The Department of Defense released a video today of the Secretary of Defense addressing the entire workforce to encourage informed decision-making with regards to coronavirus-19 vaccination.
Secretary Lloyd J.
Austin III addressed the men and women of the Department directly in a video posted to Defense.gov.
The video can be viewed here.
The text of Secretary Austin's address follows:
Hello there, I'm Lloyd Austin, Secretary of Defense.
I wanted to speak with you today about the coronavirus … and about how we can all chip in to defeat this pandemic once and for all.
As you have probably seen, we are going to be sending teams of active-duty professionals to assist FEMA in administering vaccines at select locations around the country.
This, of course, comes on top of the more than 20,000 National Guardsmen and women assisting state and local authorities across the country, as part of the whole-of-government response.
In other words, we're pitching in to help our fellow citizens as quickly and safely as possible.
We're part of a larger team of federal and state agencies, and we are working hard – leaning in – to be productive members of that team.
We're also working hard to make vaccines available to every member of the DoD family who wants one.
You know we've approached this effort deliberately and in phases, making sure that we prioritized our frontline health care workers, and our deploying troops and those most vulnerable… but as we continue to advance through these phases, we want to make sure that all of you have the information that you need to make the best decisions for your families.
