At least, that's how I'm taking this particular bit of nonsense.
The fact that we have anyone in the military trying to get waivers for religious exceptions is absolutely bonkers; especially since everyone runs through the gauntlet of immunizations within the first week or two of basic training. Random website I found mentions these as some of the various shots you get (it's been eighteen years; I don't remember what any of them were):
You’ll most likely get shots for Adenovirus, Influenza, Measles, Meningococcal, Mumps, Polio, Rubella, Tetanus-diphtheria, and yellow fever.
Now I could be mistaken, and people got out of those during their processing days, but I find it kinda hard to believe/stomach.
If you don't get vaccinated against something—regardless of how archaic the disease may seem—you've a chance to contract it. And if you contract it, there's also a pretty solid chance that during the course of the infection, the virus will use your own body's immune response to mutate into something potentially more devastating and/or contagious.
And then, because you chose not to get vaccinated, there's now a chance that I will have to suffer the consequences of your decision.
If you don't wanna get vaccinated, fine.
If you don't wanna mask up, fine.
However, both of those things are so stupidly trivial—and the vaccine and boosters are free—that I just don't understand why you'd opt against it.
...Short of those really fucking weird tinfoil hat conspiracy theories.
The fact that it's now 2022 and we still have people out there with such asinine beliefs is staggering. We've still got people that are under the belief that GMOs are unsafe because they're unnatural... or that we don't know the long-term health effects of consuming GMOs. But then you check out how life expectancy has risen over the decades, and who's to say that GMOs (among other things, of course) haven't contributed to that rise?
Again: I'm fine if you don't want to get vaccinated, but this whole pandemic has set some ridiculous precedents.
Some great.
Some... shitty.
And letting people get away with this shit... that should very well have known what the fuck they were getting into when they signed on those many fucking lines to join the military... it's one of those shitty precedents.
Exceptions of any kind other than medical be damned: you don't follow an order, you need to be separated by article 92.