Freedom freedom freedom

Well, if you make a rabid Fox News host the Secretary of Defense, this is what you get.

A major flu outbreak has sickened nearly 160 troops at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas less than two months after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that U.S. troops would no longer be required to be vaccinated for the flu, defense officials said.

The outbreak at the base in San Antonio raced through an Air Force Basic Military Training wing, where new recruits sleep on bunk beds in open bays and share meals at large communal tables.

…

In the weeks since Mr. Hegseth’s vaccine policy took effect on April 21, only about 40 percent of Air Force trainees have opted to take the vaccine, which had previously been mandatory, an Air Force official said.

In the aftermath of the outbreak, the Air Force issued an exception to the voluntary vaccine policy, requiring that all recruits at Lackland get flu shots — part of a broader effort to stem the virus’s spread.

Mr. Hegseth cast his decision to make the flu vaccine optional as a matter of religious freedom and medical autonomy.

Flu vaccines of course have nothing whatever to do with religion and so have nothing to do with religious freedom. Quack notions about vaccination are not “religious” except in the sense that both rely on just making shit up. People shouldn’t have “medical autonomy” because people don’t have “disease autonomy” or “death autonomy” or “contagion autonomy.”

“Under the disastrous Biden administration, this Pentagon waged an unrelenting war on our warriors on many fronts, including when it came to denying them simple medical autonomy and the freedom to express their religious convictions,” he said in a video announcing his decision in April.

Stupid putz. Religion is wholly irrelevant to disease control. It doesn’t matter what your religious convictions are when it’s a question of spreading a dangerous illness instead of getting vaccinated to prevent spreading illness. If Baby Jesus doesn’t want us to prevent the spread of disease he can go join Hegseth in the Asylum for Religious Lunatics.