans must investigate the corruption at the CDC and FDA when we take the majority next month!"
Miller and other vaccine opponents said nothing about rescinding the other longstanding vaccination requirements still in effect for all U.S. service members: Hepatitis A and B; the flu; measles, mumps, rubella; meningococcal disease; polio; tetanus, diphtheria and chickenpox. It’s only the coronavirus vaccine that has their attention. Doubly bizarre is that the vaccine was developed under then-President Trump and marked one of his crowning achievements in office.
The GOP move comes as the coronavirus has high potential for another global surge this winter because China is lifting its draconian lockdown rules, which had limited the disease’s spread in that country. Hundreds of millions of new infections are possible, according to one top Chinese health official.
Ending the requirement also ignores the military’s nightmarish experiences with out-of-control infections before the vaccine was developed, including 1,271 infections aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, forcing the ship’s evacuation.
The vaccination requirement has yielded none of the disaster scenarios that critics had predicted. But the GOP insists on feeding a baseless rumor mill and weakening the military’s readiness — all for the sake of political expediency.
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