Military leaders acknowledge that the vaccine requirement is one of several factors contributing to their recruiting struggles.
“I would remind all of you that the Pentagon has a range of vaccines it has long required,” Jean-Pierre said Monday. “So this is nothing new.”
The reasons, however, are complex. Two years of the pandemic shut off recruiters’ access to schools and events where they find prospects, and online recruiting was only marginally successful. Finding recruits is made more difficult by the ongoing nationwide labor shortage and the fact that only about 23% of young people can meet the military’s fitness, educational and moral requirements — with many disqualified for medical issues, criminal records, tattoos and other things.
“We lost a million people to this virus,” Austin said. “A million people died in the United States of America. We lost hundreds in DoD. So this mandate has kept people healthy.” Military leaders have argued that troops for decades have been required to get as many as 17 vaccines in order to maintain the health of the force, particularly those deploying overseas. Recruits arriving at the military academies or at basic training get a regimen of shots on their first day — such as measles, mumps and rubella — if they aren’t already vaccinated. And they routinely get flu shots in the fall.
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