While there is a growing wave in skepticism towards all vaccines within the Department of Defense after the illegal enforcement of the COVID-19 shot, a whistleblower has come forward to present information indicating that employees within Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) have previously expressed similar doubts, especially regarding the flu vaccine.
The recent news stories of a Marine Corps officer, Air Force Major Brennan Schilperoort (whose pay has been restored), Army Sergeant Dan McGriff, (a pseudonym), and Air National Guard Technical Sergeant Tony Oslin reveal the Department of Defense’s current disdain for service members seeking religious accommodation or medical exemption for the flu shot.
Has VA been more forgiving with its employees, given that they are more frequently in contact with the elderly compared to the typical service member?
The Gateway Pundit spoke to whistleblower Sonny Fleeman, who emphasized his opinions are entirely his own and do not reflect the views of the United States Government, the Department of Veterans Affairs, or any organization he is currently or has previously been associated with.
When Fleeman submitted a FOIA request to the Department of Veterans Affairs in February 2025, the agency was still requiring COVID-19 and flu shots for its healthcare employees.
“I wanted to see how many of those on the inside—the doctors, nurses, and staff who actually live with the consequences—were requesting exemptions,” he explained. “That number would reflect the real sentiment of healthcare workers rather than a tightly controlled narrative being sold to the public,” he suspected.
“To sharpen the comparison,” Fleeman also asked about flu shot exemptions, and “the results were shocking.” In 2024, close to 100,000 VA healthcare workers—approximately 25 percent of its total staff—were granted exemptions from the flu shot mandate for medical or religious reasons.
“That’s one in four employees across the largest healthcare system in the United States, and possibly the world, yet the VA still functioned,” he pointed out. For him, “The data shatters the military’s claim that mandates were ‘operationally necessary.’”
Fleeman’s findings were shared in an August 17 X post, which also expresses his concern about the military’s enforcement of a flu shot vaccine:
In 2024, nearly 100,000 VA healthcare workers — a full 25% of staff in the largest healthcare system in the world — were exempted from the flu shot mandate (medical & religious). If healthcare can function with that, the military has no excuse for ending careers over the same. pic.twitter.com/BT2aVnkXMm
— Woodland Beast (@Woodland_Beast) August 18, 2025
“If the VA can serve millions of vulnerable veterans with a quarter of its workforce exempt,” Fleeman argued, “the military had—and still has—no justification for ending careers under the same pretext,” Fleeman told The Gateway Pundit.
According to him, “The argument of necessity was never about readiness; it was about control.”
For him, the underlying problem is this: Mandates do more than seek to ensure compliance. He argued, “They also manufacture the appearance of demand, [and] by coercing uptake and silencing dissent, they create the illusion that the ‘science’ is settled and universally accepted.” However, he said the science itself is “often propped up by pharmaceutical incentives, to include research funding, lobbying, and career pressure that overwhelmingly tilt the scales in one direction.”
VA statistics reveal what the public health authorities would prefer to conceal, and that is, “dissent among frontline professionals is real, widespread, and significant,” Fleeman offered. “If so many inside the system are resisting, then the official narrative of unanimous acceptance collapses.”
Fleeman observed, “These mandates were never just about protecting health; they were about creating compliance, generating artificial demand, and consolidating control under the guise of science.”
The post Veterans Affairs’ Numbers Humiliate the Military: Mandates Weren’t About Health or Readiness, They Were About Control, Says Whistleblower appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.