Vaccine Mandate Harms Military Readiness

In a news analysis for Heartland Daily Times, National Center Senior Fellow Bonner Cohen, Ph.D. chronicled efforts by active-duty members of the U.S. military to exempt themselves from federal vaccination requirements for COVID-19.

The military’s unwavering stance on the vaccine mandate, according to a lawyer representing a group of servicemembers threatened with separation from their jobs because they are refusing the jab, said the policy has “drastically weakened national security at a time of rising tensions globally, which serves China and globalists’ agendas to take America ’out of the fight’ and take over globally.”

Bonner noted that the U.S. Army had kicked out 818 soldiers as of early June for not being vaccinated. Of the almost 4,500 members of the Army seeking an exemption on religious grounds, only 11 have been granted. And medical waivers are also difficult despite understandable skepticism about the vaccine:

The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the COVID-19 vaccines under the emergency use authorization (EUA) meant the treatments were greenlighted without having to go through the FDA’s customarily long testing process before signing off on new drugs. The EUA led to charges the vaccines were more experimental than the public was given to understand.

Problems for the military due to these involuntary separations spread beyond individual servicemembers when those soldiers, sailors and airmen are involved in duties such as being pilots, medical personnel and others who cannot be easily replaced among the ranks.

Read all of Bonner’s Heartland Daily News article – “American Soldiers in a Battle Over Military’s COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate” – by clicking here.

Bonner is also the co-author of the National Center report “Beyond COVID-19,” which points out how the “precautionary principle” behind the battle against the pandemic threatened liberty, prosperity and even public health due to public policy mismanagement. The report also makes recommendations to restore rights and freedoms while preparing to properly handle the next health emergency.



The National Center for Public Policy Research is a communications and research foundation supportive of a strong national defense and dedicated to providing free market solutions to today’s public policy problems. We believe that the principles of a free market, individual liberty and personal responsibility provide the greatest hope for meeting the challenges facing America in the 21st century.