I urge the Virginia Department of Health to consider the petition to mandate COVID vaccination for all eligible students and staff in Virginia's schools. Given the devastating effects of the COVID pandemic, I believe that it's time citizens and state officials alike took this disease as seriously as we all took polio years ago. Polio no longer is a widespread threat precisely because of the development of an effective vaccine and the implementation of a program of vaccination beginning in infancy. Surely we would all like to be able to say the same of COVID-19--that it has lost the capacity to wreak havoc with everyone's daily life because everyone is willing to take responsibility for public health and safety by getting vaccinated.