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News / Opinion / Letters to the Editor

Letter: Vaccine mandate is misguided

By Holly Kirby, VANCOUVER
Published: October 25, 2021, 6:00am

As the mass majority knows, President Joe Biden has implemented many different vaccine mandates. These include requiring federal workers to be vaccinated and having schools implement COVID-19 testing as a part of daily operations.

This is absurd. Even though some workers are supposedly protected under the Americans With Disabilities Act and others with religious exemption, how will these companies be regulated on who they fire and who they allow the exemption?

As stated on the Washington State Department of Health webpage, Gov. Jay Inslee had announced on Aug. 18 that all public and private K-12 employees need to be vaccinated or obtain religious or medical exemptions by Oct. 18. As a result of this mandate, a local school district just let go of a group of teachers and employees for not yet being vaccinated. Even though some of those teachers tried to file for a religious exemption from being required to have the vaccine.

At a time when the school districts are already hurting for teachers and substitutes, how was firing a group of teachers, not for their work ethic but for their choice not to get vaccinated, going to be beneficial?

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