mandatory for them to have it. so this becomes part of the 17 vaccines that service members have to get. and it will become it will go into their computer medical records, it will be man today toerks they will have to get it. the big question is what happens if somebody refuses. we don t have an answer to that yet. and i think what it will depend on is whether it becomes mandatory before one of the vaccines most likely pfizer, it passes through the emergency authorization stage and about beings the fda makes it fully authorized. if it is still an emergency authorization phase, then i think that there will be people will be thinking back towards when the anthrax vaccine was made mandatory for service members. people at the time, some service members, refused to get the vaccine and some were dishonorably discharged because of it. they were kicked out of the military. i don t expect that we ll see it at that same level of the anthrax vaccine, but again, the
olivia troye. i want to start with you, olivia, on the breaking news that the pentagon will mandate vaccines for all members of the military. it s a good start, to protect our members of the military services and our communities. i know it was a careful decision, but i remember deploying and getting the anthrax vaccine, i was a civilian and i was told to get it. if it s going to protect americans and service members, then i hope we ll see more efforts like this. because i think it s necessary at this point. tim, i want to ask you about two things. the administration s response to that parallel about not requiring proof of vaccine to fly is that inside the airplane, you re quite safe. that s a great thing, and sort of the innovations that the airlines made inside the airplane itself.
Aug. 6—A New York state military law attorney said he is receiving calls from Airmen serving at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base — and from active-duty service members across the country — asking about options if the Department of Defense mandates that military members take the COVID vaccine. The calls are coming at a time when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is expected to ask President Biden .
employs 1.4 million active duty men and women plus a civilian work force of more than 700,000, which is why as private companies have started to require their workers to get vaccinated against covid, all eyes have been on the u.s. military to see if the nation s largest employer would mandate vaccines, too. president biden has already required all federal employees get vaccinated and many service members are already required to receive certain vaccines. but the u.s. military has a complicated history with mandatory vaccines after it required all service members to receive an experimental anthrax vaccine in the 90s. president biden has asked his secretary of defense lloyd austin, to first study whether or not the covid vaccine should be mandatory for the u.s. military. the defense secretary will make his final recommendation to the president in the next few days. joining us now is pentagon correspondent courtney cuby and
the crux of the issue. we have been hearing from people close to secretary austin that they did not want to make this mandatory, because of the military s history with these mandatory vaccines, like the anthrax vaccine. there has been reticence to make this mandatory for military, because they do not want to look like they are using the military as guinea pigs guinea pigs for experimental medicine. we already have millions of people around the world who have taken these vaccines, including many military members themselves, more than 65% of them have gotten two doses, when you look at it across services. so that s what i think change the calculus here for the military. we know know that the secretary is open to this, they have looked at this, we have been told that it would happen very quickly. so we should expect that announcement to come very soon, nicole. paul, i was trying to find a