Originally Posted by Duffman

Why is this a dumb order, because you believe the vaccines don't work?

If they do work, then they're stopping a highly contagious virus that has a massive impact on operational readiness. Who cares about the death rate, I wouldn't want to deal with a cruiser or AOC where half the crew is dragging ass and making mistakes left and right because they all have COVID. Also, I was at an exercise in early 2020 where half the participants came down with 'a really bad flu' and some ended up in the hospital with pneumonia. They didn't die, but it crippled our ability to conduct the exercise and fight a very real-world scenario. Fast-forward a few years later and with mitigation, there were zero negative effects from COVID at a very similar exercise. If some special snowflake believes the vaccine is really nanobots that share their thoughts with the govt (more than their Facebook page does already), then they can do a different job where other people don't have to rely on them. They're a liability not an asset. They catch the virus easier, they're sick longer, and spread it to more people, including vaccinated people, who are generally only sick for a day or two, but that still really screws up operations (as I saw at my most recent TDY). You can't do most of these jobs by just showing up, mistakes matter and people with COVID suck at their jobs for a few days. It's 100% in the military's best interest to hold a hard line on this, and that's all aside from the obvious problem that soldiers are refusing to follow a direct order with known consequences. The first thing you learn in the military is that you are expendable and replaceable, so if less than 0.5% of the military wants to self-eliminate, let 'em. The VAST MAJORITY of the military got vaccinated, so now we're going to start making exceptions to a small, vocal, whiny minority? Yeah, **** that.