Dear VDH, please do NOT allow the covid vaccine to become mandatory for school employees nor for students. I understand that the petitioning parent wants school to go back to normal for her child, but the reality is that the vaccine will not bring school back to normal. The vaccine does not prevent the vaccinated or the unvaccinated from becoming infected by and spreading the virus. The vaccine is only possibly useful in minimizing the vaccinated individual’s symptoms and severity of illness. This means students’ and employees’ school routines will still be interrupted by quarantine periods because people will still become infected and ill. The CDC still recommends that vaccinated individuals wear masks in high transmission areas which would mean masks would still be required in schools even with mandatory vaccination. So yet another aspect of the school year would not be back to normal. The CDC website also says that the longevity of the vaccine’s effectiveness is still unknown. Why mandate a vaccine that has not yet been proven to be effective for a long period of time? The petitioner also requests that only medical exemptions be allowed under the mandate. Schools strive to accommodate students’ and employees’ many different religious needs. Why would our Commonwealth refuse a student’s or employee’s religious freedom in this area but not in others? Making the vaccine mandatory is not going to propel us to “normal” like the petitioner is hoping a mandate will do. Please do NOT mandate the vaccine!