Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) made transphobic comments to attack the U.S. military for requiring servicemembers to get vaccinated.
“I will seek the president’s approval to make the vaccines mandatory no later than mid-September,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wrote in a memo to servicemembers yesterday. He said that the requirement could come sooner if COVID-19 cases continue to rise or if the FDA gives final approval to the Pfizer vaccine before mid-September.
Related: Lauren Boebert tried to mock Jen Psaki’s intelligence. It didn’t go well.
“To defend this Nation, we need a healthy and ready force,” he wrote, arguing that a massive outbreak of COVID-19 in the military would be a national security threat.
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President Joe Biden must approve the plan, and he said in a statement yesterday that he supports it.
Given that states where COVID-19 cases are sky-rocketing are asking people to delay scheduled surgeries and the state of Arkansas has only eight ICU beds left at all, vaccinating the over two million active duty and reserve servicemembers against the COVID-19 virus could help save numerous lives.
Moreover, the military already mandates many vaccines for servicemembers to avoid illness and the resulting drain on medical resources.
Calling the vaccines “experimental” – despite how clinical trials of the vaccines were concluded last year – Boebert said that the U.S. military isn’t concerned with “actually winning battles” and listed other supposed priorities for the military, including supporting transgender servicemembers and communism.
“The leaders of the Pentagon are more focused on race-baiting communist propaganda, political narratives, and prioritizing gender reassignment surgery over actually winning battles,” she tweeted.
The Pentagon is mandating all members of the US Military get the experimental COVID vaccine.
The leaders of the Pentagon are more focused on race-baiting communist propaganda, political narratives, and prioritizing gender reassignment surgery over actually winning battles.
— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) August 9, 2021
When Donald Trump first banned transgender people from serving openly in the military, he cited the supposed “tremendous medical costs” of gender-affirming care as a reason for the ban. That argument became one of the most common reasons anti-transgender activists would use against equal rights, even though gender-affirming care was estimated to cost the military much less than other medical interventions like Viagra.
Boebert did not discuss the cost to the military of treating COVID-19 for years to come if servicemembers don’t get vaccinated.
None of the vaccines authorized for use in the U.S. are considered experimental. Clinical trials last year showed that they are safe and effective against COVID-19 and over two billion people worldwide have received at least one dose of a vaccine, with far fewer negative effects than the disease itself causes.
