I support the COVID vaccine. I've taken it myself, and I encourage all adults (especially those at high risk) to take it in an effort to help stop the spread of COVID. 

That being said, I am opposed to any government mandate requiring individuals to take the COVID vaccine.

Traditionally, vaccines have been required for childhood diseases (e.g., whooping cough, polio, etc.) that pose a serious risk of death or bodily injury to children. Even then, most states in America allow religious exemptions for vaccines, and 15 states even allow for philosophical objections. We have long respected dissenting beliefs in this country, even regarding something as important as childhood vaccinations. 

But COVID poses a relatively low risk of death to children. Two to three times as many children were killed in car crashes in America in 2019 than have died from COVID in the entire pandemic to date. This proposed mandate isn't really about helping kids get back to normal; they should've been back to that a long time ago.

If a school employee or any other adult is concerned about getting sick from COVID, they should get the vaccine, and many have already done so. If a school employee comes down with COVID, they should be required to stay home (like they should with most other infectious illnesses in any case). There is no need to threaten the employment of teachers, administrators, or other school employees by requiring them to get a vaccine for a disease that poses a low risk to the children in the environment in which they are working. Mandates imposed in other environments have already resulted in numerous vital employees (including healthcare workers) losing their jobs at a time when workers are badly needed to keep the essentials of our country running.

Advocates for a COVID vaccine mandate forget that we Americans are a freedom-loving people who have often lashed back against dubious government restrictions imposed for the sake of public health. Have we forgotten what happened during Prohibition, when the well-intended ban on alcohol helped fuel the rise of organized crime and gang violence? Americans don't like being told what to do on debatable matters of public health, and trying to force us to do so by public health mandates often backfires, and is already backfiring in the case of COVID. 

I have no fear of the COVID vaccine after researching it and taking it, but I can understand why some people are skeptical, even though I disagree with them.

Many skeptics have undoubtedly been confused by inconsistent messaging from public health authorities, who demanded that people take the vaccine, but then insisted people still had to live like they were walking organic death machines.

Many skeptics have seen the duplicitous messaging coming from public figures like Dr. Fauci, and wonder, "What else are they lying about?"

Many skeptics observed Democrats bash a vaccine developed under a Republican President, only to see those same Democrats turn around and be big fans of it once a Democrat President was elected. No wonder some are saying, "What gives?"

Add in bad personal experiences that some people have had with doctors, or bad past reactions to flu vaccines, or a group's past history of being subjected to unethical medical experiments (see, e.g., the horrendous history of the syphilis experiments conducted on African American men), and one should be able to understand why some people are skeptical of the COVID vaccine. 

But instead of understanding, they so often get finger-wagging lectures about how they are awful human beings who should be forced into taking the vaccine. Mandates will certainly not reassure the skeptics; they will only frighten them and further entrench current resistant attitudes. 

Persuasion will do a far better job here than coercion.