U.S. military service members will be allowed to seek an exemption from the soon-to-be-mandated COVID-19 vaccines, which would be determined by individual military service regulations, a Pentagon spokesperson said. “There is a religious exemption possibility for any mandatory vaccine, and there’s a process that we go through to counsel the individual both from a medical and from a command perspective about using a religious exemption,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said during a press briefing on Aug. 10. The department would make sure that every individual with reservations gets proper counseling on the COVID-19 vaccine’s safety and efficacy, Kirby said. Both a medical professional and a commander would counsel the individual about the risks of not being vaccinated and how that might affect deployability, assignments, travel, teammates, and the mission. “We take freedom of religion and worship seriously in the military. It’s one of the things that we sign up to …