The Biden White House this week launched a “nationwide effort” aimed at increasing the rate of children receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, with a letter from the Department of Health and Human Services stating that “vaccination is the best tool we have” to ensure the safety of students and keep schools open.
The joint letter from HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona was sent to school superintendents and elementary-school principals across the nation on Monday, just days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 shot for children ages 5-11.
“Today, we reach out to you with encouragement for you to actively support the vaccination process for children in your state, territories, county, tribes, communities and schools,” the Biden cabinet officials wrote. “This is a very exciting development and a significant opportunity to protect some of our youngest learners and our communities.”
“Vaccination is the best tool we have to keep our students safe from COVID-19, maintain in-person learning, and prevent the closure of schools and cancellation of valued extracurricular activities,” they added, recommending measures such as masking, testing, tracing, distancing, and improving ventilation.
“Schools play a vital role in providing access to and trusted information on the vaccine,” they wrote, adding that “parents listen closely to school leaders and personnel.” “We urge you to do all you can to help parents and families learn about the vaccine and get access to it.”
The Biden officials called on schools to host COVID-19 vaccine clinics. They stated that schools can use funds available through the American Rescue Plan “to ensure that you can cover all costs of hosting a clinic.”
Also on Monday, Joe Biden’s wife, Jill, was accompanied by U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on a visit to a school vaccination clinic in Virginia.
Per the White House, that visit kicks off “a nationwide effort from the Biden administration to encourage parents and guardians to vaccinate children ages 5-11.”
Joe Biden even had the help of fictional Sesame Street character Big Bird over the weekend, when the official Twitter account of the iconic yellow bird wrote that Big Bird had gotten the COVID-19 vaccine. Biden replied encouragingly to the character.
On Monday, New York City public schools went along with the White House’s advice and began their first day of open vaccination sites for 5-11-year-olds. So did Seattle.
The Seattle Times notes:
Four Seattle elementary schools administered vaccines Monday. Bailey Gatzert and Leschi Elementary School each had about 100 doses, said Audrey Querns, a project manager for the office of strategy, deployment and responsiveness at Seattle Public Schools.…
Seattle Schools plans to hold vaccine clinics at 40 schools for students who are enrolled at those schools. There will also be 14 regional clinics at Seattle school buildings on the weekends and in the evenings for any student enrolled in the district.
Parents are worried that vaccine clinics could result in children being vaccinated without parents’ permission. In Louisiana last month, a mother filed a lawsuit against a high school after her 16-year-old son got the shot during a mobile vaccination event on campus without her permission.
The vaccine agenda of the Biden White House, which mandated COVID-19 vaccination at private places of employment all throughout the country, parallels the plan being pursued by authorities in Australia.
In the Australian state of Victoria, unvaccinated people will be “locked out” of the economy.
Victoria Premier Dan Andrews said in an address in September that “we’re going to move to a situation where, to protect the health system, we are going to lock out people who are not vaccinated and can be.”
Saying that he was not going to lock the whole state down “to protect people who would not protect themselves,” Andrews noted that chances of unvaccinated people participating in public activities such as attending a sporting event or going to a pub “will be very, very limited.”
Andrews did not specify what type of services and venues unvaccinated people would be barred from, but noted that there will be “many, many” of them.
As large corporations gladly work hand-in-hand with the Biden government to compel vaccination, is America moving toward a system similar to that of Australia?
