It’s Time the Pentagon Ended Its COVID Vaccine Mandate for the Military

White House officials are furious that the House on Thursday passed its defense funding bill — now headed to the Senate — with a provision that would force the Pentagon to end its coronavirus vaccine mandate for members of the military.

The House got it right. It’s time for the Biden administration to end the vaccine mandate for service members. And businesses, universities, schools and other entities that were once justified in implementing these requirements should consider removing them, too.

Public health policy needs to adjust based on evolving science and changing circumstances. When the coronavirus vaccines were first made available, there was a compelling case for requiring them. Initial data showed that they reduced infections by more than 90 percent. In the fall of 2021, when the Pentagon announced its vaccine requirement, an unvaccinated person was five times more likely to be infected compared with someone who was vaccinated.

In other words, if you weren’t vaccinated, you were five times more likely to be infected, and therefore to transmit, the coronavirus to others. In the military, and in other settings involving close contact, such as workplaces and schools, it made sense to implement a measure that protected others.

Things changed with the arrival of omicron. For months, research has shown that while the vaccines provide excellent protection against hospitalization and death, their effectiveness in reducing infection against the omicron subvariants is low and not lasting. One recent study, in Nature Communications, found that effectiveness against infection was about 50 percent in the first three months after vaccination but declined to around 10 percent or below thereafter. Another one, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that there was no difference in infection rates between people who received two doses of the vaccine six months earlier and those who remained unvaccinated.

What about the new bivalent booster that’s designed to target omicron? Again, while protection against severe illness appears strong, effectiveness against infection is not. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 18-to-49-year-olds who received a bivalent booster on top of two or more previous vaccines had a 43 percent reduction in infection compared with those who did not get the booster. For those 50 to 65 years old, that dropped to 28 percent; for those 65 and older, the added effectiveness was just 22 percent.

Importantly, the CDC data only encompassed a two-month period following the booster. Effectiveness against infection likely wanes quickly after that. After six months, if the increase in protection were, say, 10 percent or less, is that enough to justify a mandate?

Proponents of continuing the vaccine mandates argue that, for the military and schoolchildren, many other vaccines are already required. But other vaccines are nowhere near as polarizing as the coronavirus vaccine. Equating this to others could have an unintended consequence of extending the backlash from covid-19 to other inoculations.

That would be a profound tragedy. The polio vaccine is more than 99 percent effective at preventing paralytic polio, which, at the peak of the epidemic in the 1940s and 1950s, permanently disabled tens of thousands of children in the United States every year. Similarly, the measles vaccine is 97 percent effective at preventing infection. Before its development in 1963, about 1,000 American kids suffered devastating brain swelling and 400 to 500 children died every year.

Public health officials must be upfront that the coronavirus vaccine is not equivalent to these far more effective vaccines. That doesn’t mean that we should stop promoting it; in fact, I’ve argued that much more needs to be done to urge the elderly to receive the coronavirus booster. Nearly 9 out of 10 deaths from covid are among those 65 and older, yet only about a third of people in this age group have received the updated booster. The coronavirus vaccine is also crucial for those vulnerable to severe illness, and vaccination efforts should focus on outreach to these groups.

But I don’t think that the coronavirus vaccine meets the bar for across-the-board mandates. Young, healthy people, most of whom already had covid, are very unlikely to become severely ill, and there is little, if any, lasting difference between the vaccinated and unvaccinated people’s likelihood of infecting others. Vaccines can reduce the risk of long covid, but the benefit is modest; a study of more than 13 million people found only a 15 percent reduction in risk. That alone doesn’t meet the bar for a requirement.

Could a mandate reduce overall transmission, thereby alleviating strain on hospitals? Immediately after vaccination, there is some protection against infection, but after several months, there is little, if any, difference in infection rates between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. Most of all, I worry that the price of doubling down on covid mandates is enabling the return of other vaccine-preventable illnesses.

Of course, the science could change again, in which case policies should be reconsidered. For example, a requirement might make sense if a pan-coronavirus vaccine emerges that is extremely effective against infection and transmission. For now, we need to acknowledge that the coronavirus vaccine mandate, for which there was once a strong case, is no longer justified and could be doing more harm than good.

Reporting from The Washington Post.

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