It’s an uncomfortable position for leaders, in an organization that hinges on an expectation of compliance. One commanding officer in the Washington, D.C., area told me that the optional vaccine has also opened a door to obvious partisanship and misinformation in the ranks. This officer has strenuously encouraged subordinates to receive the vaccine but is hamstrung by an influential member of the command who declined it because, this person explicitly said, “it feels partisan.” In any other circumstance, it would be incumbent on a leader to squash rhetoric like this, as a matter of what the military calls “good order and discipline.”
There are impacts on operations, too. If a member who refuses the vaccine winds up testing positive for the virus—not an unlikely scenario, with cases still high—that person is of course moved to quarantine. An unequal burden in turn falls on troops who did take the vaccine, who must flex to cover the infected member’s duties. Another officer relayed a story to me in which an unvaccinated sailor was due to be deployed but contracted the coronavirus and ultimately missed the unit’s departure.
It's a matter of readiness. Making COVID vaccinations optional is a dereliction of duty at the most senior levels of the military. Explored in the Naval Institute's blog, the reasoning behind this can be summed in a single acronym: FOJ. That's Fear Of JAGs.
ReplyDeleteApparently some pinheads advising the JCS have opined that because the vaccines are authorized under an Emergency Use Authorization, they can't be required absolutely. So the shots that are being pushed by the Commander In Chief for universal use in the country somehow can't be pushed to those defending that nation. And readiness is the victim.
Shakespeare had it right.