Do you remember the countless times that someone at the Pentagon said that the military has absolutely no way of tracking how many troops are refusing to be vaccinated against the new coronavirus?
Well, it turns out that about a third of the military has not had the opportunity to get the COVID-19 vaccine, a two-star Air Force general told lawmakers on Wednesday.
“I think our initial view – and these, of course, are very old data – is that acceptance rates are somewhere in the two-thirds territory and, of course, varies according to different groups,” said the major general. Jeff Taliaferro before the Armed Services Committee Chamber.
Taliaferro, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is the first defense officer to publicly acknowledge that the military knows how many soldiers are choosing not to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
Until Wednesday, defense officials insisted that it was impossible to find out how many military personnel refused to be vaccinated because the program was voluntary:
“It’s not the kind of thing that we’re monitoring centrally here, that OSD [the office of the secretary of defense] it has a database from which we can simply extract, “Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters on February 8.” Not the case now. “
When Task & Purpose asked the Pentagon in January for data on military personnel who refused the vaccine – noting that all troops should have updated vaccination records – a Defense Department spokesman said the military had nothing to share.
“The number of declines is not available at the moment, as this leads to the fact that taking the vaccine is voluntary and we adhere to the intention of the guidance that was placed under emergency use authorization,” Maj. Army César Santiago said on January 29.
And when Task and Purpose asked Kirby if the Pentagon could use the Defense Health Agency’s Form 207, which should indicate which members of the service refused COVID-19 vaccines, to provide an idea of how many troops refused to be vaccinated, he said to look at that.
That was on February 8 and the Department of Defense has not yet responded.
On Wednesday, Kirby continued to claim that the Department of Defense does not have a centralized system for tracking how many troops are deciding not to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
Kirby said Taliaferro and other defense officials who testified on Wednesday were reiterating that the rate of troops refusing the vaccine reflects trends in society as a whole.
He also insisted that the Pentagon is making no attempt to hide data on the number of soldiers who are deciding not to be vaccinated.
“Nobody is hiding data,” said Kirby in response to a question from Task & Purpose. “There would be no reason for us to hide the data, when we can certainly tell how many people exactly are getting the vaccines. If there is anything else in my understanding of what was witnessed today, I promise I will take it, but no one is trying to hide anything here. It is our interest to be as open and transparent as possible. We are trying to do that. “
Kirby added that he questioned the idea that the Pentagon was not being fully transparent with the media.
However, Sam LaGrone of USNI News revealed that the Navy has data on how many sailors are passing on the opportunity to be vaccinated. About 30% of sailors refuse to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
When asked on Wednesday about the history of USNI, Kirby said it is possible that individual commands or services have a better idea of who refuses to be vaccinated than the Pentagon.
“In the Department of Defense, in the OSD [office of the secretary of defense] level, the level at which we’re operating, we don’t have a central data tracking mechanism to do that, ”he said.
Former Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in December that the COVID-19 vaccine could become mandatory for service members and other employees when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration fully licenses the vaccines.
But Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) Noted on Wednesday that it could take up to two years to fully authorize a vaccine and he is concerned that the military may not have that much time.
On Wednesday, some 147,000 military personnel received two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, said Robert Salesses, who serves as deputy defense secretary for internal defense and global security, at Wednesday’s hearing.
Shown image: A marine receives the first dose of the Modern vaccine during the DoD’s first phase of vaccine administration at the Cherry Point Navy Health Clinic, North Carolina, December 23, 2020. (Photo by Marine Corps US Naval by Lance Cpl. Jacob Bertram)